How is a government demanding a woman dress a certain way any different than a religion demanding a woman dress a certain way?
Because, in a democracy, a full public debate can be held about it?
I didn't say I was happy with the majority dictating to the minority on rules of dress.
Hell, if there's a single anthropological universal, it might very well be that. Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères
Nudity is a very buddha kind of thing. It extends from the pacific to Europe and the US, but it is lacking in most non-buddha, non-Chrst ,-non_allah, no-single major-entity above the semi-gods (in crhistian faith called saints) culture...
I wonder why that would be? well I guess I now have to go and reread Levi-Strauss again :)
Specially toa pply the reading to nude beaches, interesting topic.
On the topic at hand, everybody knows my point of view around here.
A pleasure I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude
I have the gut opinon that it is like a sacred place (I have never been done ethnology on a nude beach so I do not know, but I would love to), and it is structured like a non-monotesitic religion. Since I seem to remember that the concept of being nude is strongly linked with monoteistic (or one god above the others) religion I would bet that most people in nude beaches either are agnostic or follow other spirittual structures, and therefore they use it as a sacred place.
In any case, I do not know enough about that, I should read a bit on religion structre/space structure/and human body covering or bodies tabus...and relearn some antrhopology 201 :)
structured like a non-monotesitic religion
Some crhristian congregations, those on the left and on "god is love" who work with kids use them too. I have always wondered how they manage and why they do it.
It is difficult to translate to english , but I guess in spanish you get my point. In catalan I call it the "esplai" structure. Do you know what a "esplai" is?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esplai
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esplai
It is similar to scouts, but completely different :)
"Kumbaya" (also spelled Kum Ba Yah) is a spiritual song from the 1930s. It enjoyed newfound popularity during the folk revival of the 1960s and became a standard campfire song in Scouting and other nature-appreciative organizations. The song was originally associated with human and spiritual unity, closeness and compassion, and it still is, but more recently it is also cited or alluded to in satirical, sarcastic or even cynical ways that suggest blind or false moralizing, hypocrisy, or naively optimistic views of the world and human nature.[1]
"Kumbaya" (also spelled Kum Ba Yah) is a spiritual song from the 1930s. It enjoyed newfound popularity during the folk revival of the 1960s and became a standard campfire song in Scouting and other nature-appreciative organizations.
The song was originally associated with human and spiritual unity, closeness and compassion, and it still is, but more recently it is also cited or alluded to in satirical, sarcastic or even cynical ways that suggest blind or false moralizing, hypocrisy, or naively optimistic views of the world and human nature.[1]
Look, you seem to have your minds made up about this, and I certainly have mine made up, so a "debate" here isn't going to accomplish much, at least on my end. I will go to my grave lamenting every time a government or religion uses the female body is used for ammunition in patriarchal power struggles. Like just leaving the house doesn't present enough opportunities to be judged on our appearance. Like women born into an oppressive culture don't have enough to worry about. Now they have to choose who they please, her family or her government. Makes me perfectly sick, to be honest. "Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.
the land of the French
Who are the French? A people of different historical roots (Celtic, Latin, Germanic) which has assimilated and continues to assimilate many varying strands of immigration. What's in question here is a ragged edge in the assimilation process.
The argument is about whether the state should intervene by setting rules. I think it may do so. But just saying "this is the land of the French" is not only substantially meaningless, it also happens to be the National Front line. :)
There is no such thing as a French person and anyone who thinks there actually is such a thing is himself an unreconstructed nazi.
Sigh. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
Bleh.
But if you want to consider it from a social economic perspective... Societal equality requires the welfare state. The welfare state requires solidarity. There is no strong solidarity without homogenity, or at least the feeling that we are all in this together. If some group puts itself apart, the whole thing breaks down and the neolibs win.
Imagine there is an enclave populated entirely by foreigners, let's say Arabs. Chances are that this city will not be a net contributor of funds to society. How is this different from just incorporating an entire Arab city in say Syria in the social benefit system? Well, there isn't. And as we don't send money to the Arab city in Syria, why should we do it back here? Well, we shouldn't. So we should stop. But basing the welfare state on ethnicity in that way would be racist, so we'd just rather dismantle the entire welfare state instead.
We should be very happy that the forces in Europe that oppose multiculturalism and etc generally do it just because they oppose multiculturalism, and not like in the US where the Republicans used the race card to get the Southern Democrats to vote against their own economic interest, an issue Paul Krugman writes about in his excellent book The Conscience of a Liberal. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
Well, that's how the standard right-wing argument goes, certainly.
First question: why is the enclave not a net contributor to society?
Second question: why don't we send the money to Syria?
Third question: doesn't all this just depend on the story you tell yourself about who belongs in the in-group you believe is deserving of social welfare? Seems to me that right-wingers choose to tell themselves a story that restricts deserving to a small sub-group, at the extreme restricting it to small, lucky groups of the racially and/or religiously select. The homogeneity argument is an excuse for your choice of story.
While I do agree with you and Jerome on the social value of assimilation, something valuable is lost in the process and it should be possible to integrate without erasing cultural differences.
Starvid:
Imagine there is an enclave populated entirely by foreigners, let's say Arabs. Chances are that this city will not be a net contributor of funds to society
Imagine there is an enclave populated entirely by poor people. Chances are that this city will not be a net contributor of funds to society...
In other words, the race card allows to define deserving poor and undeserving poor, and make the poor fight between themselves rather than against their common economic foe. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
Integration just has to do with the ability/willingness to function/be accepted more or less fully in mainstream society.
Other people than just immigrants can fail to be "integrated" - they fall through the cracks, they feel alienated, etc... A man of words and not of deeds is like a garden full of weeds; a man of deeds and not of words is like a garden full of turds — Anonymous
after assimilation the resulting culture is a compromise between the mainstream culture and the assimilated ones...
We are no longer talking about France there, then. This is a country where, on the last "what is your favourite dish" study, couscous came out on top (despite a rather rich and diverse local cooking tradition), displacing gratin dauphinois.
As the husband of the daughter of a Moroccan man and a Laotian woman, I do spend quite some time within immigrants. They are quite assimilated, yet far from having had their identity erased. Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Gandhi
I do spend quite some time within immigrants
Integrate means that there remain subsocieties defined by culture
A subsociety will have some - strong - amount of social segregation in the form of specific friendly interactions, a preponderance of marriage within the subsociety, etc. The geek subculture exists but is definitely not a subsociety according to this, for example.
I bet there is a "conservative catholic" subculture in France which mostly only interacts friendly and intermarries with itself. A man of words and not of deeds is like a garden full of weeds; a man of deeds and not of words is like a garden full of turds — Anonymous
And also, the problems of a subsociety for the wider demos comes not only from the fact that the subsociety exists, but also how it defines itself : Is it collectively attempting to define itself, segregate itself, and consciously improve its lot in society as opposed to the other subgroups ?
For example, typically in France, academics are defined by "having a PhD", which is more or less attemptable by everybody, although being from academic parents help ; so the maintaining of a subsociety is not conscious. Secondary school teachers in France is one of the group most adamant about not forming subsocieties, indeed.
Compare to what counts in France as the haute bourgeoisie, which consciously creates a segregated education system for it kids, enforces marriage within the class through social disapproval, and is able to get members of the class in the Elysée.
Compare to a mythical muslim subsociety which would only vote for communautarian parties, which would send the kids to private muslim schools, and whose women would be practically unable to communicate with the outside society because of the burqa.
Obvious reasons mean that Sarko denounces the mythical later subsociety rather than the earlier one... Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères
Has all of this ever been researched properly? It would make a wonderful study.
I suspect it's rather leaky
All subcultures are leaky, however you care to define them. A man of words and not of deeds is like a garden full of weeds; a man of deeds and not of words is like a garden full of turds — Anonymous
And not all subcultures are equally significant politically. No one much cares what fringe religions like paganism do or what geeks believe, because pagans have no influence on policy, and geeks only care if they change the source code.
But Islam could have an influence and Catholicism very much does have an influence - especially in the UK, where it gave us Plastic Tony.
So perhaps the issue isn't about freedom of expression as much as freedom of political influence.
Sarko's motivation is that he wants to get the far right voters to support him ; that includes the conservative christians, but quite a lot of the racist supporters are just racist and want a racially defined French society.
But he knows he won't be criticised on the burqa subject because quite a bit of the left sees the burqa as the instrument of a fundamentalist muslim subsociety and thus don't like it. Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères
your own
Compare to what counts in France as the haute bourgeoisie, which consciously creates a segregated education system for it kids, enforces marriage within the class through social disapproval, and is able to get members of the class in the Elysée. Compare to a mythical muslim subsociety which would only vote for communautarian parties, which would send the kids to private muslim schools, and whose women would be practically unable to communicate with the outside society because of the burqa. Obvious reasons mean that Sarko denounces the mythical later subsociety rather than the earlier one...
Obvious reasons mean that Sarko denounces the mythical later subsociety rather than the earlier one...
But from the other side, there's also the implication that as long as Muslims play the game by not challenging existing symbol systems head-on, they can be 'assimilated' and allowed to fit into the usual round of social aspiration and imitation - which is the true state religion, even if the state likes to pretend that it's purely secular and doesn't do any overt ritual or social management.
the usual round of social aspiration and imitation - which is the true state religion, even if the state likes to pretend that it's purely secular and doesn't do any overt ritual or social management.
I would not call it State religion, but State ideology. And I would say that in France the State does not pretend anything of the sort: the ritual and social management are definitely part of the acknowledged fabric of French society.
Again, this goes back to a point that I made earlier in this thread: that active State interventionism is something conscious, acknowledged and supported by large majorities in the country.
And that's why many on the left will support some form of action against burqas (not forbidding them in the street, because that's just impossible and silly, but forbidding them in regulated places like schools and hospitals, with the full symbolic impact of such limited measures) even though they are fully aware of his racist mongering. That's France. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
I would not call it State religion, but State ideology
Sort of like Blair's classless society.
Whether they are recognised by the state is a different matter. All states recognise some subcultures (even France, even if it pretends not to) but no state recognises every subculture.
Political parties are examples of the subcultures that France recognises. But not every political party might be allowed - an explicitly Islamic political party might run up against institutional (and cultural) opposition. A man of words and not of deeds is like a garden full of weeds; a man of deeds and not of words is like a garden full of turds — Anonymous
