Overview

This book analyses French cultural policies in the face of what the French government perceives as a challenge to its Republican secular raison d'être. It makes general arguments about France’s changing identity and specific arguments about the burqa and niqab ban. The book further explains how French history shaped the ideology of secularism and of public civil religion, and how colonial legacy, immigration, fear of terrorism, and security needs have led France to adopt the trinity of indivisibilité, sécurité, laïcité while paying homage to the traditional trinity of liberté, égalité, fraternité.  The book argues that while this motto of the French Revolution is still symbolically and politically important, its practical significance as it has been translated to policy implementation has been eroded. It shows how the emergence of the new trinity at the expense of the old one is evident when analyzing the debates concerning cultural policies in France in the face of the Islamic garb, the burqa, and the niqab, which are perceived as a challenge to France’s national secular raison d'être. Subsequently, the book raises various important questions, such as: Is the burqa and niqab ban socially just? Does it reasonably balance the preservation of societal values and freedom of conscience? What are the true motives behind the ban? Has the discourse changed in the age of COVID-19, when all people are required to wear a mask in the public space? Therefore, this book is a must-read for students, scholars, and researchers of political science, as well as a general audience interested in a better understanding of French politics, elections, cultural policy, secularism, and identity. 

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9783030946685

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Raphael Cohen-Almagor is a Professor of Politics and International Studies and Founding Director of the Middle East Study Group, University of Hull (UK). He completed his DPhil in Political Theory at St. Catherine’s College, University of Oxford (UK). Cohen-Almagir taught, inter alia, at Oxford (UK), Jerusalem, Haifa (Israel), UCLA, Johns Hopkins (USA), and Nirma University (India). He also was a Senior Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington DC (USA), and Distinguished Visiting Professor, Faculty of Laws, University College London (UK). In 2021-2022, he is Public Policy Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and in 2023 will inhabit the Olof Palmes's Guest Professorship, Lund University (Sweden). Cohen-Almagor is the founder of Israel’s “Second Generation to the Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance” Organization, The University of Haifa Center for Democratic Studies, The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute Medical Ethics Think-tank, and The University of Hull Middle East Study Group/Centre. He has published extensively in the fields of politics, philosophy, media ethics, medical ethics, law, sociology, and history. 

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