In response to Bourdieu and Wacquant, I argue that American hegemony in setting the terms of debate on ethnicity and racism is nothing new, led in the first half of the century by US heterotopic intellectuals, immigrants, outsiders and descendants of slaves. Ironically, in the light of claims made by the authors, in the post-war era the debate is increasingly dominated by ex-imperial British and French postcolonial thinkers. The authors' disquiet is more explicable, however, if viewed against the background of (...) French republican discourses that deny the legitimacy of `difference' in the public sphere. But in the final analysis, terms such as multiculturalism or ethnicity are not legislated from above but respond to grassroots social movements, and in France minority groups are presently claiming a voice and presence in the public sphere. (shrink)

The rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Europe seems to be tangibly signalled by an increase in women and young girls wearing the Muslim veil, the hijab. In France, this has led to the legal banning of all headscarves and other religious symbols in state schools in the name of French secularism. The article considers the ambiguities and ambivalences associated with the politics of embodiment surrounding veiling and honour killings comparatively, in Britain and France, and the implications for ongoing debates on (...) multiculturalism. The article argues that the publicity surrounding symbolic practices of sexual intimacy in the context of modernity may come to be loaded with secondary symbolic connotations, often highly politicized, for both Muslims and Europeans, leading to irresolvable conundrums. The processes of higher order symbolization outlined here raise critical questions of authority: who has the authority to interpret the scriptures, in this case the Koran and ideas about individual liberty? Who has the right to determine the limits of modesty, or whom a young person should marry? As in the earlier confrontations in South Asia between Sufi saints and learned Muslim clerics, the current contestation involves a range of actors claiming authoritative sacred knowledge. (shrink)