Contenu du sommaire : Les équivoques de la laïcité

Jean Baubérot, The Affair of the Scarves and Secular Education in France The prohibition of head coverings (scarves) in French high schools has been a test of the principles of secular education in France which permits an analysis on three levels. First, the dynamics of dissent are revealed as transcending traditional political or ideological positions. Second, defenders of secular education have formed a consensus in favor of the prohibition, even if they disagree on how to do it. Third, the traditional conflict in France between Catholics and secularists has been overcome in favor of secular education. However, this development implies a conspiracy of silence regarding the crisis of secularism in general and, in particular, on the issue of "secular morality".

Haroun Jamous, The Young Girls with Scarves The autonomy of the socio-cultural field in relation to that of the political leads to a discussion of the direct links between the injunctions of political and religious authority relative to the wearing of head scarves and changes in the behavior of Muslim women. Analysis of the situation in France suggests that, given the social and cultural changes occurring among Muslim women, the controversy has served to transpose difficult personal changes onto a focus upon real or symbolic forms of domination.

Marie-Claude Lutrand, Women 's World Vision Distinction in Iran Today In the present Iranian society the problem of two coexisting distinct value systems — Islam and Occident — must be faced. Following the Islamic Revolution the Iranian woman 's image and status have been officially redefined according to the Islamic moral code. Analysis shows that the type of women 's relation towards the hijab and the underlying symbolic separation largely determine antithetic and dichotomic modes of perception which relate to the effect of re-islamization upon the female population.

Patrick Cingolani, Therapeutic Culture and Religious Renewal Pentecostal Catholicism in France is the result of a shift in modes of subjectivation with regard to earlier ways of expressing one 's faith. A rhetoric of alienation and liberation prevails in the accounts of healing by the subjects interviewed. They all speak of an authentication of the self in the face of dependence on or domination by society as a whole or family obligations. To account for such reasoning it is best to look beyond the Catholic and even the Christian sphere and consider the historical dependence of Pentecostal Catholicism in France on the counter-culture of the 1960s which largely paved the way for the age of psychotherapeutics and religion of the 1980s and 1990s.

Gérard Heuzé, Secularism and Its Enemies : The Example of Contemporary India The opposition between secularism to its fundamentalist enemies, especially Islamic fundamentalism, has become a current framework of social interpretation in contemporary Europe. The spreading of equalitarian ideas seems to aggravate hostile rhetoric and acts against minorities, especially Muslims. The fluctuating character of representations seems to be related to the irruption of fantasies in the political field as well as to deep changes among the modernizing agents.

E. San Juan Jr, Articulations of Sexuality and Nationalism in Contemporary United States In the national Imaginary dominant in the United States, the constitution of U S. identity has so far depended on the articulation of a masculinist/patriarchal model of agency rooted inter alia in the historical myths of "newness", the exceptional future-oriented destiny, the challenge for the Western virginal frontier, and military supremacy. Such myths are framed within the ethos of a fundamentalist individualism that has been expressed in various semantic modalities end contexts : nativism, Anglo- Saxon racial supremacy, "Manifest Destiny", defender of the free world... In today's neoconservative hegemony, the recently obsolete anticommunist civil religion has been displaced by coded signifiers like "family values", restoration of motherhood and the "right to life ", etcetera.

Nora Benamra Solorzano, Evangelism, Agrarian Problems and Liberation Theology in Guatemala In the 1960s, the Guatemalan Catholic Church, guided by an evangelical logic, became involved in socio-economic projects directed towards helping the poorest inhabitants — the Indian majority of the country. The progressive wing of the church is associated with the new directions championed by liberation theology which is behind the creation of agricultural cooperatives favoring the emancipation of Indian communities. The Cooperative oflxcàn Grande in the region of Guiché, in spite of its destruction by the army in 1982, is an organizational model for these populations. communities. The Cooperative of lxcàn Grande in the region of Guiché, in spite of its destruction by the army in 1982, is an organizational model for these populations.

Aziz Jellab, Social Insertion as a Step towards Professional Insertion : The Case of Youth Aged 16 to 25 and the Local Mission An examination of the question of the social insertion of young people shows not only that insertion does not refer only to the work market, but also that it represents social acceptance before professional integration. The case of youth frequenting the Local Mission is revealing in this regard. The Local Mission appears to be a vehicle of post-schooling socialization for a public having difficulty entering the workforce. In fact, the case of these young people calls for a study of the notion of work itself.

Bernard Hours, Humanitarian Medical Interventions and Prevention without Borders : Medicin or Ideology ? For humanitarian doctors, the object of human rights is the human victim, no longer as the subject of history but as a wounded body with an identity crystallized in a state of dependence. For a generation of doctors, a preventive pulsion on a planetary scale which confuses politics and medicin, and in which lucidity is not a principal virtue, has become an ideological orientation. At a time when democratic transparency is increasingly rare, this ideology is perfectly congruent with global management.

Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, Thirdworldism and Multiculturalism The successive stages through which occidental thinking about nonindustrial societies has passed over the last two centuries is related both to the evolution of racism and of the human science. The idea of Third World helped to relativize the notions of "savagery" and of "development". If the opposition between tradition and modernity is now obsolete, it is nevertheless maintained in the perverse form of the identity concept which is often opposed to that of ethnicity.