Livre - Revealing democracy

Anxieties over the Islamic face covering and over the proper management of otherness in liberal democracies seem to have reached a new peak with the introduction of legislation banning the burka in France and Belgium, and recent proposals for similar statutes in Quebec. What assumptions are contained within Western secularism and revealed in these attempts at legislating women’s religious clothing? This book presents a collection of essays which take secularism/laïcité and the regulation of public expressions of religious commitment as their points of departure, exploring the issues these raise within society with a view informing the public debate and reflecting on the nature of citizenship. Is democracy well served when the terms and conditions of citizenship are defined beforehand by a given group and when these terms are presented as non-negotiable and unchangeable? Revealing Democracy sheds light on the ways in which liberal states address and cope with the challenges of diversity and otherness and documents how processes of domination may be internalized and reflected in discourses on secularism and religion. It compels us to look without complacency at the limitations of liberal democratic citizenship and reflect on the inability of state policies to curb racism and entrenched patterns of Eurocentric social domination. Chantal Maillé is Associate Professor of Women’s Studies at Concordia University in Montreal. She conducts research in the field of feminist politics, women’s movements and francophonie. Her recent publications address issues of transnationalism and postcolonial theories. She is a member of CRIDAQ. Greg M. Nielsen is Professor of Sociology and Co-director of the Concordia Centre for Broadcasting Studies at Concordia University. His current research is on how mainstream journalism works to expand gaps between marginal citizens who are reported on and the ideal audiences implied by the journalistic address. Daniel Salée is Professor of Political Science at Concordia University. His research in recent years has focused on the politics of ethnicity and citizenship in the Canadian and Quebec contexts, with a particular emphasis on Indigenous peoples and the handling of ethnocultural diversity by hegemonic Eurodescendant populations