British National Identity: The Roots of the Crisis 6 September 2006

‘Western values’ have officially remained more or less the same since the liberal revolutions of the 17th and 18th centuries, whereas society has since been transformed — first by industrial capitalism and the nation-state, now by corporations running amok in an increasingly integrated world economy. For at least a century western societies have been based on impersonal principles (the state, capitalist markets, science) which placed an intolerable strain on the idea of personal agency that underpins what we are told is our way of life. The result is considerable confusion, a mixture of passivity in the face of anonymous forces and craving for recognition as a unique personality. This existential crisis sometimes takes the form of questioning national identity. (more…)

French anthropology and the riots 6 March 2006

Didier Fassin began his commentary on French anthropology’s non-response to last year’s riots (AT February 2006) with a reminder that an army of Andean ethnographers likewise missed the rise of Shining Path in Peru. While his subject matter is specifically French, the issue of anthropology’s relationship to contemporary society is a general one.

Fassin’s editorial begs for a sociological analysis of the discipline’s national predicament. Some readers may have recently received a letter asking them to oppose anthropology’s apparent demotion within the administrative structures of the CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique). The discipline’s marginality in France is not new. The fast track into the national educated elite (competitive entry to the École normale supérieure, agrégation etc) never had a place for anthropology; and the country’s leading anthropologists (Mauss, Lévi-Strauss, Godelier) were often first agrégé in philosophy. The recent reorganization of the French universities has further entrenched sociology’s dominance over the smaller anthropology section. (more…)

The London Bombings: A Crisis for Multi-culturalism? 7 July 2005

The London bombings of 7 July have provoked an orgy of anxious introspection in the British media. Its chief focus has been the parlous condition of our national identity. How could four British men blow up themselves and scores of innocent commuters? If the second, failed round of bombings seemed to play into the phobias of the Tory press about parasitic and ungrateful immigrants, the first event undermined complacency about the British model of multi-culturalism.

It is not surprising that the right-wing newspapers would call for loyalty to crown and country, nor that this government would suspend the rule of law in order to be seen to be dealing with Muslim ‘extremists’. More remarkable were Polly Toynbee’s discovery, in The Guardian, that there might be something to the French ban on religious symbols in school after all, and Jonathan Freedland’s article in the same newspaper on 3 August, ‘The identity vacuum’, where he argued that Britain’s hold over its ethnic minorities is ‘weak’ and something should be done about it. (more…)

The French ban of the veil 15 February 2005

France is notorious these days for two things – getting up the nose of the Americans (from French fries to ‘freedom’ fries) and banning the veil in schools. The second of these is a ‘total social fact’, something that taps into the deepest and most contradictory currents of modern French history. As an anthropologist who lives in Paris, I am often asked to comment, but I find it hard to say what I think.

I spend so many hours locked away writing that I hardly have the time to get out. But, when I do, I don’t feel excluded from the life of the streets. Alienation from social experience is so much the norm in Paris that it is stripped of its bitterness, allowing the stranger to sample the array of cultural distractions at will, not least the charming banter of the shops in his quartier. The palpably public character of Parisian society means that one can be alone, but not lonely. Everyone belongs. There isn’t much incentive to join an expatriate clique, although many ethnics here, including the British, are extremely insular. And, even if I am not fluent enough to participate actively in public discourse, I draw immense satisfaction from living in a place where intellectuals are considered to be indispensable to civil society. (more…)

How my generation let down our students 15 December 2004

The year I got my doctorate, in 1969, there were 23 lecturing jobs I could have applied for in Britain; and at least one had no applicants. The fifteen new universities that had just been created were still recruiting and their graduate students had not yet reached the market. The situation quickly turned to one of job scarcity; and Heath’s government chose this moment to announce a pay review that included the polytechnics and teachers training colleges as well as the universities. The lecturers’ union, the Association of University Teachers (AUT), chose to stay out on the grounds that we were part of the ruling class, the Civil List, and should not be considered with the others. (more…)

Varieties of national economy 15 June 2004

…be cheerful, sir. Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits, and Are melted into air, into thin air. — The Tempest IV: I, 147

There is a shop near our local park that sells little girls’ ballet dresses. The yellowing models in the window do not speak of a thriving enterprise. When I tell English or American visitors that there are still lots of specialist shops like this in Paris, they invariably ask, “Yes, but do they make money?” Wrong question. The family of the old lady who runs this one is happy to subsidize her – it gets her out of the house; it grants her the company of children; it is what she likes to do; and she may even contribute something towards expenses. It doesn’t matter if she makes a profit or not. (more…)