Abstract
In recent years religious clothing has become prevalent across many European cities, making religious bodies more visible in public spaces. This paper brings together our separate research on Jews in Paris and Muslims in London. While recognising the clear differences between these two socio-political contexts and distinct religious groups, we suggest that a focus on clothing allows us to consider some points of similarity and difference in the presentation of gendered religious bodies, particularly in situations of heightened stigmatisation. We draw upon Goffman’s notion of impression management, in contexts of risks and threats, to explore how individuals experience and negotiate self presentation as members of stigmatised religious groups. We use rich qualitative data based on indepth interviews to consider how, when faced with collective stigmatisation, actors make deliberate and measured choices to present themselves and attempt to impression manage.
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Notes
This paper combines data from two separate research studies both of which focus on local districts within capital cities. The London data form part of a wider, 4-year study of Muslim communities in a borough in the north of the city. Fieldwork took place between 2007 and 2010. This paper draws upon data from four focus groups and ten individual interviews with adult Muslim women (Ryan et al. 2010). The participants were of diverse ethnicities and ages, most were born overseas and had arrived in Britain as adults. The women, recruited largely through the cooperative of Muslim community groups, tended to be conservatively religious (Ryan 2011).
The Paris case study draws upon data from research on a district of Paris where the presence of observant Jews became recently important, and where Jewish orthodoxy is overrepresented. Several methods have been combined during the fieldwork: semi-directive interviews were conducted with active members of the Jewish communities (orthodox and non-orthodox), and with other inhabitants of the district, along with observations in the public space. Questions on clothing habits in time and space, perceptions of the neighbourhood and of antisemitism have been asked during those interviews. (Endelstein 2009, 2010)
In 1870 the Crémieux decree gave to European residents (« pieds-noirs ») and to the native Sephardic Jewish community the French citizenship, while Muslim Arabs and Berbers remained « indigenous ».
Jews were the victims of 60 % of racist attacks in 2004, and 72 % in 2003, when the Jewish population only represents 1 % of the French population–about 500,000 persons. At the end of the decade antisemitic attacks increased again. CNCDH, La lutte contre le racisme et la xenophobie, Rapports annuels 2005, 2006, 2010. For an analysis of the image of Jews in France see (Mayer 2007). Surveys have shown a growing concern about anti-Semitic acts among the Jewish population (Schnapper et al. 2009).
Hassidism is a movement of spiritual revival which was founded in the 18th century in Eastern Europe, against the austerity of Rabbinic Judaism. After a period of decline from 1870 to 1945, due to secularisation and the destruction during the Second World War, Hassidism reappeared after 1945 and mainly since the 1980s in France and among the Jewish diaspora more widely (Gutwirth 2004).
The « Hassidim » are the members of Hassidic movements.
The Jewish population is about 500,000 persons in France, 300,000 in Great Britain and 13 millions around the world.
Pew’s UK figure for 2010 is 2,869,000 Muslims which is equivalent to 4.6 % of the population. In absolute terms, the UK has the third largest Muslim community on the continent, after Germany (4,119,000) and France (3,574,000) (reported in The Telegraph newspaper 18th July 2012).
The term “orthodoxy” is employed here to name those very diverse movements which tend to a total application of the Jewish law.
If transnationalization is not a new phenomenon in Judaism, it has been amplified and accelerated with the development of communications and with the circulation opportunities for individuals and for religious messages. The movements that are the most transnationally organized are usually either the most “modernist” ones, such as Liberal Judaism, or the most rigorist ones.
Ritual fringes worn by observant Jews. They are attached to the four corners of the prayer shawl that they wear permanently. Some people use to hide them inside their trousers, other let them stick out.
In Israel, those movements (for example the Satmar movement) do not recognize the existence of the pre-Messianic Jewish State, and are living as if the surrounding Isareli society did not exist.
The Lubavitch movement organises religious celebrations in public all around the world.
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Endelstein, L., Ryan, L. Dressing Religious Bodies in Public Spaces: Gender, Clothing and Negotiations of Stigma Among Jews in Paris and Muslims in London. Integr. psych. behav. 47, 249–264 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-012-9228-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-012-9228-5