Critique internationale - Content
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[The White Lady, the Uncircumcised Man and the Black Diamonds: The Resurgence of Racial Discourse in South Africa]
This article examines the resurgence of racial discourse in South African political debates in the light of the 2009 election results. It holds that, while neither “ethnicity” nor “race” are explanatory factors that help understand voter behavior, “race” continues to structure the perception of social interactions among the citizens of South Africa. In a period marked by deepening social tension and competition for control of the economic riches that are at the foundation of state power, in particular, “race” can be – and indeed is – used to discredit opponents.
[The Unity and Diversity of the Lebanese Shiite Community Put to the Test of the Ballot Box (2009-2010)]
Since the assassination of Rafic Hariri in 2005, the Lebanese national scene has been split between two multi-denominational coalitions. The denominational political parties, Hezbollah and Amal, have profited from majority rule and a quota-based electoral system to win nearly all Shiite parliamentary seats in the 2009 legislative elections. With help from their Christian and Druze allies, they have propelled themselves to the center of state power, eventually becoming the ruling majority. They justify their hold on the Shiite electorate by the imposition of a unified representation of identities in a hegemonic discourse which emphasizes denominational memory and the struggle against Israel. Shiite unanimity has nevertheless been called into question by the course and outcome of the 2010 municipal elections. Mobilizing secondary actors and focusing on local issues, these elections revealed that, like other denominations, the Shiite denomination contains a plurality of different positions. They also suggested that electoral reform, which has not taken place in eight decades, would contribute to alter modes of identification and frameworks of mobilization.
[Towards a De-Ethnicization of Politics in India? The Persistence of the Caste Vote]
While issue voting probably played a more important role in India’s 2009 legislative elections than had been the case in the past, this re-nationalization was not (apart from the decline of Hindu nationalist forces) reflected in a de-ethnicization of public space. On the contrary, affirmative action programs and the tensions to which they give rise reinforced the political role of castes by transforming them into interest groups to the detriment of the old system, which was founded on a community of shared values (those of the high castes). At the level of the states – the most important level in Indian politics today, even in the context of national elections – political parties are associated with castes that vote as a majority for one of them. In certain states, the Dalits are even about to transcend the divisions based on jatis identities and come together in support of a single party, the BSP. A key argument of supporters of re-nationalization, the extension of the Congress Party’s rule is thus the result of the fragmentation – and not the reunification – of the political landscape along caste lines. Indeed, in a one-round electoral system, even if it loses votes, the biggest party wins more seats (even if it loses votes) whenever the number of its opponents increases.
[The Political Uses of the “Polish=Catholic” Stereotype and Their Limits in Post-Communist Poland]
In the space of two decades, Poland has gone from a country where it was nearly impossible to criticize the Church and its place in public space to one characterized by socially formulated demands that this space be secularized, as witnessed by the many demonstrations against the crucifix erected in front of the presidential palace in Warsaw (supposedly in memorial to President Lech Kaczyński, who died in the Smolensk air disaster) as well as Dominican Father Ludwik Wiśniewski’s letter to the Papal nuncio in Poland challenging the Polish Church. Examining this development leads one to attend to the political uses of the “Polish = Catholic” stereotype after 1989. Three issues, in particular, need to be considered: the permanence of the role accorded religion in Poland independently of the break with the past represented by 1989; the significance of the use of religious references in the evolution of the Polish scene since the establishment of democracy; and the role of religion as a resource for simultaneously managing identity and movement (that is, the reorganization of identity occasioned by the profound changes with which Polish society, like all others, finds itself confronted).
[The Mirages of European Foreign Policy after Lisbon]
This article seeks to evaluate the potential changes introduced by the Lisbon Treaty into the foreign policy of the European Union (EU). In examining the real capacity of the EU to manage international crises and conflicts, it challenges several dominant approaches in the study of EU foreign policy. A distinction is drawn between three possible aporia in the evolution of European foreign policy: first of all, the contributions of the Lisbon Treaty are judged to not be amenable to modifying the grammar of what continues to be an essentially “institutional” foreign policy; next, it turns out that this European foreign policy tends to exhaust itself in “speech act” diplomacy not accompanied by “action”, whether it be in developmental or defense policy; finally, the recent, widely held belief that European “normative power” can be substituted for power properly so-called in the regulation of international problems is called into question.
[The Muslim World League in Europe: An Instrument to Defend the Saudi Strategic Interests]
In order to struggle against the growing influence in the Arab world of the secular nationalism promoted in Egypt by President Nasser, Saudi Arabia decided in the '60s to appear as a center of religious and ideological influence. The cornerstone of the hegemonic politics of Saudi Arabia for the world leadership of Islam was the creation, in 1962, of the Muslim World League. This organization was in charge of financing projects related to the development of Islam in the world. It is probably in Europe that the proselyte activities of the League are the most important. If the League holds a predominant position in the soft power politics of the Saudi kingdom, its mission is also to struggle against ideologies that are likely to threaten the stability of the regime. It funds projects of mosques construction, distributes Korans and brochures, organizes Islamic classes and conferences, hoping to create networks of clientele and of non-critical allegiances to the Saudi kingdom in the Muslim populations. The League advocates a heterogeneous salafism, which indeed resembles, at least on a dogmatic level, the salafism advocated by theologists of Saudi Arabia but dissociates itself from it on a social and a political level. Confronted to the multiplication of international risks (the Iraq War, al-Qaeda, Saudi jihadists...), the League takes part in a vast institutional ensemble "of protection of the Saudi throne," like the Dar al Ifta, Council of the Saudi ulamas, which pledges allegiance to the authority and fight against anti-establishment Islamism and Islamic terrorism with its different fatwas.
[Intimate Alterity, Remote Alterity: Multiculturalism Transplanted to Latin America]
This article examines the most common accounts of multicultural reform in Latin America as well as the principal analyses of the Indian movement in this same region. The positions adopted by three generations of native informants regarding official assimilation (1920-1980) and diversity (2000-2010) policies are described on the basis of an historical and ethnographic survey carried out in a rural area of Mexico, Milpa Alta, where the population has been identified as descended from pre-Columbian inhabitants. The article argues that multicultural policies, international human rights legislation and, often, native political discourse are in tension with national systems of alterity. In the case studied here, multicultural policies are grafted on to a configuration which situates native populations in an archetypal position of alterity. It is, however, an endogenous alterity since it is imagined to be a constitutive part of a larger national “us” conceived of as uniformly mestizo. Its specificity notwithstanding, the Mexican example allows us to consider the importance of the exogenous or endogenous character of alterity in discussing the consensus today enjoyed by the multicultural model.
Construire la paix : conceptions collectives de son établissement, de son maintien et de sa consolidation
Grégory Salle, La part d’ombre de l’État de droit : la question carcérale en France et en République fédérale d’Allemagne depuis 1968, Paris, Éditions de l’EHESS, 2009, 343 page
Claire Zalc, Melting Shops : une histoire des commerçants étrangers en France, Paris, Perrin, 2010, 330 pages
Isabelle Delpla et Magali Bessone (dir.), Peines de guerre : la justice pénale internationale et l’ex-Yougoslavie, Paris, Éditions de l’EHESS, 2010, 317 pages.
