Culture-as-Race or Culture-as-Culture: Cultural Identity in French Society

Introduction: Making a Difference

“…French peasants had learned to become French in the past, and immigrants could do so as well. This 'open' national identity did not mean that subcultures were respected, or accepted, as was the case within a multicultural model (Beriss 2000). Recent changes are striking because for decades France has prided itself on its 'French model' of socialising and assimilating via schools, the military, employment and workers' unions.…”

Réponse aux commentaires de la « Disputatio »

“…Or, dans la perspective républicaine classique, les questions raciales ne sont pas traditionnellement abordées (lorsqu'elles le sont) sous les auspices de la race, ni même de la race-comme-culture, mais sous celles de la culture-comme-race 8 . En d'autres termes, c'est le concept de culture qui a servi en France d'outil privilégié pour construire les identités, et en particulier pour produire une conception de l'identité nationale comme groupe culturellement unifié.…”

Silence in the Court and Testimony Behind Bars Juvenile Defendants and the French Judicial System

“…In this understanding, social, ethnic or national groups are categorised into a hierarchy of discrete, qualitatively different cultural systems. This is a hierarchy that nonetheless functions like race to ascribe certain immutable attributes to the peoples within them (Balibar, 1988;Beriss, 2000). Because cultures are understood to determine the beliefs and practices of the peoples born into them, particularly 'less evolved' non-Western cultures, they are thought to be stubbornly resistant to the processes of change, adaptation or hybridisation.…”