See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/271852884

Citizenship and the Nation-State

Article in WSQ Women s Studies Quarterly · January 2010

DOI: 10.1353/wsq.0.0205

CITATION READS

1 3,037

1 author:

Elena Vesselinov
CUNY Graduate Center
28 PUBLICATIONS 408 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE

All content following this page was uploaded by Elena Vesselinov on 06 February 2015.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

Citizenship and the Nation-State
John Richard Bowen’s Why the French Don’t Like Headscarves: Islam, the State, and Public
Space. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007
Joyce P. Kaufman and Kristen P. Williams’s Women, the State, and War: A Comparative
Perspective on Citizenship and Nationalism. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2007
Citizenship and Ethnic Conflict: Challenging the Nation-State. Edited by Haldun Gülalp.
London: Routledge, 2006

Elena Vesselinov

The three books reviewed in this essay explore questions of citizenship

rights brought to the fore by changing national and global social contexts.
Bowen’s book, Why The French Don’t Like Headscarves: Islam, The State, and
Public Space, presents a case study of contentions arising between the sec-
ularist, laïcité traditions of the French state and the desire of young Muslim
women to cover their hair in accordance with religious Islamic traditions.
In their book, Women, the State, and War: A Comparative Perspective on Citi-
zenship and Nationalism, Kaufman and Williams discuss four case studies
focusing on women’s rights in the United States, the former Yugoslavia,
Israel, and Northern Ireland, respectively. Last, Gülalp’s edited volume,
Citizenship and Ethnic Conflict: Challenging the Nation-State, incorporates
six case studies, each exploring the historic formulations and contesta-
tions of what constitutes nationness among diverse groups (in Germany,
Greece, Turkey, Israel, Lebanon, and Iraq).
Interestingly enough, whether the authors discuss headscarves,
women’s rights, or the role of religious and ethnic groups in state unity,
the common theme among all books becomes the link between minori-
ties and citizenship rights. Religious garb is not an issue in Israel or Iraq; it
becomes problematic in conjunction with minority status and the secular-
ist nation-state. Women’s lack of political, economic, and social rights well
into the twentieth century, even in most economically advanced countries,
not only has contributed to their vulnerable position in times of conflict,
but also continues to require the separation of women as a subjugated
minority, whose rights need special protection. Not to mention, of course,

WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly 38: 1 & 2 (Spring/Summer 2010) © 2010 by Elena Vesselinov. All
rights reserved.
335
336 Citizenship and the Nation-State

that in many countries around the world, women still lack the most basic
human rights.
Therefore, in this review essay, I will discuss the strengths and weak-
nesses of each book through the prism of minority rights; it seems to me
that there are inherent contradictions related to the place of minorities in
the very inception of the nation-state. Each of these contradictions consti-
tutes a recurring theme in the three books. The first theme is related to the
very definition of what makes up a minority group and the extent to which
such groups are recognized and protected by the state. The second theme is
that in the liberal tradition of nation-state building, the state has to be sep-
arated from religion. However, in some states specific religion is part of the
constitution, which jeopardizes equality before the law, as well as groups
that profess different religious beliefs. The third theme stems from the
consolidation of the nation-state as protecting individual rights and free-
doms. As we will see below, in many cases such protection is insufficient,
and measures are needed to safeguard collective well-being. The atrocities
conducted against minorities in times of conflict is the most important
example. Finally, as a result of violent conflicts, and evident throughout
the twentieth century and in the three books, national boundaries change
and new nation-states emerge, together with new minority groups within
them. The contemporary process of nation-state building can no longer be
based solely on the eighteenth-century liberal ideas of nation, state, and
rights. These ideas corresponded well to the stages of “print capitalism” in
Europe (Andersen 1991), with its need for national markets, protection of
boundaries, and state control. The new political, economic, environmen-
tal, and conflict realties require continuous rethinking of what constitutes
a nation, a national identity, political sovereignty, majority, and minority.
None of the books addresses this last theme explicitly; however, all of them
present an excellent opportunity to learn and think about the contempo-
rary contentions between nation, state, and citizenship rights.

Recognition of Minorities

We cannot easily find a term to better depict the uneasy coexistence of

nation and state than “minority group.” Long before the League of Nations
and later the United Nations developed instruments for minority protec-
tion, there were many bilateral and some multilateral treaties between
European states that protected their respective religious minorities. There
 Elena Vesselinov 337

was no general minority rights framework; rather, each treaty was based
on the specific contexts of the countries involved in it (Kymlicka 1995).
However, after World War II it became clear that states had to adopt a
human rights framework, including provisions for minority protections, in
an effort to avoid further major conflicts and atrocities. Thus, Article 27 of
the U.N. International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, adopted in
1966 by the United Nations General Assembly, establishes that “in those
States in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities exist, persons
belonging to such minorities shall not be denied the right, in community
with the other members of their group, to enjoy their own culture, to pro-
fess and practice their own religion, or to use their own language” (The
United Nations 1997).
While the covenant was enforced in 1976 and signed by all states,
discussed in the three books, not all states readily acknowledge the exis-
tence of minorities. In France, as Bowen points out, no official government
statistics exist (as in the census of the population) based on religion or
language spoken at home. In Germany, Turkish and other immigrants are
regarded as guest workers without a path to citizenship and integration.
Turkey recognizes religious minorities, but not linguistic ones and there-
fore Kurdish-speaking Muslim Kurds are not considered to be a minority
(Kertzer and Arel 2002).
Bowen explains very well the political, institutional and social integra-
tionist context in France (there is even a central governmental body—the
High Council on Integration). Within this context, in government agen-
cies and in public discourse, it is expected that all citizens are French or, in
other words, that there is a perfect overlap between state and nation. The
integrationist or assimilationist perspective is supported by a legal frame-
work of jus soli, according to which citizenship is conferred on any individ-
ual born on the territory of the state. The assimilationist perspective has
become increasingly problematic with the soaring number of immigrants,
some of them, such as Moroccans, entering with a French passport but not
necessarily with a French identity, and others lacking both.
The issues surrounding the French Muslim groups came to the fore
of the international scene with the suburban riots of November 2005.
In media reports and scholarly work it is shown that whether or not the
French government would like to acknowledge Muslim minorities, living
conditions for many of these groups were not marked by legal or social
equality compared with those of the rest of the country (Simon 2003).
338 Citizenship and the Nation-State

Many suburbs exhibit a high level of minority concentration, higher lev-

els of unemployment, and lower levels of school achievement, which are
trends characteristic of underprivileged minority neighborhoods.
In her chapter, “Redefining German Unity,” in Gülalp’s edited volume,
Kastoryano shows that German authorities not only failed to acknowledge
minority groups, but, in contrast with those of France, also denied immi-
grants a path to citizenship. Until the fall of the Soviet bloc and the sub-
sequent mass migration of East Germans to the West, Turkish and other
immigrants were not recognized as minority groups in Germany by the
state or the public. They were contracted as Gastarbeiters (guest workers)
and although they lived for several generations in what used to be West
Germany, they were denied the possibility of citizenship. This was because
citizenship was awarded (it appears as an award system) based only on
the principle of jus sanguinis, or blood relation to another German. Kas-
toryano points out that the problem has presently been acknowledged. As
of 2000 a child of a lawful resident who has spent eight consecutive years
in the country can obtain citizenship. However, the author’s authoritative
discussion of the perils of citizenship and nationality shows the continu-
ous legal and social conundrum. According to the new law, a foreigner’s
child can be a dual citizen, that is, have the foreign parent’s nationality
and be a German national, until the age of eighteen. Between the ages of
eighteen and twenty-three, a decision must be made to choose one of the
two nationalities, for the loyalty of any citizen cannot be split between
two nations; it can belong to only one. Even more telling is the ambiguity
and variety of terms used in public debates and government documents
defining “foreigners.” Along with Ausländer (foreigner), terms such as Ein-
wanderer (immigrant), Einwandererungsminoritat (immigrant minority)
and ausländische Mitbürger (foreign co-citizen) have entered the debates.
“Foreign co-citizen” comes closest to acknowledging that these individu-
als may actually be entitled to some citizenship rights.
Kastoryano makes two additional very important points. Despite
the obvious limitations on citizenship rights imposed by the very terms
used, the changes in legal status and the acknowledgment of immigrant
groups already constitutes a process of “minority building” (31). The
state is beginning to recognize the presence of a minority group, the Turk-
ish minority, which has a different ethnic background and cultural heri-
tage. The second important point is that Turkey has a vested interest in
pursuing the institutional consolidation of such a national ethnic minority,
 Elena Vesselinov 339

because it sees this group as a powerful lobby in the context of European

integration.
While supporting its national minority in Germany, the Turkish
state historically has had a rather arbitrary framework vis-à-vis minor-
ity groups in Turkey. Cadaptey’s chapter in Gülalp’s volume, “Passage to
Turkishness,” focuses on the rise of nationalism during Ataturk’s repub-
lic, 1923–38. Although the republic postulated secularism as one of its
founding principles, the cornerstones of nation-state building became the
Turkish language and, most of all, Islam. In Cadaptey’s words, “Kemalism
saw Turkishness as a derivative of religion” (65). This understanding laid
down the background for the Resettlement Law of 1926, which opened
the door for all immigrants sharing the Turkish hars (religion and lan-
guage) and closed it for those who did not. While the government admit-
ted non-Turkish Muslims, it also made sure to resettle that population
among Turks so that the non-Turks were properly assimilated. As further
documented in the chapter, with the thoughtlessness and brutality charac-
teristic of the Ottoman Empire, the Turkish government shoveled people
from and to different regions in the country in almost complete disregard
for any human rights.
Among immigrants and natives, the groups that were treated with
respect seem to belong to the upper classes of society, or to the Turkish
soy. Here I find the author’s analysis insufficient, for he interprets the word
soy as “race,” whereas it is a combination of “pedigree,” “class,” and “eth-
nicity.” To belong to the Turkish soy means not only to be Muslim and to
speak the language, but also to be affluent and from a noble background.
Immigrants who belonged to this group were allowed to settle where they
wished, while the rest were settled where the government saw fit.

Religion and the State

The Kemalist state made an effort to distinguish between polity and reli-
gion; however, as we saw above, religion penetrated the government’s
immigration policies. Unfortunately, in Cadaptey’s chapter there are no
references to how the contention between religion, nation, and state might
have changed in contemporary times. Present-day conflicts, however, are
contemplated in the rest of the case studies of the countries formerly
included in the territory of the Ottoman Empire, namely, Greece, Leba-
non, and Iraq. In eight out of the ten case studies, the tensions between reli-
340 Citizenship and the Nation-State

gion, national and ethnic identity, and political solidarity are prominently
discussed. This clearly speaks about the importance of religious beliefs and
institutions in the context of the nation-state and minority rights.
In the states formerly part of the Ottoman Empire, the so-called mil-
let system is seen as the forbearer of the current significance of religion in
the context of nation-state building. As Gülalp explains in his succinct and
well-structured introduction to the edited volume, the Ottoman Empire
was organized around different semi-autonomous millets, where religion
was the binding principle among diverse ethnic groups. Each millet had
its own appointed religious leader and included legal and cultural govern-
ing functions. In the excellently argued chapter “Greece: Religion, Nation,
and Membership in the European Union,” Fokas analyzes the legacy of
the millet in the contemporary politics of the nation-state. As the author
points out, the Greek Orthodox Church served, on the one hand, as a
keeper of the Greek people’s independent spirit and sense of belonging
and, on the other hand, as a reactionary force. Historically, when the Otto-
man Empire was coming to an end and its various peoples, including the
Greeks, struggled for self-determination, the Greek Orthodox patriarch
and the rest of the church leadership were not among the ardent support-
ers of independence. The church was afraid to lose its perks, such as its
privileged position in the sultan’s central administration and tax relief and
other financial incentives. Fokas shows how in much more recent history,
in 2000, the church leadership fought vehemently against the Greek gov-
ernment’s initiative to issue new identity cards without religious identifi-
cation. The initiative was undertaken under the requirements related to
the mechanisms of European integration.
In the discussion about the tension between religion and secular gov-
ernment, it is important to point out that the tension does not stem from
any religion itself, but originates in the institutions claiming monopoly
over representing the religious beliefs. Fokas clearly shows the role of the
Greek Orthodox Church and specifically its leadership. The strong pres-
ence of the church even in today’s political life is solidified through the
Greek constitution, in which Article 3 points to the Eastern Orthodox
as the “prevailing” faith (47). It is hard to imagine how any non-Eastern
Orthodox minority could be integrated in this society.
It is as hard to imagine non-Jewish minority integration in Israel.
Since declaring independence in 1948, the Israeli government has had to
 Elena Vesselinov 341

fight a series of wars with its Arab state neighbors, and while peace agree-
ments with Egypt and Jordan have now been signed, Israel’s relationship
with Palestinians is nowhere near a peaceful resolution. Instead of a peace
agreement, the Israeli government continues to build its own Berlin Walls
along the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, in response to attacks from Pales-
tinians. Dieckhoff, in the chapter “The Nation of Israel: Between Democ-
racy and Ethnicity” in Gülalp’s volume, makes a convincing argument that
constant conflicts have strengthened the internal cohesiveness of the Jew-
ish national community. After its constitution, the state of Israel enacted
policies, similar to Ataturk’s immigration policies, that allowed any person
of Jewish background to emigrate to Israel (the Law of Return of 1950).
While these policies brought together people of the same religious convic-
tions, their social, economic, and ethnic backgrounds varied widely—they
came from places as diverse as Russia, Iraq, Eastern Europe, Africa, West-
ern Europe, and Iran.
In addition to religion, what brought these people together were the
atrocities committed against many of them and the desire to live in “a Jewish
state in the Land of Israel” (85). Dieckhoff argues that although Judaism is
not proclaimed in the constitution, it nevertheless penetrates government
decisions, political party participation, and many other areas of public and
private domain. In fact, it seems that the rabbinical monopoly over all mat-
ters of personal status, including marriage, Jewishness, and certainly tradi-
tions and holidays is quite strong. A non-Jew cannot legally marry a Jew in
Israel; some people, as Dieckhoff reports, have gone to neighboring states
or foreign consulates for a marriage license. Even that, however, seems to
offend the Orthodox rabbinate, who have argued against recognition of
such licenses.
Kaufman and Williams, in Women, the State, and War: A Comparative
Perspective on Citizenship and Nationalism, also discuss the link between
religion and citizenship; however, they take the issue of marriage a step
further and situate it within the framework of citizenship as a gendered
process. Although equality before the law is an established political prin-
ciple, religious codes govern the lives of Jewish and Arab women (and of
Christian women on Palestinian territories). Kaufman and Williams argue
that all such codes are patriarchal in essence and confine women to tra-
ditional roles. The more conservative the respective religious strand, the
more unequal is the women’s position in society and the more limited
342 Citizenship and the Nation-State

women’s rights. I cannot help but wonder what exactly “equal before the
law” means in a context in which individuals are subject to different legal
jurisprudence based on religion.
Similar contentions exist in Lebanon, although there is no one single
majority religious group that rules. In their chapter, “A Nation Divided:
Lebanese Confessionalism,” in Gülalp’s volume, Reinkowsky and Saa-
deh discuss the way in which political parity was achieved in the country
after the civil war that lasted from 1975 to 1990. There are three confes-
sional groups, based on the three main religions that have to coexist on
the same territory: Maronites, Sunnis, and Shiites. The three groups’ elites
are the main political actors in the country, and their leaders share power
at the very top of the political structure: the so-called troika consists of a
Maronite president, a Sunni prime minister, and a Shiite Speaker of the
House. What is particularly interesting here is that the foundations of this
parliamentary democracy, with a rule for sharing political power, are reli-
gious. Again, between the individual and his or her political emancipation,
we find mediation by religious institutions.
The power of the religious institutions was tested in a proposal by
President Hrawi for an optional civil marriage in 1998. Reinkowsky and
Saadeh argue that the president had his own political reason for making
the proposal in the first place. However, the authors eloquently reveal the
interplay between religious and political leaders, whereby the religious
leaders came together despite their theological differences and effectively
killed the proposal.
The power of religion in the political arena predominates in Iraq,
as well, although the influence of religious elites seems to be more frag-
mented and intertwined with the power of tribal shaykhs, according to the
final chapter, “The Rise and Fall of Civil Society in Iraq,” in Gülalp’s book.
The author, Zubaida, argues that before Saddam Hussein took power in
the country, there had been a civil society brewing within the context of
the monarchy (the regime established under British colonial rule). This
civil society was greatly diminished during Baathist Party rule, but, as the
author argues, it could again be revived. Unfortunately, the chapter about
Iraq presents the weakest case study among the different works reviewed
for this essay. The difficulty of conducting research in Iraq notwithstand-
ing, the chapter could have been bolder, even built on more personal
histories of émigrés. The two émigré stories recounted in the chapter are
 Elena Vesselinov 343

insufficient and unconvincing as evidence or even as illustrations of the

existence of a civil society before Saddam Hussein’s regime.
All the authors of case studies, mentioned so far in the context of
religion versus polity, discuss the presence of religious leaders as political
actors in what are democratic nation-states (with the exception of Iraq).
Thus all these cases present evidence that the separation of church and
state is clearly problematic. However, if the separation is well established
and implemented, does this guarantee equality before the law? Not neces-
sarily, if you ask many young Muslims in France. In his well-researched
and -argued book, Bowen points out that the principle of laïcité was estab-
lished under a law of 1905, which stipulates that the state does not recog-
nize any religion. This is among the best examples of the liberal principle of
separation of state and religion. In the contentious relationships between
the French state and the Catholic Church that followed the law, the state
made a series of amendments, one of which was that church buildings
became government property and thus would be subsidized by the state.
As a result, Bowen argues, the government subsidizes the Catholic Church
much more than it does any other religion in France. Subsequently, a lot of
pressure has been put on local and central governments in France to sub-
sidize buildings of mosques, as well. In addition, the author explains that
religion is recognized as a private institution and protected by freedom of
conscience and freedom of associations. Therefore, the state-religion issue
in France is the reverse of the cases discussed above; instead of having an
overwhelming presence of religious leaders at the terrain of the state, as
either direct political actors or legal regulators of private affairs, in France
the question is one of state regulation and the subsidizing of religion and
religious activities.
Bowen’s research focus on the issue of wearing headscarves in schools
illustrates the intense interplay between government institutions, civic
associations, and private citizens’ interest. I found this to be the book’s
preeminent strength, showing how different interest groups, including
political leaders, social scientists, school teachers, Muslim community
leaders, Jewish community leaders, and Catholic Church leaders react and
influence the process of making a religious activity, wearing a headscarf at
school, illegal. What I found lacking is a more systematic approach toward
interviewing young Muslim women who decide to wear or not to wear the
headscarf.
344 Citizenship and the Nation-State

Individual Versus Minority Rights

What further complicates a human rights issue such as wearing a head-

scarf in French schools is the notion that the state has a responsibility to
protect human rights vis-à-vis individual citizens, as is stipulated in the
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. The individual citizen
in this case is understood not only as a person who has legal status, but
also as a person who is aware of his or her citizenship duties. Since Locke,
within the classical liberal tradition, men are prescribed inalienable rights,
but they are also expected to be responsible members of the national com-
munity. Thus, the very ideas related to human rights bear elements of a
constant conflict: at the level of the state, individual rights are supposed to
be protected by a political entity in charge of the welfare of the entire com-
munity; at an individual level, people are supposed to be given protection
of their rights as long as they act as responsible citizens with the national
community’s interests at heart.
These conflicts within the very notion of human rights are exemplified
in France, where the majority of French citizens are against wearing the
headscarves in schools, mostly because it contradicts the national com-
munity principle of laïcité, as well as the individual’s rights and respon-
sibilities before the law. In public debates, as Bowen shows, Muslims are
charged with eschewing national cultural and institutional principles in
favor of promoting Islamism: taking religious norms out of the context of
the private sphere and establishing them as principles in the larger society.
Many of the women cited in the book counter that for them wearing the
headscarf is an act of self-expression and that the new law infringes their
free, peaceful expression of personal identity.
Further challenges in resolving this issue stem from women’s role as
bearers of rights. In the French Declaration of 1789 and in the classical
political liberal tradition, women are not presented as bearers of human
rights. While political theory and political reality in many democratic
countries have corrected for this quite significant omission with the intro-
duction of universal suffrage, affirmative action, and other legal measures,
in many Muslim countries women still do not have any rights. What a lot
of young women who favor the headscarf do not confront is the issue of
political repression and male domination that is associated with the cov-
ering of women’s hair, face, hands, feet, and in many cases entire body.
Veiling is not only an expression of religious piety, devotion and identity,
 Elena Vesselinov 345

but also a political and politicized act. Although Bowen does mention this
point of view, he does not use it to probe the young women he interviews
more seriously about it.
Kaufman and Williams set out to specifically address citizenship as a
gendered process. In the United States, which empowered its male citizens
with both the Bill of Rights and the separation of state and religion at the
end of the eighteenth century, similar to what occurred in France, women
obtained the right to vote only in 1920 (Chapter 3). The chapter follows
the historical women’s struggle and social movements for equal rights,
from the 1840s and 1850s property laws for married women and women’s
activism during the two world wars to the present. It is quite fascinating
and important to understand the history of obtaining rights step by step:
only in 1975 did the U.S. Supreme Court rule that “women and men are
equally obligated to serve as jurors” (67). Prior to that, women could not
serve as jurors, because apparently they had to serve dinners, according
to one assistant attorney general, cited by Kaufman and Williams. This
example illustrates the authors’ contention that women’s claim to equal
citizenship is constantly mediated through their traditional roles as moth-
ers, wives, and caregivers. As is well known from feminist theory, gender
is a socialization process. The state, Kaufman and Williams argue, through
its regulatory framework, particularly that of marriage, has continuously
created conditions of women’s subordination and unequal access to basic
rights.
As evident through the chapter, and through history, change and prog-
ress are achieved through women’s movements for legal and social equality.
In that respect women join other discriminated-against minorities, such as
African Americans (obtaining equal rights only after the Civil Rights era),
Latinos, and Asians in American society. Apart from the history of slavery,
the worst cases of the violation of minority rights appear during wars and
other violent state conflicts. The breakup of ex-Yugoslavia brought ethnic
cleansing to Europe for the first time since the Nazi atrocities of World War
II. The ethnic cleansing was brought about by rising Serb nationalism after
the breakup of the communist regime in 1990, as well as by the desire for
self-determination in the former Yugoslav republics of Slovenia, Croatia,
Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Macedonia. Kaufman and Williams rightly
observe that with the rise of nationalism, protection for women’s rights
declined. In the ensuing ethnic wars in the former Yugoslavia, in which all
ethnic minorities suffered persecution and abuse, women were especially
346 Citizenship and the Nation-State

vulnerable. The authors argue that, on the one hand, women began to be
defined, in their “patriotic womanhood,” as those who, through their roles
as mothers and wives, maintained and promoted collective ethnic tradi-
tions, but that, on the other hand, the fact that they were seen as bearers of
ethnic pride and traditions led to targeted abuse in rapes and killings. Such
atrocities glorified the perpetrators because they were hitting where it hurt
the most, at the very essence of what it meant to be of specific ethnicity, to
be born of certain background and to have the pride of traditions.
An important omission in the analysis here is that the rise of national-
ism marked a break with the legacy of socialism, a legacy in which women
took advantage, at least to some extent, of the right to work. As Kaufman
and Williams point out, women constituted 1.6 percent of the Serbian
parliament in 1990, whereas they had made up 20 percent of the parlia-
ment before the fall of communism (still not evidence of parity with men).
However, the authors do not explain that promoting national identities
was not part of the communist ideology. Quite the contrary; in commu-
nist ideology collective goods and goals trumped the individual’s wants
and desires. National identity did have some significance, in history books,
school lessons, and holidays, but identity in general is a product of an indi-
vidualistic internalization process and, as such, it was not a central commu-
nist concept. The artificial collectivist framework imposed on communist
societies was one of the many reasons for the violent breakup of the former
Yugoslavia, of the Velvet Revolution in the former Czechoslovakia, and of
continuing tensions within the former Soviet empire.

Conclusion

Women may have enjoyed more economic and social rights in the former
Yugoslavia as compared with the period of war and they certainly were not
as violated as they were during the war. However, no communist regime
was particularly supportive of individual or minority rights. Therefore, any
form of democratic regime should be viewed as a considerable improve-
ment over a communist state or any other dictatorship. In this context,
I would disagree with Bowen, who does not take a stand on the issue of
headscarves. It seems to me that the problem of the headscarf cannot be
considered without taking seriously the fact that repressive regimes and
dictatorships use the veil as an implement of oppression. Wearing a head-
scarf, a burqa, a veil—all these signs come with their specific contexts and
 Elena Vesselinov 347

meanings. The headscarf cannot be extracted from these contexts, because

this is where it came from, from specific political contexts, including in
many cases male oppressive power over women. The prominence of the
headscarf originated in male-dominated political regimes, organized in
part to subjugate women. That being pointed out, should the headscarf
be banned? As chapters discussed in this review show, any kind of attack
on somebody’s group identity leads to consolidation of that identity. Fur-
thermore, such attacks are not themselves innocent of politically oppres-
sive aims. What I think is needed most is honest debate about the various
political meanings that wearing a headscarf is associated with.
Bowen’s work helped me establish my personal point of view regarding
the issue at hand. Although I think that being an objective researcher does
not preclude, but necessitates, the author’s stand, I would like to strongly
recommend Bowen’s book because through the lenses of one specific
issue, readers can learn a lot about the history of laïcité, the colonial legacy
of France in countries such as Morocco and Algeria, the constitution of
the French Muslim community, the interplay between French institutions,
and that between different interest groups within and outside France.
This kind of multilayered approach, particularly the interplay between
different national and international forces, is missing in Kaufman and Wil-
liams’s book. This omission is most prominent in the case of Northern
Island, which is part of the United Kingdom. Although the book focuses
on citizenship as a gendered process from an institutional point of view,
how the states gender national identity and human rights, the British
institutions are not included in the analysis and neither are the religious
institutions. These analytical shortcomings notwithstanding, I would
recommend the book as very informative and for bringing attention to
women’s continuous struggles for equal rights. The conflicting political
and social statuses of women and the lack of equal political power and
representation exacerbate women’s vulnerability to abuse in time of war.
Kaufman and Williams also succeed in establishing the role of women’s
activism even in the context of war and open conflicts. As with all minori-
ties, such as African Americans, Latinos, and Asians in the United States;
the Turkish minority in Germany; and the Muslim minorities in France,
minority rights are best protected through social movements and the
struggle to obtain political representation.
All three books show that the only known and successful way of
obtaining rights is through mobilization; minority groups themselves
348 Citizenship and the Nation-State

need to gain political power in order to define themselves; secure rec-

ognition from state institutions; and achieve further civil, social, and
political rights. How much of that power can be based on religion alone
depends on the specific context of the society that minority groups live
in. In democratic secularist states such as the United States and France,
religion is not a constitutive principle at the terrain of the state. Religious
affiliation is protected on the terrain of civil society through the freedom
of consciousness and association. At the other extreme are countries such
as Iraq, where traditional Islamic laws have governed society for a long
time. In the middle, between the extremes, is another tier of states, demo-
cratic states, where religion has become part of the political process. The
cases of Greece, Turkey, Israel, and Lebanon show that state government
can integrate religious institutions in a democratic political process. On
the one hand, the explicit political power of religious institutions means
that individual human rights, conceptualized as sacred, inalienable, and
universal, are mediated by religious authorities. On the other hand, there
are external and internal forces at play for each of these countries that set
the stage for future changes. There are external pressures from European
Union institutions, as in the case of Greece and Turkey, for structural
reforms in compliance with the process of European integration. In the
case of Lebanon, there are internal pressures to further democratize the
political process and diminish the role of religion. It is not unthinkable to
speculate that once peace is achieved in the Middle East between Israel
and its neighbors, Israeli political processes may take the state from being
an “ethnic democracy” to becoming an unqualified democracy.
I would like to credit Gülalp’s edited volume with presenting sharp,
powerful analyses of the relationship between religion and the state, and
the complexity of ethnic identity within the framework of citizenship and
nation-states. I would also like to recommend all three books for scholars
interested in the continuing significance of human rights problematics in
the contemporary world. All three books, or chapters of each book, can be
assigned in undergraduate and graduate seminars to help students better
understand the changing contexts and conditions of human rights around
the world.

Elena Vesselinov is an assistant professor of sociology at Queens College and the Gradu-
ate Center, City University of New York. She has an MA in theory and practice of
Human Rights from the University of Essex, U.K., and a PhD in sociology from the
 Elena Vesselinov 349

University of Albany, State University of New York. Elena is an urban sociologist with

research interests in social and spatial inequality, residential segregation, immigration,
and comparative urbanization. Her research has appeared in, among other publica-
tions, Urban Studies, Journal of Urban Affairs, Demography, and Research in Social
Stratification and Mobility and has been supported by the National Institute of Child
and Human Development, the National Science Foundation, the Soros Foundation,
and other sources.

Works Cited

Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and

Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.
Kertzer, David, and Dominique Arel, ed. 2002. Census and Identity: The Politics of
Race, Ethnicity, and Language in National Censuses. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Kymlicka, Will. 1995. Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority
Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Simon, P. 2003. “France and the Unknown Second Generation: Preliminary
Results on Social Mobility.” International Migration Review 37(4):1091–19.
The United Nations. 1997. “International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights.” http://www.hrweb.org/legal/cpr.html. Retrieved on October 19,
2009.
 COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Author: Vesselinov, Elena

Title: Citizenship and the Nation-State

Source: Women's Stud Q 38 no1/2 Spr/Summ 2010 p. 336-50

ISSN: 0732-1562
Publisher: Feminist Press at the City University of New York
The Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, Suite 5406, New York, NY 10016

The magazine publisher is the copyright holder of this article and it is reproduced
with permission. Further reproduction of this article in violation of the copyright is
prohibited. To contact the publisher: http://www.feministpress.org/

This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-
licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make
any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should be independently
verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever
caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.

View publication stats