Contesting Fundamentalisms

Edited by JoAnn Jaffe, Carol Schick, Ailsa M. Watkinson

Fundamentalism has been thrust into the limelight by recent world events. It is necessary to understand fundamentalism in order to contest its claims, but talk of fundamentalism lacks precision.

In Contesting Fundamentalisms, the authors cast a wide net to include an array of ideological positions in social and cultural movements, as well as more traditional areas of religious practice. The chapters critically investigate the nature of fundamentalism in economics, nationalism, ethnic relations, Aboriginal politics, gender politics and religious practice. Each of these areas is made clearer, or shown in a different light, by viewing them through a fundamentalist lens. These essays invite a multidimensional understanding of whom or what may be called “fundamentalist” and the dilemmas that this naming creates.

Contents

• Considering Fundamentalism
• Cultural and Ethnic Fundamentalism: Identity, Liberation and Oppression
• Real Indians: Cultural Revitalization and Fundamentalism in Aboriginal Education
• The Makings of a Post-Zionist Discourse: Jewish Fundamentalisms and a Critical Politics of Identity
• More Than a Pejorative Epithet: Islamic Fundamentalism(s)
• Sifting Islam from Fundamentalism: Muslim Feminists Struggle
• Lean and Mean: Hegemonic Masculinity and Fundamentalism
• With Us or With the Terrorists: American Hyperpatriotism as Fundamentalism
• The Market will Make it Right: Neoliberalism as Market Fundamentalism
• Religious Fundamentalism Meets the Charter: Equality Rights and Re-Privatized Public Services
• Slippery and Unstable: School and Human Rights

About the Authors

JoAnn Jaffe is an associate professor of Sociology and Social Studies at the University of Regina.

Carol Schick is an associate professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Regina.

Ailsa Watkinson is an associate professor with the Faculty of Social Work, University of Regina.

Excerpt

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