Cady - Gendering the divide: religion, the secular, and the politics of sexual difference

RELIGION,

THE SECULAR,

and the Politics of

SEXUAL DIFFERENCE

RELIGION, CULTURE, AND PUBLIC LIFE

RELIGION, CULTURE, AND PUBLIC LIFE

SERIES EDITORS: ALFRED STEPAN AND MARK C. TAYLOR

The resurgence of religion calls for careful analysis and constructive criticism of new forms of intolerance, as well as new approaches to tolerance, respect, mutual understanding, and accommodation. In order to promote serious scholarship and informed debate, the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life and Columbia University Press are sponsoring a book series devoted to the investigation of the role of religion in society and culture today. This series includes works by scholars in religious studies, political science, history, cultural anthropology, economics, social psychology, and other allied fields whose work sustains multidisciplinary and comparative as well as transnational analyses of historical and contemporary issues. The series focuses on issues related to questions of difference, identity, and practice within local, national, and international contexts. Special attention is paid to the ways in which religious traditions encourage conflict, violence, and intolerance and also support human rights, ecumenical values, and mutual understanding. By mediating alternative methodologies and different religious, social, and cultural traditions, books published in this series will open channels of communication that facilitate critical analysis.

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Religion and International Relations Theory,

edited by Jack Snyder

Religion in America: A Political History,

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Democracy, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey,

edited by Ahmet T. Kuru and Alfred Stepan

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RELIGION,

THE SECULAR,

and the politics of

SEXUAL DIFFERENCE

Edited by Linell E. Cady & Tracy Fessenden

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW YORK

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Copyright 2013 Columbia University Press

All rights reserved

E-ISBN 978-0-231-53604-2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Religion, the secular, and the politics of sexual difference / edited by Linell E. Cady and Tracy Fessenden.

pages cm. (Religion, culture, and public life)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-231-16248-7 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-231-16249-4 (pbk.: alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-231-53604-2 (e-book)

1. SecularismComparative studies. 2. SecularismCongresses. 3. SexComparative studies. 4. SexCongresses. 5. Sex discriminationComparative studies. 6. Sex discriminationCongresses. 7. Sex roleComparative studies. 8. Sex roleCongresses. I. Cady, Linell Elizabeth, 1952editor of compilation.

BL2747 8.R45 2013

200.81dc23

2013008746

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CONTENTS

LINELL E. CADY AND TRACY FESSENDEN

JOAN WALLACH SCOTT

Response Essays

SABA MAHMOOD

AZZA KARAM

ANN BRAUDE

GENE BURNS

MARGOT BADRAN

ZILKA SPAHI-ILJAK

JANET R. JAKOBSEN AND ANN PELLEGRINI

MOLLY K. MCGARRY

NACIRA GUNIF-SOUILAMAS

ELIZABETH SHAKMAN HURD

RAJESWARI SUNDER RAJAN

DAVID KYUMAN KIM

THIS BOOK is the second of two volumes to emerge from a multiyear project on comparative secularisms that was funded by a generous grant from the Ford Foundation to Arizona State Universitys Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict. The project included a series of international conferences, seminars, consultations, and meetings over a five-year period that brought together scholars from a range of disciplines.

The first volume, Comparative Secularisms in a Global Age, ed. Linell Cady and Elizabeth Shakman Hurd (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), explores the history and politics of secularism in France, India, Turkey, and the United States in comparative and global perspectives. It challenges any single picture of secularism by illuminating distinctive formations and their particular historical, political, and religious influences and contexts. In the process it captures the Western Christian and post-Christian roots and inflections of the categories of the secular and religion as well as their adaptation and transformation through global diffusion. Although the case studies show the warrants for speaking of French, Turkish, Indian, and American secularisms, they also point to the multiple, contesting currents internal to each of these formations.

Gender and sexuality have become flashpoints in the noisy and seemingly ubiquitous public clashes over the boundaries and legitimate reach of secular and religious domains. Religion, the Secular, and the Politics of Sexual Difference asks why. More specifically, why have advances for gender and sexual equality come so readily to be attributed to the power of the secular and secularizing processes? Through a series of case studies focusing on specific countries as well as transnational discourses and institutions, this volume explores the relations between secularizing processes and various projects of gender and sexual emancipation. Rather than envision secularism as the answer to conflicts over gender and sexuality, we seek to highlight its role as a structural feature of the conditions that generate them.

This book grew out of a conference, Gendering the Divide: Conflicts at the Border of Religion and the Secular, held at Arizona State University in 2010. Most of the chapters began as presentations at this conference. We also invited several contributors to write shorter response essays to Joan Scotts chapter, which are grouped together in part 1.

We are most grateful to the Ford Foundation for its support of this project. Connie Buchanan, a former program officer at Ford, recognized the importance of an international, comparative study of secularisms, as well as the crucial role of gender as a thread running through them. We want to thank Sheila Davaney, also a former program officer at Ford, for her advice and varied contributions to the project as program officer and as a participant. We are also grateful to Toby Volkman and the Henry Luce Foundation for supporting an initiative on gender, rights, and religion that serendipitously overlapped with the completion of this volume, providing us with a remarkably generative context for exploring these issues with our collegeagues.