The summaries of the presentations prepared by Université Laval students will soon be available here in English.
Zaheeda P. ALIBHAI
Doctoral candidate , Ottawa University, Religious Studies
The Politics of Belief: The Refashioning of the Body in Law, Public Policy and on the Virtual Public Square In the twenty-first century
Nowhere do orientalist discourses and governmentality intersect more clearly than in public debates and government policies regulating or banning some Muslim women’s bodily practices (hair or face veiling) in public spaces. In the French legal case S.A.S. v. France, S.A.S. described her practice of veiling as an ambition of the cultivation of belief in progress — where the body of becoming is co-created, influenced, navigated, and engaged with the secular terrain of «everyday» life. Against the backdrop of several international (Canada, France, Egypt) legal cases this paper analyses the interlocking systems of power and the disciplinary policies of the state that collude with dominant interpretations of «religion» to control the boundaries of what is permitted as «acceptable» forms of religiosity in the public sphere. What emerges is a specific idea of the religious body at the expense of religious diversity, religious freedom and state neutrality (Beaman 2008). As such, the state can face the legal task of shaping the beliefs of believers in ways that are most conducive to the secular complexion of the state. Taking these social, cultural and political contexts into account I conclude with Nancy Fraser’s concept of the subaltern counter publics to examine the virtual public square as the discursive space where some Muslim women construct and circulate their own counter discourses and narratives.
Jaspreet BAL
Youth care practitioner, Professor, Humber College, Toronto
A case for Kes: A radical Sikh feminist discussion on hair
Kes, hair, is at the heart of the Sikh identity. For Sikhs of all genders, the keeping of hairis central to the practice of Sikhi. Sikh scripture, history and rehit (the code of conduct) all reinforce the unquestionable importance of maintaining all hair on the body. The presence of hair on the bodies of brown Sikh women in the diaspora is complicated by the multiple identities that inform their existence. The proposed paper will look at the importance of Kes in Sikhi and the policing of Sikh women’s bodies both within and outside of the Sikh community. For example the presenters consider South Asian beauty ideals, European beauty ideals, liberal feminist narratives, and national politics as some ofthe vying forces in Sikh women’s lives. From a strengths based perspective, the nurturing of Kes will also be looked at as a sight of resistance and assertion of identity. The presenters will use specific examples to show the multiple standards Sikh women face inthe choices they make with their hair. The politicizing of Sikh women’s body hair inevitably becomes an issue that can determine access to community, family, capital and national identity.
Amélie BARRAS
Associate Professor in the Department of Social Science (Law & Society Program) at York University (Toronto)
Gender and religion playing hide and seek at the United Nations
This paper draws on the experience and work of a selected number of Christian NGOs at the United Nations Human Rights Council to explore the (in) visibility of questions around gender and religion, and in particular, questions that touch on the intersection of gender and religious identities in that forum. In so doing, the overall aim of the paper is to think about how these identities are regulated by some faith-based NGOs and the extent to which this regulation tends to be influenced by the (re)production of a traditional secular/religious dichotomy. The paper will explore these questions by focusing on two case studies illustrative of how these NGOs and their activists present themselves in this UN forum. The first case study will examine how activists, who often belong to religious orders, decide to mark or not their bodies to indicate their religiosity and gender when working in this space. The second case study will discuss the type of work these NGOs are involved in and in particular the reluctance of some to engage openly in work on gender issues that would ‘mark’ them as clearly religious; e.g. issues on sexuality and reproduction. Through these case studies, the paper ultimately argues that while these actors do in some instances blur the lines of the secular/religious dichotomy, they also participate to reproducing the idea that the Human Rights Council is a secular space where religion, especially when it intersects with gender, remains hidden in the corners of the halls of the United Nations.
Mathieu BOISVERT
Professor, Université du Québec à Montréal
Hijra identity: at the crossroads of gender, religion, and politics
Hijras belong to a South Asian community described as «transgender». It consists exclusively of men who permanently display a feminine identity. In a context where homosexuality has recently been decriminalized (2013) and where social norms related to gender are restrictive, how do the members of this community manage to justify and legitimize their collective and individual identities, which are largely marginalized? A study conducted between 2016 and 2018 with about thirty hijra participants from the greater Mumbai region allows us to put forward two specific elements for this paper: on the one hand, certain rites of passage specific to the hijra community — such as leṛta (initiation) and nirvāṇa (castration) — legitimize the status of the candidate at a particular stage of her life and that, on the other hand, certain pilgrimages — such as those dedicated to Bahucharamata (GJ), Yellamma (KA) and Aravan (TN)—justify the existence of this highly ostracized community itself.
Emilie EL-KHOURY
Doctoral student, Department of Anthropology, Université Laval
Subjective Experiences of Muslim Women from Brussels and Montreal on the Concept of Secularism
My doctoral study specifically examines the subjective representations, i.e., the lived experience and perspective, of Muslim women of all Islamic faiths from 2011 to the present day, with respect to radicalization and armed struggle movements, more specifically Daesh-Islamic State (ISIS). The practical dimension of this research mobilizes a multi-site field ethnography in Brussels, Beirut, and Montreal. My dissertation exploits the practice of ethnobiography that prioritizes life narratives as the main technique for collecting field data. I met 92 women settled in the cities mentioned above. It cannot be denied that Islam is portrayed as incompatible with the values of secularism and democracy in certain academic, political, and civil circles. Authors such as De Coorebyter (2017), echoing Baubérot (2014) and his book titled «La laïcité falsifiée», explain that the concept of secularism has been betrayed in recent years under the impetus of the rise of the extreme right which, in France among others, has appropriated the concept whilere interpreting it to stigmatize persons belonging to religious minorities. During my interviews, questions related to the ideas of Baubérot (2014) were asked, such as the relationship to religious signs in the private and public spheres and their links to secularism. I will address these aspects of my interviews in this paper, as well as examples from my Brussels and Montreal fieldworks.
Marlene EPP
Professor, Conrad Grebel University College at the University of Waterloo
Quaint and Curious: Dress codes as signifiers of cultural and religious representation for Mennonite women
As in other culturally distinct religious communities, women within Mennonite and related Anabaptist-origin communities are frequently identifiable by their dress. Various conservative branches of the Mennonite religion, as well as Amish and Hutterites, maintain prescribed dresscodes that apply mainly to women. Often described as «plain dress», these codes also existed in previous eras for what are today modern Mennonite groups. Certain aspects of plain dress were justified by biblical interpretation while others functioned tomaintain separation from modern society. While Anabaptist groups often sought invisibility vis-à-vis the Canadian state, and while patriarchal norms in home and church reinforced female silence and thus invisibility, dress codes made women visible in public society. However, as white, Christian women, their dress was, and is, largely apolitical. Unlike Muslim women in twenty-first century Canada, women’s bodies within Anabaptist groups were not regulated by the state, nor vilified by a xenophobic public. Rather than a threat, Mennonite, Amish, and Hutterite women are viewed as quaint if curious, their way of life is romanticized, and their particularities held up as a symbol of a multicultural mosaic. The lack of public or state critique of their dress provides evidence of how racialized the mosaic is. (The 2020 Covid-19 pandemic has, however, shown how distinct dress identifies religious groups that are stigmatized when they are associated with virus outbreaks.) This paper will analyze various dress codes and practices within Mennonite and related conservative religious communities with regard to themes of racialization, embodiment, and representation.
JAHAN GAHAN
Assistant professor, Religious Studies, University of Alberta
Sex on Trial: The Legal History of Sexual Crimes in Iran in the Early 20th century Iran
This paper investigates the shifting role of Islam in governance, through exploring criminalization of sexual intimacy outside the institution of marriage between 1912-1933 in Iran.This period between the immediate aftermath of the Constitutional Revolution and the establishment of the Pahlavi regime in 1926, is an understudied yet significant time for Iran, when the secularizing post-constitutional parliament radically reorganized the judiciary and court procedures. Most significantly, in 1912, costume courts (‘urfi) and Islamic courts (shar‘i) were merged. As a result, the relation between Islam and rule of law was rearranged. Between 1926 and 1933, the state experimented with three different versions of morality laws under the newly drafted penal code. Through a close reading of court cases and police reports on criminalized sexual activities — including prostitution, zinā (sexual activities outside the institution of marriage in Islamic law), sodomy, and pandering — I demonstrate how the place of Islamic sensibilities were renegotiated in the analytics of legal-moral rule. The aim of this paper is to address larger questions about the role of Islam in the governance of morality, under quasi-secular state formations in the early 20th century in Iran, including: How did secular courts become the guardian of public Islamic morality? How did the codified law draw the line between private bodies and public moral concerns and what role did Islam play in codifying morality, if any? Ultimately, this paper challenges the idea that Islam was pushed to the margins of modern rulein the early 20th century. Rather, it demonstrates that Islamic moral principles were subsumed in the analytics of the rule of modern law, under quasi-secular legal formations.
Géraldine MOSSIÈRE
Anthropologist and associate professor, Institut d'Études Religieuses (IÉR), Université de Montréal
Regulation and Sexual Liberation in Quebec: Sexuality as a Driver of Social Change
In Quebec, the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s is associated with the modernization and liberalization of the province initiated by the babyboomers. Among the discourses conveyed by this generation, the memory of the oppression of sexuality, the control of women’s bodies and the coercion of procreation by the Catholic clergy played a central role in the social and political evolution and identity that the province forged for itself. The arrival of migrant populations with their cultural and religious backgrounds has recently introduced new norms and practices in the management of sexuality and bodies that are undermining this newly acquired collective liberation. The collective debates surrounding the insertion of these populations into the local landscape attest to these tensions and the central role played by the status of women and the regulation of sexuality. Yet, the stories I have collected among young Quebecois who have converted to Islam associate their choice of this religion with the discipline and regulation of the body and sexuality it promotes. In this paper, I will discuss how each cohort’s narratives about the body and the management of sexuality relate with recent social and political developments in the province and argue that these discourses onthe management of the body and sexuality and the regulation of their expression and coercion in the public space drive social and political change.
Audrey ROUSSEAU
Sociologist, assistant professor, Department of Social Sciences, Université du Québec en Outaouais (UQO)
«This is a Catholic country» or how the preventable death of Savita Hallapanavar became the emblem of the pro-choice movement in the Republic of Ireland
In 2018, the 6th Irish popular referendum on abortion led to the repeal of the 8th constitutional amendment (criminalizing voluntary termination of pregnancy since 1983). Beyond contextualizing this legislative change is partly explained by decades of feminist mobilization. This contribution will deepen the premise that the story of Savita Hallapanavar — a pregnant woman of Hindu faith who died of sepsis in Galway in 2012 — has become emblematic of the pro-choice movement. We will look more closely at the grounds for refusing to carry out an abortion when the situation has become dangerous for the mother’s life. To do so, we will question two presuppositions implicit inthe expression «This is a Catholic country», uttered by Ann Maria Burke, a midwife (who explained that as long as the unborn child’s heart continued to beat, the intervention requested by the mother and father could not be performed) that reveal societal attitudes. On the one hand, these words spoken to a couple of Indian origin, in a society where more than 94% of the population identifies itself as «White Irish» (CSO, 2016) reifies the division between «them» and «us». On the other hand,these words assert a moral superiority (giving equal right to the life of the mother and the fetus) which, in this case, contrasts, with the annihilation of the life of the mother and the unborn child. In conclusion, the originality of our contribution revolves around the racial and gender connotation of denial (act of language) that seems to have served as a catalyst in the struggles for reproductive
Santbir SINGH
Masters student, Sociology, York University
A case for Kes: A radical Sikh feminist discussion on hair
Kes, hair, is at the heart of the Sikh identity. For Sikhs of all genders, the keeping of hairis central to the practice of Sikhi. Sikh scripture, history and rehit (the code of conduct) all reinforce the unquestionable importance of maintaining all hair on the body. The presence of hair on the bodies of brown Sikh women in the diaspora is complicated by the multiple identities that inform their existence. The proposed paper will look at the importance of Kes in Sikhi and the policing of Sikh women’s bodies both within and outside of the Sikh community. For example the presenters consider South Asian beauty ideals, European beauty ideals, liberal feminist narratives, and national politics as some ofthe vying forces in Sikh women’s lives. From a strengths based perspective, the nurturing of Kes will also be looked at as a sight of resistance and assertion of identity. The presenters will use specific examples to show the multiple standards Sikh women face inthe choices they make with their hair. The politicizing of Sikh women’s body hair inevitably becomes an issue that can determine access to community, family, capital and national identity.
