Religion, the Secular, and the Politics of Sexual Difference

261 Pages·2013·1.935 MB·English

by  Linell E. Cady, Tracy Fessenden, (eds.)

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.
After Pluralism: Reimagining Religious Engagement,
edited by Courtney Bender and Pamela E. Klassen
Religion and International Relations Theory,
edited by Jack Snyder
Religion in America: A Political History,
Denis Lacorne
Democracy, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey,
edited by Ahmet T. Kuru and Alfred Stepan
Refiguring the Spiritual: Beuys, Barney, Turrell, Goldsworthy,
Mark C. Taylor
Tolerance, Democracy, and Sufis in Senegal,
edited by Mamadou Diouf
Democracy, Islam, and Secularism in Indonesia,
edited by Mirjam Künkler and Alfred Stepan
RELIGION,
THE SECULAR,
and the politics of
SEXUAL DIFFERENCE
Edited by Linell E. Cady & Tracy Fessenden
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW YORK
Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
cup.columbia.edu
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. Secularism—Comparative studies. 2. Secularism—Congresses. 3. Sex—Comparative studies. 4. Sex—
Congresses. 5. Sex discrimination—Comparative studies. 6. Sex discrimination—Congresses. 7. Sex role—
Comparative studies. 8. Sex role—Congresses. I. Cady, Linell Elizabeth, 1952–editor of compilation.
BL2747 8.R45 2013
200.81—dc23
2013008746
A Columbia University Press E-book.
CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at [email protected].
Cover design: David Drummond
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Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.
CONTENTS
Preface and Acknowledgments
Gendering the Divide
PART 1
1 Gendering the Divide: Religion, the Secular, and the Politics of Sexual Difference
LINELL E. CADY AND TRACY FESSENDEN
2 Secularism and Gender Equality
JOAN WALLACH SCOTT
Response Essays
3 Sexuality and Secularism
SABA MAHMOOD
4 Must It Be Either Secular or Religious? Reflections on the Contemporary
Journeys of Women’s Rights Activists in Egypt
AZZA KARAM
5 Religion and Women’s Political Mobilization
ANN BRAUDE
Gender and the Privatization of Religion
PART 2
6 Secular Liberalism, Roman Catholicism, and Social Hierarchies: Understanding
Multiple Paths
GENE BURNS
7 Gendering the Secular and Religious in Modern Egypt: Woman, Family, and
Nation
MARGOT BADRAN
8 Women, Religion, and Politics in Bosnia and Herzegovina
ZILKA SPAHIĆ-ŠILJAK
Gender, Sexuality, and the Body Politic
PART 3
9 Bodies-Politics: Christian Secularism and the Gendering of U.S. Policy
JANET R. JAKOBSEN AND ANN PELLEGRINI
10 Crimes of Moral Turpitude: Questions at the Borders of Religion, the Secular, and
the U.S. Nation-State
MOLLY K. MCGARRY
11 On French Religions and Their Renewed Embodiments
NACIRA GUÉNIF-SOUILAMAS
Bridging the Divide
PART 4
12 Rescued by Law? Gender and the Global Politics of Secularism
ELIZABETH SHAKMAN HURD
13 The Brahmin Widow and Female Religious Agency: Anticaste Critique in Two
Modern Indian Texts
RAJESWARI SUNDER RAJAN
14 Issues with Authority: Feminist Commitments in a Late Secular Age
DAVID KYUMAN KIM
Bibliography
Contributors
Index
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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 University’s 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 Scott’s 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.
Many thanks to Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, who has been centrally involved in this
project from its inception to its final consultation. Her ideas, energy, and collaborative
spirit have contributed so much to it. Beth, with Sheila Davaney, Kathleen Sands, and
Sally Steenland, joined us for a wrap-up meeting that focused on the intersections of
secularism, religion, gender, and sexuality. We are grateful for the lively and insightful
conversations that came at such a propitious time.
We also want to thank our many colleagues at Arizona State University who,
through participation in the conference and in other venues, formal and informal, have
contributed to our thinking about issues of gender, secularism, and religion: Madeleine
Adelman, John Carlson, Roxanne Doty, Alesha Durfee, Mary Margaret Fonow,
Stanlie James, Sally Kitch, Miki Kittilson, Joan McGregor, Jackie Martinez, Daniel
Rothenberg, Yasmin Saikia, Shahla Talebi, George Thomas, Rebecca Tsosie,
Margaret Urban Walker, Carolyn Warner, and Reed Wood.
Carolyn Forbes and Laurie Perko, at the Center for the Study of Religion and
Conflict, have provided superb administrative support for this project and its varied
components over many years. Their skill and care in dealing with the many details,
large and small, of a multiyear, international project have been invaluable. We also
want to express our gratitude to Matt Correa, a doctoral student at Arizona State
University affiliated with CSRC, who has provided research and administrative
support for this project. We especially appreciate his outstanding editorial support in
preparing this volume for publication.
We are grateful to Wendy Lochner and Susan Pensak, our editors at Columbia
University Press, for their enthusiasm and support for the volume. We also thank the
two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of the manuscript and suggestions
for its improvement.
Finally, and most important, we thank the contributors to this volume for the
dedication, enthusiasm, and insight that made it all possible.
1
PART
GENDERING THE DIVIDE