Papers by A. Sophie Lauwers
Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2024
Scholars in various academic disciplines have pointed out how national religious heritage is incr... more Scholars in various academic disciplines have pointed out how national religious heritage is increasingly appropriated by the far right, to construct a false binary between secular Christian European states on the one hand, and Islam on the other. This article contributes to this literature by examining how these political developments, often deemed "illiberal", are enabled by "liberal" uses of religious heritage. Using the lens of what Étienne Balibar calls "fictive ethnicity", the article examines how both liberal and illiberal uses of religious heritage in Western Europe construct a historic nation to which only dominant groups can lay claim, which contributes to the symbolic and material marginalisation of minorities. This has repercussions for analyses of socio-political exclusion and for liberal nationalist theory: addressing contemporary inequalities requires not only limiting explicitly exclusionary forms of nationalism, but also actively unsettling the widespread ontology of homogeneity underpinning national fictive ethnicities.
Ethnicities, 2022
Scholarship on religious inequality in Europe has focused mainly on the position of religious min... more Scholarship on religious inequality in Europe has focused mainly on the position of religious minorities, primarily Jews and Muslims. Investigations into Islamophobia, antisemitism, and other forms of discrimination and oppression, however, are merely one side of the coin. This article draws attention to Christian privilege as a different, but related phenomenon. It understands 'privilege' to be part of the study of hegemony, as the asymmetrical counterpart of structural oppression. The article situates Christian privilege within secular Christian hegemony in Western Europe and explores its relation to racial and religious exclusion. It identifies three different types of Christian privilege and outlines a framework for normatively evaluating them.
Critical Philosophy of Race, 2019
Recent scholarship increasingly defines Islamophobia as a form of racism. The possibility that Is... more Recent scholarship increasingly defines Islamophobia as a form of racism. The possibility that Islamophobia could also manifest itself as religious or cultural bigotry is generally overlooked. This article argues that although anti-Islam bigotry is intertwined with anti-Muslim racism, the two are conceptually distinct. Making this distinction allows us to better analyze, unmask, and critically assess Islamophobia. The article conceptually explores the similarities and differences between anti-Muslim racism and anti-Islam bigotry. It finds that although anti-Islam bigotry implies a prejudicial rejection of an essentialized idea of Islam, it understands religion or culture to be an individual choice and allows for the possibility that Muslims convert or assimilate. As such, it differs from anti-Muslim racism, which implies that the Muslim identity and the negative characteristics associated with Islam are innate and unchangeable. The article argues that contemporary Islamophobic political discourse in Europe is predominantly racist, although it hides behind a cloak of anti-Islam bigotry.
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Papers by A. Sophie Lauwers