The Intrinsic Predicaments of Civic Nationalism:Ethnic and Religious Issues in the French Republican Model
As a typical representative of western nation-states,contemporary France is challenged by many difficulties in dealing with its exceptionally acute ethnic and religious problems.These problems have fully exposed the systemic flaws of its"republican model",therefore it has also become an important window to observe the challenges and institutional difficulties of the construction of national community and the practice of nation-state governance in western countries.Under the French republican tradition,the unceasingly sanctified notion of"civic nation"(nation civique)excludes the notion of"ethnic nation"(nation ethnique)and denies the multi-ethnicity of its national composition,leaving many minorities,including Muslims,confronted with identity dilemmas that continue to cause ethnic-related conflicts;the secularism(laïcité)and its values,which emerged by breaking through the original Catholic order,have been deconstructed in contemporary times to some extent by increasingly pluralistic religious practices,which results in a crisis of secularism and further triggering some conflicts between Muslims and the native French society.The concepts of"civic nation"and secularism under the discipline of republicanism obviously conflict with the pluralistic reality of contemporary French society.These two dominant ideas shape the French society into multiple levels of distortion and contradiction.It also focuses on the minority groups represented by Muslims,which profoundly affects the evolution of ethnic and religious issues in contemporary France,and leaves its nation-state identity to face great challenges.The internal dilemma of the French republican model in dealing with ethnic and religious problems reflects the chronic institutional problems of the western nation-state system,such as the serious ethnic inequality,the obvious racism tendency and the severe modernity dilemma.
national communityrepublican modelcivic nationethnic politicssecularism
万方数据
