Contesting Fundamentalisms

Contents: Acknowledgements. 1. Considering fundamentalism/Carol Schick, JoAnn Jaffe and Ailsa M. Watkinson. 2. Cultural and ethnic fundamentalism: identity, liberation and oppression/Joyce A. Green. 3. Real Indians: cultural revitalization and fundamentalism in aboriginal education/Verna St. Denis. 4. Jewish fundamentalisms and a critical politics of identity: the makings of a post-Zionist discourse/Jackie Kuikman. 5. Islamic fundamentalism(s): more than a pejorative epithet?/F. Volker Greifenhagen. 6. Sifting Islam from fundamentalism: Muslim feminists struggle/Nayyar S. Javed. 7. Lean and mean: hegemonic masculinity as fundamentalism/Murray Knuttila. 8. With US or with the terrorists: American Hyperpatriotism as fundamentalism/JoAnn Jaffe. 9. The market will make it right: neoliberalism as market fundamentalism/Don Mitchell. 10. Equality rights and re-privatized public services: religious fundamentalism meets the charter/Ailsa M. Watkinson. 11. Slippery and unstable: school and human rights/Carol Schick. Index.

"Increasingly, discussions about fundamentalism lack precision and leave the implications of fundamentalist practices unexamined. How can we use the term so that it has analytical meaning and is not merely a label applied by self-proclaimed "non-fundamentalists?"

In contesting fundamentalism, the authors expand the term fundamentalism to include an array of ideological positions in social and cultural movements. Chapters critically investigate the nature of fundamentalism in such diverse areas as economics, nationalism, aboriginal politics, and ethnic, gender and religious studies. Examining these areas through the application of a fundamentalist lens presents them in a different light and with greater clarity.

Understanding fundamentalism is a necessary undertaking for contesting its claims. These essays invite a multidimensional understanding of who or what may be called "fundamentalist" and the dilemmas that this naming creates." (jacket)