ISSN 2084–1418
The paper edition of the Anthropology of History Yearbook is the definitive version
2013, No. 1 (4), On Representation
Genevičve Zubrzycki
The Symbolic Redefinition of National Identity in Quebec
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Keywords: Quebec, Quiet Revolution, secularization, national identity, symbolic politics.
Abstract: In this article, I analyze how the relationship between national identity and religion was reconfigured by social actors during the Quebec’s so-called Quiet Revolution, and discuss how the secularization of society that took place in the 1960s and 1970s shapes contemporary politics in Quebec. With the building of its welfare state in the 1960s, national identity and religion in Quebec have become divorced institutionally, ideologically, and symbolically. Quebec has also undergone one of the most rapid processes of secularization in the Western world during that decade. In this text I trace the evolution and transformation of the relationship between national and religious identities in Quebec through an analysis of symbolic politics, and discuss how some of the ambiguities and unintended consequences of the Quiet Revolution are at the root of current debates about the place of religion in the public sphere.
About Author:
ZUBRZYCKI GENEVIČVE - Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan.