Culture Wars in the Contemporary World?

Abstract

The concept of “culture wars” has been proposed for the first time, in its present meaning, by James Davison Hunter in his 1991 book Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America, arguing that contemporary America was the battlefield of the struggle between the orthodox (finding their guide in transcendent authority and in principles inherited from the past) and the progressives (committed to rationalism and to the change towards a more inclusive and tolerant world). In the following years, a fierce debate flared in both academic circles and popular press, about the existence, the consistency, and the meaning of this cultural struggle. Although the concept has been applied mainly to the US case, there have been some attempts to adopt it also in relation to other cases studies: for example, the affaire du foulard in France, the controversies about religious symbols (such as the crucifix and the veil) in public schools, the accusations of blasphemy related to the Danish cartoons, the bioethical issues, and the debates on same-sex marriage and adoption in several European countries. Some scholars have also proposed the idea of a “global culture war” waged by powerful transnational organizations, in both the Christian and the Muslim world. Papers’ topics include (but are not limited to): case studies on a single issue/country, cross-country comparisons, analyses of the role of transnational organizations, longitudinal analyses.

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