Anthroplogist Monique Selim recalls her research into social structures in French housing estates in the 1970s and the taboos she ran up against on talking about the existence of working-class racism. Today, academic and media discourse on minorities, migration, and otherness has become ethnicized so that it no longer sets itself apart from the language of the street. While ethnic catagorization can act as an instrument against discrimination, it can also, when imposed in an ontological fashion onto society, encourage the tendency to create a gap between the self and other.
Monique Selim
is author of Pouvoirs et marché au Vietnam (2003) and Solidarités et compétences. Idéologies et pratiques (with Bernard Hours, 2003). She is a member of the editorial board of Journal des Anthropologues et Chimères.
