Last night I went to a public lecture by Christina Slade, who talked about the media use of Arabic-speaking migrants in the European Union. She introduced and contextualised the issues that her research has been investigating with reference to a statement by Nicolas Sarkozy in which he stated that Muslim women who wear the veil are “cut off from all social life, deprived of identity”. It does not matter greatly in context whether Sarkozy was referring only to the full covering as there has been legislation to ban head scarves as well in various countries. Even in Australia, we occasionally get politicians calling for a ban. Slade then proceeded to demonstrate how, in terms of their cultural citizenship, these migrants were certainly not socially or politically disconnected, in fact quite the opposite was the case. I think that she used the term ‘cultural citizenship’ but whether or not she actually used it, that’s what I thought I heard and it got me thinking.

There are probably as many definitions of cultural citizenship as there are cultural theorists, some of which seem to refer to the right of migrants to maintain their own culture in a host country. The definition that I am more familiar with is something along the lines of being able to create a sense of belonging and shared identity out of the cultural resources on offer. The presence of the word citizenship does at least suggest that this is belonging to the nation, a term that itself is problematic to define once you actually try. I get this definition largely from John Hartley’s Uses of Television, where he describes it as the ‘practice of putting together an identity from the available choices, patterns and opportunities on offer in the semiosphere and the mediasphere’ and he sees it as enabled by television and based on material consumption. Though I think he gives less weight to the link to national connotations than I am inclined to.

It is the ‘based on material consumption’ part particularly strikes me. Nancy Deutsch and Eleni Theodorou, admittedly studying low-income young people in the USA, demonstrate how these young people use consumption in order to create identity, both to individuate themselves and to form connections to social groups. Consumption was absolutely tied to their present identity and affiliations, but also intricately wound up with their future aspirations and relationships to others. Interestingly, they also found that it was used to mask class differences. For the girls, in particular, consumption was an essential aspect of creating an acceptable gender identity. I don’t think things are so different in Australia. Susan Linn, in Consuming Kids, describes the way that the media, and television in particular, through advertising, trains us to become consumers, these days from the cradle. It isn’t even always the product that is important, but the creation of consumers who will keep consuming. And when targeting children, the consumer identity is overwhelmingly gendered.

Back to the lecture. What all of this has me wondering is whether the disconnection that leaders like Sarkozy worry about so much about isn’t social, civic, or political, as they claim, but a disconnection from consumerist culture which, these days, pretty much is the heart of our western, advanced capitalist societies. The head scarf to a limited extent, and the burqa more so, hide those material accessories—hairstyles, jewellery, make-up, clothing—that mark us as appropriately gendered and appropriately consumerist in our society. Our consumption is taken to demonstrate our commitment to particular gender identities, subcultural groups, lifestyles, and values. If all we see is the head scarf or burqa (and too often that is all we see) then we are missing these other markers that, either consciously or subconsciously, indicate a commitment to the values of a consumerist society. Consumption is so much at the heart of our society; it is what drives the economy and no one seems to question the importance of that. In fact, at present the big complaint from the retail and other sectors is that we’re doomed because consumers have stopped spending.

It is important to note that I am not suggesting for a moment that women who wear the head scarf or burqa are not materialistic or consumerist. They may or may not be, that is not the issue. The issue is how we read their choice of clothing in terms of commitment to what we see as our society’s values.

The scarf and the burqa are not blank slates. Wrongly or rightly, we ascribe to them a whole lot of meanings based on our stereotypes of certain types of migrants. Among these are that they believe strongly in their families and communities. Often we will claim belief in these too, but in their case we are more inclined to contrast it with our belief in individual freedom. Again, we are talking stereotypes, not the actual beliefs of migrants, which we can’t even guess at without getting to know them personally. So the other thing that I wonder is whether these stereotypes, triggered by the difference in dress, also confront the professed beliefs of conservatives and the Religious Right in ‘family values’ and community, causing an unacknowledged guilt.

Philip Webb writes about how the Religious Right (again, in the US, I’m afraid, but our conservatives and Religious Right are increasingly aping those in the US), hang on to an idealised and Christianized version of the Victorian era family as based on organic relationships and a private place of retreat from the transactional relationships of society. This, Webb says, is the rhetoric to which they cling, but their vehement support of industrial and post-industrial free-market capitalism has transformed the conditions of the family such that it also is now an institution or association subject to regulatory intervention. The continued use of nostalgic rhetoric about the family in these circumstances serves to also politicise it, further undermining that which they claim to value about it. Webb says, ‘The contemporary debates about family are not a failure to recognize structures changing through shifts in means of production and consumption; they are attempts to historically freeze the family and assert its transcendence, so the seeming benefits of neo-liberal capital continue to flow, ostensibly with no impact on the social form’ (p. 116).

Does a reading of Muslim dress as non-consumerist, together with stereotyping of migrants as strongly committed to family and community values, ever so subtley prick the consciences of conservatives and religious right-wingers who trumpet family values while vigorously promoting the economic and cultural policies that help to create rampant consumerism and individualism, things that they also decry despite frequently participating in them?

I’m not putting any of this forward as well-thought-out theory or grounded in evidence. Rather, I’m simply putting together a whole lot of things that I’ve heard and read recently and trying to see if there might be some connection between them. So I’d love comments from anyone who does have a better grasp of the issues at hand than I do, and especially anyone who has first-hand experience.