Introduction: Aims, Access and Analysis

Abstract

The research on which this book is based is an extension of inquiries that each of us has been conducting separately for many years. All three of us share interests in the ‘fault lines’ of French and British societies. We are all concerned with the inequalities and injustices that accompany social divisions along lines of class, ‘race’, ethnicity and religion. Our shared interests also include the positive attempts made by groups in civil society to contest and to combat inequalities and injustice. In this connection, Danièle Joly and Farhad Khosrokhavar have implemented an ‘interventionist’ method of not simply studying problematic social phenomena from a distance but also of intervening in the dynamics of conflict in order to steer the protagonists towards a better theoretical understanding of what is at stake in the conflict. They have employed this interventionist method in studies of young, disaffected and sometimes-violent members of minority ethnic groups in France and the UK. Both of these authors have conducted a great deal of research on Muslims in a variety of contexts. Religious minorities, including Muslims, have also figured prominently in Jim Beckford’s research in France and the UK.