communautarisme

Clearly these wouldn't correspond exactly to communautarisme, but in some contexts I think even these can work very well:
special interests
identity politics

Special interests is especially common U.S. political context; identity politics may be a tad dated but still relevant to so-called "culture wars."
 
    • Nico2 said:
    Clearly these wouldn't correspond exactly to communautarisme, but in some contexts I think even these can work very well:
    special interests
    identity politics

    Special interests is especially common U.S. political context; identity politics may be a tad dated but still relevant to so-called "culture wars."
    Click to expand...

    I don't think identity politics is dated, and I was thinking it's probably a good translation for 'communautarisme'
     
    You're right, it's not really dated. For some reason I think about the 1990s when I think about identity politics, but it's still current. I just heard it on the last episode of Samantha Bee :)
     
    What about "failure to integrate"? That has a negative connotation ("failure") and is easily understandable. Another option could be "insularity".
     
    Communatarisme is one of those godawful words that pollute French political discourse on a daily basis. Clannishness, which was originally suggested by Keith Bradford, is about as good an approximation as one is going to get. You can't understand the word without understanding the political philosophy behind it. It posits that there is one French nation and those who refuse to visibly assimilate into the majority are communautariste, i.e. they want to remain separate, on their own. They don't abide by the alleged "values of the Republic". This is not only unacceptable, it's a danger. There is a certain "in-group paranoia" freighted in this word that is hard to adequately translate (insularity, for me, isn't sufficient).
     
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    I don't think "clannishness" (first suggested by Roger007 at #3, and later by Keith Bradford) really works, or at least not in the UK context. It's perhaps an equivalent sentiment, but the wrong register in my view and used in very different contexts. To me it's a term that might be used about different groups within an organisation perhaps, or maybe of different groups of artists or something, people who flock together and stay in their group in a way that is a bit irritating or exclusionary, but doesn't really matter in the larger scale of things. It wouldn't be used in the media to talk about the attitudes of different ethnic groups, as "communautarisme" is - it's not as serious or potentially political. I think "sectarianism" would be closer, in the way it is used, although it would depend on context.
     
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    I strongly disagree. Sectarianism doesn't work. It doesn't mean the same thing. It isn't sectarian to wear a veil or a turban or to merely be visibly different. Sectarianism in a UK context inevitably makes one think of discriminatory practices like gerrymandering in Northern Ireland or singing about drowning in Fenian blood at an Old Firm game. This is nothing of the sort. It's a word used as part of a political agenda vis-à-vis anyone who deviates from a (mostly fictional) neutral norm that is imposed by the state. There is no direct translation available because such a word just doesn't arise in a non-French context.
     
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    Just FYI I chose to use “refusal to integrate” for my document. It has the merit of being so very English that it doesn’t distract the reader from their reading - something I think is important. If ‘communautarisme’ reads easily to French speakers then I want to find something that reads just as easily. I also agree with Wodwo and Pedro that clannishness and sectarianism don’t necessarily work, for reasons of register and associated context respectively. It’s a tough one!
     
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    Pedro y La Torre said:
    I strongly disagree. Sectarianism doesn't work. It doesn't mean the same thing. It isn't sectarian to wear a veil or a turban or to merely be visibly different. Sectarianism in a UK context inevitably makes one think of discriminatory practices like gerrymandering in Northern Ireland or singing about drowning in Fenian blood at an Old Firm game. This is nothing of the sort. It's a word used as part of a political agenda vis-à-vis anyone who deviates from a (mostly fictional) neutral norm that is imposed by the state. There is no direct translation available because such a word just doesn't arise in a non-French context.
    Click to expand...
    I agree that "sectarianism" has been used extensively in the UK/Irish context. However, I think the particular resonances described by Pedro y La Torre are not necessarily shared - certainly in such detail - by all English speakers, including me, and that the word remains potentially applicable to other contexts. Similarly, I have come across many uses of "communautarisme" in French academic writing where it is not being used simply as part of a political agenda seeking to do down deviants from some imaginary norm. Of course that happens, but it's not the only context in which the word is used. In my experience any community may be described as displaying "communautarisme", including those who regard themselves as embodying the "neutral norm".

    As ever, context is all.
     
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