Description
Book SynopsisThrough an examination of North African Jewish youth practices in Paris,
Rhinestones explains the production of race, alienation, and intolerance within an understudied European minority population.
Trade Review"This study of North African Jewish (Sephardi) adolescents enrolled in Jewish day schools in Paris brings a relatively understudied population to the burgeoning literature on the problem of multiculturalism in postcolonial France . . . [T]here is fascinating material here worthy of further unpacking." -- Andrea L. Smith *
American Ethnologist *
"[L]ittle attention has been paid to Jewish perceptions of the Muslim Arabs [in France]. In her provocative new book, [...], Kimberly Arkin takes on this topic, and in doing so, provides a brilliant analysis of the complicated legacies of colonialism, antisemitism, and nationalism in contemporary France . . . [Her] book masterfully uses a wide variety of theoretical frameworks to make sense of French day school identity politics, and she artfully fleshes out her anthropological study with extensive use of primary source material." -- Nadia Malinovich *
Association for Jewish Studies *
"Anyone still concerned that the ethnography of Jewish communities remains wedded to nostalgia, provincialism, or salvage should consult Kimberly Arkin's bracing ethnography of the schooling of young people of 'Sephardi' . . . Arkin shows us that [French Jews], and especially their young people, can provide an unexpected and revealing window on the troubled processes of integration and democracy in Europe today." -- Jonathan Aaron Boyarin *
American Anthropologist *
"Anthropologist Arkin tackles a sensitive subject: racial views among Sephardic Jewish adolescents in Paris . . . Arkin builds upon existing historiographical themes by exploring the formation and cultivation of French Jewish identity, while adding a useful anthropological perspective on the manifestation of these identity choices . . . [T]he book is well written and engaging, and should be accessible to advanced undergraduates. Summing up: Recommended." -- J. Haus *
CHOICE *
"This bold book takes on the subject of French Jewish adolescent racism—a topic so 'untouchable' that Arkin was expelled from the school in which she was doing fieldwork after having publicly acknowledged the phenomenon. Through this carefully researched and notably historic ethnographic explanation of a complex subject, Arkin uncovers the way racial understandings and categories were constructed, often unwittingly, by state educational policies, school administrators, and parents, most of whom held quite different and even diametrically opposed views on the nature of French Jewish identity." -- Maud Mandel * Brown University *
