Conflict about clothing: The headscarf as a symbol of cultural conflict

Recent discussions on the Moslem headscarf mostly take into account only the prototypical meanings of this sign that are fixed within collective imagination. They subject the sign to a process of abstraction that ignores contextual factors as well as individual reasons for wearing a headscarf. Classified as a religious and political sign, the headscarf is declared to be incompatible with the neutrality required of public institutions. A woman who is wearing a headscarf is confronted with the merely hypothetical model of a neutral person. The author first discusses the various discursive interpretations of the headscarf as well as the cultural mechanisms that lead to its conception as a "sign of otherness". She then emphasizes the aspects that are more specific to clothing, demanding a more differentiated context-oriented conception of headscarfs and emphasizing their ambivalent relational character.