Editorial: Understanding the Conundrum Secular States, Fundamentalist Politics

The theme of this special issue of Feminist Dissent focuses on the ways in which religious fundamentalist movements have become hegemonic in many secular states around the world. This purported paradox of fundamentalist politics gaining power in secular states is all the more challenging to analyse in the context of both the consolidation and re-articulation of neoliberalism as an ideology and framework for organising economy and society in the era of late capitalism and its successive crises. Specifically, we are interested in exploring the ways in which these transformations within state, society and the economy have affected women’s positions and gender relations. The illustrative case studies we examine in this issue are India, Israel and Turkey.