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131. Review Essay - Is the King Dead? Performing Sovereignty in the Modern Era

Author:
Sheryl Kroen
Publication Date:
09-2003
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
It is common practice among early modern French historians to interpret society, culture, and politics through an analysis of the metaphors, narratives, and rituals that mediated the relationship between sovereigns (kings and queens) and the nation. La Mort du Roi: Un essai d'ethnographie politique comparée transposes this practice to the modern period, in particular by focusing on the discourses and rituals surrounding dying and dead heads of state in France and elsewhere. It was the death of François Mitterrand in 1996 that provided the inspiration for this transposition, worked out in a year-long seminar organized by Jacques Julliard in 1996 and 1997 at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales.
Topic:
Sovereignty
Political Geography:
France

132. French Democracy Without Borders

Author:
Suzanne Berger
Publication Date:
03-2002
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
There are intense debates in France today over globalization and its impact on democratic values and practice. The arguments retrace in many respects a much older inquiry into the compatibility of democracy and capitalism. The history of the past two hundred years suggests that despite the inequities that capitalist economies generate, the majority of the electorate has not been willing to vote out the system. Capitalism was protected, in part, by the fact that these systems were never wholly democratic, but provided constitutional protections for property. And democracy was preserved, in part, by the fact that these systems were never wholly capitalist, but in fact within national borders found a variety of solutions for blunting the impact of market forces. If globalization means a world without national borders, one may question whether this co-existence of capitalism and democracy can continue, and in fact, much of the French debate focuses on this point. This article retraces the history of the borders of France and suggests that borders are political, not geographic, constructions and as such, are far from disappearing even between the US and Canada, even within the European Union. As long as states can still regulate economic exchanges in ways that differentiate their societies from adjacent countries, borders persist. Globalization does create serious new challenges, but the stark dilemma of choosing either a world of economic openness or a world of liberal democracy does not capture the real stake and choices available to France and other democratic societies.
Topic:
Economics
Political Geography:
Europe, Canada, and France

133. Comparing Risk Regulation in the United States and France: Asbestos, Aids and Genetically Modified Agriculture

Author:
David Vogel and Jabril Bensedrine
Publication Date:
03-2002
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
This article compares the regulation of asbestos, the regulatory impact of the health crisis associated with AIDS and the regulation of genetically modified agricultural products in the United States and France. These cases trace the evolution of health, safety and environmental politics and polices in the two countries over the last three decades. In general, risk management policies have become more politicized and risk averse in the United States while they have become more politicized and risk averse in France. In many respects, regulatory politics and policies in France during the 1990s resemble those of the US during the 1960s and 70s.
Topic:
Environment
Political Geography:
United States and France

134. 17 octobre 1961 - 17 octobre 2001: une commémoration ambiguë

Author:
Brigitte Jelen
Publication Date:
03-2002
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
A few months ago, the massacre of Algerian civilians by the French police on October 17, 1961 was finally officially recognized, as the new socialist mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, placed a commemorative plaque on the Pont Saint-Michel. In his declaration to the press, Delanoë was careful to focus on the "Parisian" character of this ceremony, although the 1961 massacre was committed by the French national police. Perhaps Delanoë's noble and courageous gesture hides an ambiguity, an injustice to the victims? In order to understand the symbolic importance of this plaque in the construction of France's official memory of the Algerian war, this essay analyzes how the French government since 1962 has attempted to "forget" the conflict in the name of "national unity," in particular through the use of amnesty laws. In a discussion on forgiveness inspired by J. Derrida, the possibility of a French national memory of the Algerian war (and of the October 17, 1961 event) that would include the voices of the victims is considered.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
Paris and France

135. Des élections municipales sous le signe de la parité

Author:
Françoise Gaspard
Publication Date:
03-2002
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
The March 2001 municipal elections in France constituted a political litmus test, done one year before the presidential and parliamentary elections. They were also the first to fall under the new parity law enacted in June 2000. For the first time, there had to be an equal number of men and women on candidate lists for cities of more than 3,500 inhabitants. While the debate over parity had been intense, the first application of the parity law went more smoothly than expected. The most surprising feature of the election results is that the Right, which had shown little enthusiasm for parity, seems to have been the primary beneficiary of the new system. The question is now whether a larger presence of women in local politics will lead to a real change in public policy, and if it will have an impact on the national level, where the law is a lot less constraining than at city level.
Political Geography:
France

136. La construction européenne confrontée aux attentes des Françaises

Author:
Jacques Capdevielle
Publication Date:
03-2002
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
Les Françaises comme les Français manifestent un mécontentement croissant quand à la façon dont l'Europe se construits. Les premières particulièrement attachées au maintien des acquis du Welfare et à une relance keynésienne de l'économie. Ces attentes vis-à-vis d'une régulation européenne n'émanent pas seulement de femmes dont la situation économique et sociale serait fragilisée par la conjoncture. Elles sont même d'autant plus fortes que leur niveau d'études est élevé et qu'elles occupent une position socioprofessionnelle favorisée.

137. Canonization of Norbert Élias in France: A Critical Perspective

Author:
Daniel Gordon
Publication Date:
03-2002
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
In his article, "The Canonization of Norbert Elias in France: A Critical Perspective," Daniel Gordon argues that important scholars in France have regarded Norbert Elias, the German-born sociologist, with such unqualified admiration that they have failed to examine his life and thought with sufficient scrutiny. Gordon explores several aspects of Elias's intellectual development: his volkisch Zionism and germanophilia during his twenties, his flight from neo-Kantian philosophy to Karl Mannheim's sociology during his thirties, and his abortive efforts to make a new life for himself in France after leaving Germany in 1933 and before eventually settling in Britain. All these experiences, Gordon argues, colored the way Elias drew the comparisons between Germany and France that lay at the center of so much of his thought, comparisons that betrayed a certain kinship to the prejudices German nationalists in the 1920s held about German Kultur and French civilisation. Gordon concludes by suggesting that many French scholars on the left took to Elias's work during the 1980s because it offered them a framework, after the decline of Marxism, for sustaining a critical analysis of hierarchy in French society.
Political Geography:
France

138. The Oldest Hath Borne Most: Response to Daniel Gordon

Author:
Roger Chartier
Publication Date:
03-2002
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
In "'The Oldest Hath Borne Most': Response to Daniel Gordon," Roger Chartier rejects the idea that he has made Elias the object of sectarian devotion, and he refutes several misrepresentations that he believes Gordon makes of his own writing about Elias. He goes on to criticize Gordon's claim that Elias clung to a narrowly linear view of historical change. Most of all, Chartier takes issue with the notion that a conservative German nationalism or "germanophilia" informed Elias's sociological thought in the way Gordon describes. This line of argument, in Chartier's view, rests on a form of a priori ideological reductionism that is as misleading as the sociological reductionism that too often prevailed in the 1970s.
Political Geography:
Germany

139. A Reply

Author:
Daniel Gordon
Publication Date:
03-2002
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
Intellectual life is a kind of combat," wrote Fernand Braudel. I see no reason why historians, who happen to study early-modern civility, should behave like courtiers toward each other. But in point of fact, I do not describe Professor Chartier as a member of a terrible "sect." The term "sect" appears only in a quotation from Zygmunt Bauman. And readers will observe that what Bauman and I are both getting at is the need to be critical of the process of canonization that has been at work in Elias's case.

140. Connaissez-vous Jacques Nantet?

Author:
Goulven Boudic
Publication Date:
03-2002
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
Reconnu, célébré et toujours abondamment cité pour son étude sur Le Pouvoir périphérique qui l'amenait, au plus fort de la vogue décentralisatrice et girondine, à nuancer la réputation jacobine du système politico-administratif français au regard du quotidien des pratiques d'échange et de transaction entre «centre» et «périphérie », le sociologue Pierre Grémion poursuit depuis une vingtaine d'années—et la publication de Paris-Prague—une «reconversion» particulièrement réussie sur le terrain de l'histoire intellectuelle. Son précédent ouvrage, Intelligence de l'anticommunisme, consacré à l'anticommunisme d'inspiration libérale et sociale-démocrate, l'avait amené à revisiter l'histoire de la création et du développement du Congrès pour la liberté de la culture, réseau intellectuel jusqu'alors trop vite confondu avec la figure de Raymond Aron et par ailleurs largement disqualifié comme objet légitime d'études par les révélations de son financement via la C.I.A.