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291. The Lithographic Conspiracy: How Satire Framed Liberal Political Debate in Nineteenth-Century France

Author:
Amy Wiese Forbes
Publication Date:
06-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
This article discusses political satire under the July Monarchy. It analyzes how the question of satire's political meaning was generated and framed in the 1830s as debate over abstract rights under the new, supposedly more liberal government of the July Monarchy. Following the Revolution of 1830, lithographic satire became connected conceptually to political conspiracy and was argued to be harmful to the new regime. State institutions, including the police, the courts, and the National Assembly, attempted to understand and define satire politically. The effort to evaluate satire's potential harm to the state shaped French liberalism into a contest between rights to free speech and protection from harm. This process was part of a broader struggle to construct legitimate authority in France.
Topic:
Politics
Political Geography:
France

292. Pierre Goldman: From Souvenirs obscurs to Lieu de mémoire

Author:
Donald Reid
Publication Date:
06-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
Pierre Goldman was born to Jewish resisters in France in June 1944 and lived with the inability to match his parents' achievements during the war. Although a secondary figure in soixante-huitard movements, his trials for murder in the early 1970s made him a central figure in post-soixante-huitard activists' reflections on their situation. This essay examines Goldman's sui generis efforts to establish his identity as a resister and a Jew, his central role in his generation's attempts to define their relationship to the society they wished to change, and his place in the succeeding generation's efforts to differentiate themselves from the generation of their parents, Goldman's generation.
Political Geography:
France

293. Apology and the Past in Contemporary France

Author:
Julie Fette
Publication Date:
06-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
In societies coming to terms with historical injustices, public apology has recently emerged as a potent trend. This is particularly true of France, where the state served as a catalyst for a wave of public apologies for acts of intolerance committed during the Second World War. Following Jacques Chirac's 1995 official apology for Vichy's anti-Semitic policies, various groups in civil society publicly atoned for their particular Vichy roles in discrimination against Jews: the medical profession, the law bar, the Catholic Church, and the police. How does public apology, as distinct from court trials, historical commissions, and reparations, affect contemporary France's reconciliation with its past? This article also analyzes how apologizing for Vichy has created demand for an official French apology for the Algerian War. By 2006, the politics of memory in French society decidedly shifted attention from Vichy to post-colonialism: in both cases, the apology turn imposes new dynamics of remembering and forgetting.
Topic:
Politics and War
Political Geography:
France

294. La naissance d'un géant: Arcelor-Mittal (1948-2006)

Author:
Éric Godelier
Publication Date:
06-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
In 2006 a terrible fight pitted two steel makers, Mittal and Arcelor, against each other. Understanding the dynamic of this enormous takeover requires a historical perspective. The structure, business strategy, and corporate governance of these groups evolved over a long period of time. This article explores the conflict in the context of the history of French steel industry. An examination of Usinor, moreover, as the ancestor and creator of Arcelor, can reveal a lot about the political, social and economical influence of steel makers in French society. Understanding the conflict also calls for an analysis of how a large company could change its corporate culture. Instead of reducing corporate culture to individual or collective “values,” as Edgar Schein did some time ago, this article explores Usinor's culture as a system of representations, material elements, technologies, products and ways of doing and thinking.
Topic:
Governance
Political Geography:
France

295. Iranian Influence in the Levant, Iraq and Afghanistan

Author:
Danielle Pletka, Frederick W. Kagan, and Kimberly Kagan
Publication Date:
02-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for the Study of War
Abstract:
The conflict between Iran and the United States began in 1979 with the Iranian Revolution and the seizure of the American Embassy in Tehran. Born partly of ideological differences and partly of real and perceived differing national interests, it has continued, alternately hot and cold, for almost three decades and seems unlikely to end soon. Like most previous conflicts, its conclusion cannot be foreseen. Many such struggles, like the Anglo-German tensions between 1871 and 1945 and the centuries-long tensions between Britain and France, lead to full-scale war. Others, like the Anglo-Russian or Russian-Ottoman tensions throughout the nineteenth century, lead to more limited conflict. And some, like the U.S.-Soviet Cold War, are resolved without direct armed confrontation. One key to resolving any such conflict is understanding both the nature of the enemy and the scope of the conflict—insights that have eluded most Americans and, indeed, many Iranians. This report addresses this lack of understanding and argues that while neither Americans nor Iranians desire full-scale military confrontation, Iranian activism and American passivity are contributing to a drift toward war.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, Nuclear Weapons, and Border Control
Political Geography:
Britain, United States, Iran, Middle East, France, Germany, and Syria

296. The World is Still Waiting: Broken G8 promises are costing millions of lives

Publication Date:
05-2007
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
Poverty and suffering could be ended in our lifetime, and our leaders must do everything in their power to make this happen. This was the clear demand of the 40 million people in 36 countries who took part in the Global Call to Action Against Poverty in 2005. A year later, in the space of just one day, 24 million people across the world stood up against poverty as part of World Poverty Day.
Topic:
Education, Health, and Poverty
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, Japan, United Kingdom, Europe, Canada, Asia, France, Germany, and Italy

297. “Pour Aider Nos Frères d'Espagne”: Humanitarian Aid, French Women, and Popular Mobilization during the Front Populaire

Author:
Laurence Brown
Publication Date:
03-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
The Spanish Civil War stirred an array of humanitarian relief campaigns in France that placed women in the front lines of popular mobilization. As communists, socialists, liberals, antifascists, feminists and pacifists, French women invoked the iconography and language of sexual difference to construct pro- Republican aid appeals as an expression of gendered social concern above party politics. Through exploring the female leaderships, organization, and popular participation in different relief campaigns, this article emphasizes the extent to which Spanish aid efforts were dominated by tensions within the Front Populaire.
Political Geography:
France

298. Soixante ans après: pour un état des lieux de mémoire

Author:
Nathan Bracher
Publication Date:
03-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
In reviewing various commemorations that highlighted the year 2005 in France, this article points out the major evolutions of memory visible primarily in the press and media coverage of these events. If public memory remains as highly charged and polemical as it was in the 1980s and 1990s, attention is clearly turning away from the Occupation and Vichy to focus more on Europe and on France's colonial past, as we see not only in the ceremonies celebrating the “liberation” of Auschwitz, the Allied victory over Nazi Germany, and the dedication of the Mémorial de la Shoah, but also in the many articles devoted to Russian and Eastern European experiences of the war, as well as to the bloody postwar repressions of colonial uprisings in Algeria and Madagascar. Now that racial and ethnic tensions are exacerbating an increasingly fragmented public memory, the work of history is more urgent than ever.
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, Eastern Europe, France, Germany, Algeria, and Madagascar

299. France, une géographie à inventer: un nouveau contrat politique entre la société et son espace

Author:
Jacques Lévy
Publication Date:
03-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
This article argues that the way French society comprehends its territory is not only an aspect of a more general identity crisis, but also an acting component of an overall political model. France can be characterized as a “state-fatigued” society. Centralism has had an important spatial consequence: an alliance of the nation-state and provincial “notables” against the city. The major cities, especially Paris, produce for the rest of the country but continue to be denied effective local and regional political power. In this context, the peculiar tradition of aménagement du territoire can be analyzed as a discourse based on the myth of a demiurge, the state, which would be the only legitimate actor able to restore France's grandeur by reconquering the deprived parts of its territory. Correlative public polices target moral compensation for a supposed injustice: a partial reimbursement of the debt France once contracted by incorporating the provinces into the national territory. After reviewing disappointing recent changes in the geographical architecture of political power, the article makes some proposals. They are based on the dual framework that an empowerment of relevant spatial units will be necessary and that only a profound and massive debate involving ordinary citizens can overcome the current institutional gridlock.
Political Geography:
France

300. Profiling Normative Foreign Policy: The European Union and its Global Partners

Author:
Nathalie Tocci
Publication Date:
12-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for European Policy Studies
Abstract:
This paper is the first in a series that will investigate “Who is a normative foreign policy actor?” It forms part of a new project intended to explore fundamental aspects of foreign policy at the global level, against the backdrop of a proliferation of global actors in the 21st century, following half a century with only one undisputed global hegemon: the US. The European Union is itself a new or emerging foreign policy actor, driven by self-declared normative principles. But Russia, China and India are also increasingly assertive actors on the global stage and similarly claim to be driven by a normative agenda. The question is how will these various global actors define their foreign policy priorities, and how they will interact, especially if their ideas of normative behaviour differ? This first paper sets out a conceptual framework for exploring these issues and defines 'normative' as being strongly based on international law and institutions, and thus the most 'universalisable' basis upon which to assess foreign policy. The foreign policy actor nevertheless has to be assessed not only on its declared goals, but also on the means it employs and the results it obtains. The truly normative foreign policy actor should score consistently on all three counts and in many different contexts, which will condition the extent to which normative policies are chosen, viable and effective. Subsequent papers in the series will apply this conceptual framework to five case studies on China, the EU, India, Russia and the US.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, and Regional Cooperation
Political Geography:
Europe, India, France, and Berkeley