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451. 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

452. 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

453. 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

454. 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

455. 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

456. The New "Ethnology" and "la situation coloniale" in Interwar France

Author:
Alice L. Conklin
Publication Date:
06-2002
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
Jean Bazin's 1996 invocation of the enduring effects of Georges Balandier's critical insights of the 1950s is a testimonial to not just how revolutionary, but also how persuasive these insights were and remain. It is common currency now, even among those of us who are not anthropologists, that first European travelers, then European scientists "invented" places like "Africa" that tell us more about themselves/ourselves than the reality they purported to describe. The particular "invention" of the twentieth century was anthropologists' "discovery" of "pure cultures" untouched by history and especially by colonialism. Having found such peoples, anthropologists then devoted themselves to recording and preserving their "authentic" traditions before it was too late. Balandier's precocious contribution to the field, in this context, was to take the colonial situation itself as his object of study as early as 1951 and to render visible the unequal power relations so discreetly evacuated by his more "complicit" professional colleagues.
Political Geography:
Europe and France

457. 150 Years Of Algerian Painting: Relevance for Understanding the Postcolonial Situation

Author:
François Pouillon
Publication Date:
06-2002
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
There are significant differences between the way academics in France and the United States see postcolonial processes, differences having to do with particular national histories. It is, however, precisely the task of academics to work to transcend such specificities. So the differences must have to do with collective intellectual movements in the two countries, and it would perhaps be useful to compare them.
Political Geography:
United States and France

458. Un Passage À L'acte Improbable? Notes de recherche sur la trajectoire sociale de Zacarias Moussaoui

Author:
Stéphane Beaud and Olivier Masclet
Publication Date:
06-2002
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
La France découvre, au lendemain des attentats du 11 septembre 2001 et de la guerre en Afghanistan, qu'elle a couvé en son sein des jeunes, nés ou élevés dans le pays, qui sont devenus des soldats de l'islamisme radical. Antoine Sfeir, directeur des Cahiers de l'Orient, estime à 150 le nombre de jeunes Français qui seraient impliqués dans les réseaux islamistes proches de Al Quaïda. Le plus connu d'entre eux, Zacarias Moussaoui, 33 ans, fiché depuis 1999 par la Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire (D.S.T.) comme "susceptible d'appartenir au Jihad international", est soupçonné d'être le vingtième pirate de l'air des attentats du 11 septembre 2001. Emprisonné aux États-Unis, il risque la peine de mort. On peut aussi citer Djamel Beghal, arrêté à Dubaï en juillet 2001, et son adjoint Kamel Daoudi, 27 ans, informaticien de formation, tous deux d'origine algérienne et également suspectés d'appartenir au même réseau Al Quaïda.
Political Geography:
Afghanistan and France

459. Affirmative Action At Sciences Po

Author:
Daniel Sabbagh
Publication Date:
09-2002
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
Unlike in the United States, in France, the main operational criterion for identifying the beneficiaries of affirmative action policies is not race or gender, but geographical location. In this respect, the first affirmative action plan recently designed in the sphere of higher education by one of France's most famous 'grandes écoles', the Institut d'études politiques de Paris, while not departing significantly from this broader pattern of redistributive, territory-based public policies, has given rise to a controversy of an unprecedented scale, some features of which may actually suggest the existence of a deeper similarity between French and American affirmative action programs and the difficulties that they face. That similarity lies in the attempts made by the supporters of such programs to systematically minimize the negative side-effects on their beneficiaries' public image potentially induced by the visibility of the policy itself.
Topic:
Education
Political Geography:
United States, America, Paris, and France

460. Albert Sarraut and Republican Racial Thought

Author:
Clifford Rosenberg
Publication Date:
09-2002
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
This article addresses the racial thought behind French immigration and colonial policy in the heyday of imperialism. Albert Sarraut and several other likeminded officials articulated a singularly contradictory view of human difference. They viewed colonial immigrants as an exotic menace, and looked with approval to the writings of racist thinkers in the United States, like Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard. At the same time, however, Sarraut and his colleagues considered North African immigration, in particular, as vital to France's future well-being; French policy-makers were more optimistic than the Americans that colonial migrants could be "civilized" within decades, or perhaps a few generations. This latter view encouraged them in their commitment to the Republic's civilizing mission and their belief that turning immigrants into Frenchmen was a practical and realistic necessity.
Political Geography:
United States, America, and France