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31. Inventing Human Rights: A History

Author:
Bronwyn Leebaw
Publication Date:
03-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
In the second half of the eighteenth century, epistolary novels became popular in France and England, people began listening to the opera in silence rather than walking around to converse with friends, and efforts were made to prevent theater-goers in Paris from disrupting performances by coordinating their coughing and farting. For Lynn Hunt, these changes in the daily lives of Europeans are intrinsically related to the development of universal human rights. In this rich and beautifully written work, Hunt argues that human rights rely upon our ability to empathize with strangers. The changing habits and experiences of late-eighteenth-century Europe fostered new understandings of individuality and empathy, which would support the expansion of rights.
Topic:
Human Rights
Political Geography:
Europe, Paris, France, and England

32. Can America Still Lead in the Global Economy?

Author:
Lael Brainard and David Lipton
Publication Date:
08-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Brookings Institution
Abstract:
From the vantage point of 2008, some of the most memorable initiatives of U.S. international economic leadership—the Paris and Louvre Accords, the support for Poland and Russia after the fall of communism, the Uruguay Round, and the Mexican Financing Loan—seem like quaint reminders of a simpler time. In the coming years, the exercise of international economic leadership will surely prove more complex than in the past. The very success of the American vision of a global spread of vibrant and competitive markets has created a huge, rapidly integrating private economy of trade and finance much less amenable to guidance, let alone control, by governments. Unlike in diplomacy and defense, where non state actors are growing in importance but still a side show, in inter- national economics, households, corporations, labor unions, and non-profits are now the dominant players in most parts of the world. While they respond to national laws and policies, their interests are varied and their operations often span borders.
Topic:
Economics, International Political Economy, International Trade and Finance, and Markets
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, Paris, Poland, Uruguay, and Mexico

33. An American in Paris? A Guided Tour of Sarkoland

Author:
Mira Kamdar
Publication Date:
06-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
The boundless jubilation on this side of the Atlantic over the recent election of Nicholas Sarkozy as the new president of France says more about the American malaise than it does about the French. True, a record number of voters turned out to help Sarkozy handily beat his opponent, Socialist candidate Segolene Royal, by a margin of 53 percent to 47 percent in the second round of the presidential election in May. But, the legislative elections held about one month later demonstrate that French voters may be more wary of Sarkozy than are American observers. Though Sarkozy's party, the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP), maintained a solid majority in the National Assembly, it unexpectedly lost 45 seats. The Socialists, still in the minority, picked up 36 seats. This still leaves the UMP with 314 out of a total of 577 seats, versus the Socialist's 185, and Sarkozy has underlined the fact that he considers himself to have no less of a strong mandate for this disappointing result. However, the legislative elections did produce one major casualty for Sarkozy: the man he had named to run the ambitiously titled new Ministry of Environment, Transportation and Energy, Alain Juppe, lost his seat in Bordeaux and had to resign his post. Sarkozy was forced, under the rules of France's democracy, to dissolve his brand new government and reshuffle his cabinet. This cast an embarrassing shadow over what might otherwise have been a thorough rout, and gave hope to France's Left that not all had been lost.
Political Geography:
America, Paris, and France

34. U.S.-Designated Hamas Front Gets Symbolic Win in France

Author:
Matthew Levitt
Publication Date:
03-2007
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Abstract:
On March 8, 2007, a French court ordered the Wiesenthal Center's director for international relations in Paris to pay a symbolic €1 fine in a defamation suit brought by a U.S.-designated Hamas front organization. The Comité de Bienfaisance et de Secours aux Palestiniens (Committee for Welfare and Aid to the Palestinians) (CBSP) charged that it had been defamed by allegations that it finances terrorism and raises funds to support the families of suicide bombers recruited by Hamas. Atlhough the French court acknowledged that the 150 exhibits submitted by the defense "indeed constituted an impressive body of evidence," it nonetheless issued a symbolic ruling in favor of the plaintiff.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, Middle East, Paris, and France

35. Harmonisation and alignment: The double-edged swords of budget support and decentralised aid administration

Author:
Ole Therkildsen and Ole Winckler Anderson
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
The Paris declaration of 2005 on aid effectiveness is now part of the international consensus. It holds that increased use of budget support combined with decentralised aid administration will lead to transaction costs reductions (through better donor harmonisation of aid) and to enhanced local ownership (through better alignment of donor policies and practices with those of recipients). Both improvements are assumed to enhance aid effectiveness.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Government, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
Paris

36. Architecture and Biopolitics at Les Halles

Author:
Meredith TenHoor
Publication Date:
08-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
Until 1969, when Paris's wholesale food markets were moved to the Parisian suburb of Rungis, Les Halles, the market district in the center of Paris, fed much of the city's urban population. Les Halles was not simply a place where food was bought and sold, but also a highly visible and symbolically charged node of communication between the countryside, the state, and the bodies of Parisian citizens. Due to its centrality and visibility, Les Halles came under enormous pressure to physically symbolize the state's relationship to the “market.” In turn, the architecture of the markets at Les Halles came to stand in for the powers of the state to organize a flow of goods from farm to body. From the 1763 construction of the Halle au blé, to the 1851 ground-breaking on Victor Baltard's iron and glass market pavilions, to the construction of the Centre Pompidou and the Forum des Halles in the 1970s and 1980s, the markets at Les Halles were regularly redesigned and rebuilt to accommodate and/or produce shifting notions of architectural, social, and financial order.
Topic:
Communications
Political Geography:
Paris

37. L'enjeu métropolitain des Halles

Author:
Thierry Baudouin and Michèle Collin
Publication Date:
08-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
During the Fordist period, the state transformed the historic site of Les Halles, in the heart of Paris, into the agglomeration's chief mass transit gateway. Efforts to make the site into a veritable tool of social, cultural, and economic metropolitan development are struggling because of governmental modalities that remain very marked by centralism. A majority of citizens, notably those living in suburban Paris, actively stake a claim to this metropolitan dimension and to the rich possibilities of this tool. The article principally analyzes the territorializing practices of suburban youths, whose multiple subjectivities are still poorly integrated into the site. Les Halles thus reveals the question of the correspondence of these establishing metropolitan practices to the reality of the centralized institutions around Paris intramuros.
Political Geography:
Paris

38. Les rapports ambigus entre politiques et citoyens: le cas du réaménagement du quartier des Halles à Paris

Author:
Pierre Diméglio and Jodelle Zetlaoui-Léger
Publication Date:
08-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
While Mayor Bertrand Delanoë had omitted the renovation of Les Halles in his plans for the city in his 2001 inaugural address, in 2002, at the urging of the RATP and Espace Expansion, he decided to create a working group to undertake this project during his tenure. Having made citizen participation a new goal for local government, he also announced that the project would be undertaken with Parisians, especially local associations. The first part of this article emphasizes the different postures that elected politicians, engineers, and experts have adopted over the course of forty years vis-à-vis the question of citizen participation in urban planning. The second part explores the decision- making process for the Les Halles renovation over the last four years; it considers the issues and difficulties linked to the implementation of participatory plans incorporating residents––whether they are members of local groups or not––in complex urban planning projects.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
Paris

39. Artistic Community and Urban Development in 1920s Montmartre

Author:
Jeffrey H. Jackson
Publication Date:
06-2006
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
By the 1920s, the physical transformation in the urban space of Montmartre led two groups of artists to "secede" from the city of Paris, at least in spirit. Calling themselves the Commune Libre de Montmartre and the République de Montmartre, these painters, illustrators, poets, writers, and musicians articulated a distinctive community-based identity centered around mutual aid, sociability, and limiting urban development. They also reached out to the poor of the neighborhood through charity efforts, thus linking their fates with those of other area residents. Through these organizations, neighborhood artists came to terms with the changes taking place in the city of Paris in the 1920s by navigating between nostalgia and modernism. They sought to keep alive an older vision of the artists' Montmartre while adapting to the new conditions of the post-World War I city.
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
Paris and France

40. The Musée du Quai Branly: Art? Artifact? Spectacle!

Author:
Herman Lebovics
Publication Date:
12-2006
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
Designed by Jean Nouvel, the Musée du Quai Branly, the just-opened museum of African, Amerindian, Pacific, and Asian cultures, covers a city block on the Left Bank of Paris's museum row. Both in landscaping and internal layout, Nouvel wished to frame the building within his understanding of the cultures on display inside, but also within its setting in the metropolitan capital. Objects collected in the imperial age now are displayed in what French officials see as the postcolonial era. But how were the pieces on display to be shown: as works of art or well-made cultural artifacts? Nouvel took the lead in evoking a vision of the cultures on display that is closer to Joseph Conrad's dark tales than to enlightened contemporary scholarship and museology on these societies. Neither an art nor an ethnography museum, the Musée du Quai Branly is a spectacle about the societies of the global South.
Political Geography:
Africa, Paris, and Asia