Changing France


Book Description

How do European states adjust to international markets? Why do French governments of both left and right face a public confidence crisis? In this book, leading experts on France chart the dramatic changes that have taken place in its polity, economy and society since the 1980s and develop an analysis of social change relevant to all democracies.




French Politics and Society


Book Description

French Politics and Society is the ideal companion for all students of France and French politics with a strong reputation for its lucidity and lively exposition of the French polity. This third edition remains a highly readable text and offers a broad, critical and comprehensive understanding of French politics. The book provides an excellent description of French institutions and ensures readers access to background information through discussing historical developments, political forces, public policy, and the evolution of important aspects of French society. Key updates for the third edition include: extensive updates including the Chirac, Sarkozy and Hollande presidencies; inclusion of constitutional and state reform coverage since 2008; the French party system and evolution of the French left and right; more on France’s positioning with regards to Brussels and the impact of the European economic crisis. French Politics and Society is essential reading for all undergraduates studying French politics, French studies, European studies or comparative politics.




Contemporary France


Book Description

At least since the French Revolution, France has the peculair distinction of simultaneously fascinating, charming and exasperating its neighbours and foreign observers. Contemporary France provides an essential introduction for students of French politics and society, exploring contemporary developments while placing them in a deeper historical, intellectual, cultural and social context that makes for insightful analysis. Thus, chapters on France's economic policy and welfare state, its foreign and European policies and its political movements and recent institutional developments are informed by an analysis of the country's unique political and institutional traditions, distinct forms of nationalism and citizenship, dynamic intellectual life and recent social trends. Summaries of key political, economic and social movements and events are displayed as exhibits.




Multi-Ethnic France


Book Description

This second edition of Multi-Ethnic France spans politics and economics, social structures and cultural practices and has been updated to cover events which have occurred on the national and international stage since the first edition was published. These include: recent developments in the Banlieues, including the riots of 2005 the growing visibility of sub-Saharan Africans in France's evolving ethnic mix the reverberations in France of international developments such as 9/11, the second Intifada and the Iraq Wars the renewed controversy over the wearing of the Islamic headscarf the development of anti-discrimination policy and the debate over 'positive discrimination'. Immigration is one of the most significant and persistent issues in contemporary France. It has become central to political debate with the rise, on one side, of Jean-Marie Le Pen's extreme right-wing party and, on the other, of Islamist terrorism. In Multi-Ethnic France, Alec G. Hargreaves unmasks the prejudices and misconceptions faced by minorities of Muslim heritage and lays bare the social and political neglect behind the riots of 2005. This second edition is fully updated, and includes a glossary and chronology, as well as a revised bibliography.




Society and Culture in Early Modern France


Book Description

These essays, three of them previously unpublished, explore the competing claims of innovation and tradition among the lower orders in sixteenth-century France. The result is a wide-ranging view of the lives and values of men and women (artisans, tradesmen, the poor) who, because they left little or nothing in writing, have hitherto had little attention from scholars. The first three essays consider the social, vocational, and sexual context of the Protestant Reformation, its consequences for urban women, and the new attitudes toward poverty shared by Catholic humanists and Protestants alike in sixteenth-century Lyon. The next three essays describe the links between festive play and youth groups, domestic dissent, and political criticism in town and country, the festive reversal of sex roles and political order, and the ritualistic and dramatic structure of religious riots. The final two essays discuss the impact of printing on the quasi-literate, and the collecting of common proverbs and medical folklore by learned students of the "people" during the Ancien Régime. The book includes eight pages of illustrations.




France and the World Since 1870


Book Description

"This work not only analyses decision-making, strategic and defence issues, but also the work of the French intelligence agencies. It sets them against the 'deep forces' that have shaped France's international relations, from material aspects such as geography, demography and economics to more abstract features of France's national identity such as notions of the state, the civilizing mission and ideas of grandeur."--BOOK JACKET.




Cultural Politics in International Relations


Book Description

Questioning the authority of the discipline of international relations, in particular structural realism, to recognize the influence of varied social phenomena on possible outcomes, this book demonstrates how seemingly insignificant acts propagated through music, humour and poetry can disturb official culture and initiate social change.




Culture and Activism


Book Description

Winner of the Award for Distinguished Scholarship from the Animals & Society Section of the American Sociological Association This book offers a comparison of the animal rights movements in the US and France, drawing on ethnographic and interview material gathered amongst activists in both countries. Investigating the ways in which culture affects the outcomes of the two movements, the author examines its role as a constraining and enabling structure in both contexts, showing how cultural beliefs, values, and practices at the international, national, and organizational levels shape the strategic and tactical choices available to activists, and shedding light on the reasons for which activists make the choices that they do. With attention to the different emphases placed by the respective movements on ideological purity and pragmatism, this volume provides an account of why their achievements differ in spite of their shared ultimate goals, offering policy recommendations and suggestions for activists working in a variety of cultures. Informed by the work of Giddens and Bourdieu, Culture and Activism: Animal Rights in France and the United States constitutes an empirically grounded, comparative study of activism that will appeal to scholars of sociology, anthropology, political science, and cultural geography with interests in social movements and social problems.




Race in France


Book Description

Scholars across disciplines on both sides of the Atlantic have recently begun to open up, as never before, the scholarly study of race and racism in France. These original essays bring together in one volume new work in history, sociology, anthropology, political science, and legal studies. Each of the eleven articles presents fresh research on the tension between a republican tradition in France that has long denied the legitimacy of acknowledging racial difference and a lived reality in which racial prejudice shaped popular views about foreigners, Jews, immigrants, and colonial people. Several authors also examine efforts to combat racism since the 1970s.




Modern France


Book Description

The French Revolution, politics and the modern nation -- French and the civilizing mission -- Paris and magnetic appeal -- France stirs up the melting pot -- France hurtles into the future.