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Begin New Search Content Type Journal Article Publishing Institution Conference Group on French Politics Society Publication Year within 25 Years

21. Religion, politique et régulation juridique aux États-Unis

Author:
Fabienne Randaxhe
Publication Date:
12-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
From a French perspective, the relationship between the state and religion in the United States may seem paradoxical. On the one hand, the American nation was the first one to have established, by constitutional means, a separation between religious bodies and the political realm. On the other hand, religious and political spheres in the US still seem to overlap to some extent. While French approaches tend to regard US laïcité as uncertain and incomplete, this article discusses whether laïcité is in the US incomplete or aware of tensions to be lessened among religious, political and social forces. I focus on legal regulation and consider the notion of accommodation as a particular form of legal laïcité.
Topic:
Politics
Political Geography:
United States and America

22. Religion et politique en France dans le contexte de la construction européenne

Author:
Jean-Paul Willaime
Publication Date:
12-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
Strongly marked by the weight of the past, the French approach to State-Religion- Society relations has distinct qualities, and especially a strong confrontational and emotional dimension. This essay address the evolution of these relations and their tensions by focusing on three subjects that make manifest the relationship between politics and religion in important ways, namely, schools, sects, and Islam. The arena of the school is especially significant in three respects: the link between public and private schools; the question of what should be taught about religion, and the display of religious expression by students. The essay considers these matters within the context of wider transformations in religion (secularization) and politics (disenchantment and changes in the state's role in society). It concludes by situating recent developments in the context of globalization and especially Europeanization.
Topic:
Development, Globalization, and Islam
Political Geography:
Europe and France

23. Les élections françaises de 2007

Author:
Gérard Grunberg
Publication Date:
12-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
The 2007 presidential elections have been the most important in France since 1981 because they provoked ruptures in the way the state and the French political system function. These ruptures, which this essay explores, include: the structural advantage the Right now has over the Left in national elections; the extension of the president's power and role in the regime; the transformation of the French political parties system into bipartism; and, finally, evolution inside the two major French parties due not only to the personality, ideas and choices of their respective candidates but also to the growing role of the president in the regime and its effects.
Political Geography:
France

24. Analyse de l'élection présidentielle des 22 avril et 6 mai et des élections législatives des 10 et 17 juin 2007: une rupture politique?

Author:
Pascal Perrineau
Publication Date:
12-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
Nicolas Sarkozy's victory in the 2007 French presidential elections represents a true rupture: rupture with years of political apathy, rupture with what was an escalating rise of political protest, rupture with a “law” that since 1981 seemed to require that every outgoing majority be beaten. Sarkozy's electoral victory was substantial. It was built on a notion that what the French were looking for was a strong sense of direction, and it gave rise to a dynamic of striking change right after the election (a political opening to the left, a shift in presidential style, disarray in the Socialist Party, and the marginalization of the National Front).
Topic:
Politics and Law

25. La singularité française: la campagne présidentielle de Ségolène Royal

Author:
Frédérique Matonti
Publication Date:
12-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
For the first time, a woman has come close to becoming the president of France. This essay examines the conditions that account for why Segolène Royal was chosen as Socialist candidate for the presidency. These conditions were above all political and were linked to key features of the Socialist Party. But her nomination also needs to be understood in the context of the parity law. To an important extent this law reinforced the gendered order, and Ségolène Royal's candidacy emerged readily in the wake of the law. The essay goes on to analyze the candidate's campaign. Before and during the primary campaign, the general framework was conducive to her ascendancy. But, after the primaries, critics were sharp: Royal was portrayed as ever less competent. Although there is a sociological basis for the voting of 2007, misogyny also played a part in Ségolène Royal's defeat.
Topic:
Law
Political Geography:
France

26. Once Again, From a Distance: Martinique and the French Presidential Election of 2007

Author:
William Miles
Publication Date:
12-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
In May 2007, Martinique did not follow the rest of France in endorsing Nicolas Sarkozy in his bid to become president. Along with the other overseas French states Guadeloupe and Réunion (but not Guyane), Martinique supported rather the Socialist candidate Ségolène Royal. Martinique thereby distanced itself from the rest of the République—as it had done in 1995—by backing a left-wing presidential candidate rather than the ultimately victorious right-wing one. 2007 represents the converse of 1981, when Martinique voted for the rightist candidate but France as a whole elected a leftist (François Mitterrand). Over time, being at electoral odds with the nation as a whole has become less troubling for Martinicans: independence, which most islanders oppose, is no longer seen at stake in presidential outcomes. On the other hand, Martinicans have become progressively resigned to their peripheral status within French presidential politics.
Political Geography:
France

27. The Writer's Responsibility in France: From Flaubert to Sartre

Author:
Gisèle Sapiro
Publication Date:
03-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
As Michel Foucault observed in his famous essay, “Qu'est-ce qu'un auteur?” before discourse was a product, it was an act that could be punished. The author's appropriation of discourse as his personal property is secondary to its ascription to his name through penal responsibility. In France, authorial responsibility was introduced in 1551 through royal legislation directed at controlling the book market. The Chateaubriant edict made it compulsory to print both the author's and the printer's names on any publication. The notion of responsibility is thus a fundamental aspect of the emergence of the figure of the modern writer. The state first imposed this conception of responsibility in order to control the circulation of discourses. But after writers internalized the notion, they deployed it against the state in their struggle to establish their moral right on their work and to have literary property recognized as individual property, a struggle that culminated in 1777 with a royal decree recognizing literary compositions as products of labor from which authors were entitled to derive an income. This professional development reinforced the writer's social prestige and status, in Max Weber's sense.
Political Geography:
France

28. “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

29. 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

30. 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