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15811. France's Double-Talk on Globalization

Author:
Sophie Meunier
Publication Date:
03-2003
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
France has become a worldwide champion of anti-globalization. French intellectuals have long denounced the cultural and economic shortcomings of US-led globalization, while French politicians, on the Left as on the Right, load their speeches with rhetoric critical of a phenomenon that gets a lot less attention in other European countries and in the United States. Yet, at the same time, France is a country whose economy and society have adapted well to this much-criticized globalization. Why this double-speak? Why this disjuncture between words and actions? This article explores this paradox, analyzes the role that France's double discourse on globalization has played in producing the surprising outcome of the 2002 elections, and reflects on the options open to the main political parties today.
Topic:
Economics
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, and France

15812. Creating a Tourist's Paradise: The Marshall Plan and France, 1948 to 1952 [Dossier: Promoting American Tourism in Postwar France]

Author:
Brian A. McKenzie
Publication Date:
03-2003
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
This article examines the promotion of American tourism to France during the Marshall Plan. The paper assesses the cultural and economic goals of the tourism program. Economic aid provided by the United States was essential for the post-war reconstruction of the French tourism industry. Furthermore, transatlantic air carriers adopted new guidelines for tourist class airfares at the urging of U.S. officials. The paper also examines marketing strategies and the creation of tourism infrastructures that facilitated transatlantic tourism. Representatives from the French tourism industry visited the United States to study American hotels and they agreed to adopt practices and rebuild French hotels in ways that would be congenial to American tourists. The paper demonstrates that French and American officials and tourism professionals Americanized the French tourism industry during the Marshall Plan.
Topic:
Economics
Political Geography:
United States, America, and France

15813. Rudeness and Modernity: The Reception of American Tourists in Early Fifth-Republic France [Dossier: Promoting American Tourism in Postwar France]

Author:
Christopher Endy
Publication Date:
03-2003
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
In the late 1950s and 1960s, many French politicians, journalists, and travel industry leaders argued that the French had lost their manners. Although some foreigners, most notably Americans, spoke of rude French hosts, this negative stereotype was largely a French construction. Defenders of artisanal tradition reinforced the idea of French rudeness to highlight the dangers of postwar modernization, while technocratic commentators used the stereotype to criticize artisanal practices. Responding to this perceived crisis in hospitality, Charles de Gaulle's Fifth Republic expanded its involvement in mass tourism, launching "amicability" campaigns and boosting investment in high-rise hotels. The discourse of French rudeness helps explain the evolution of France's travel industry and illuminates cultural dimensions to postwar modernization and Franco-American relations.
Political Geography:
America and France

15814. The Pacte Civile de Solidarité and the History of Sexuality [Dossier: The PaCS in Historical Perspective]

Author:
Robert A. Nye
Publication Date:
03-2003
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
It is useful to think about the debate and passage of the recent legislation on the PACS in terms of the long run of the history of sexuality in France. Owing in part to a perceived demographic crisis, the French have expressed a strong bias in favor of reproductive sexuality. This has meant that sexual discourse has discouraged non-procreative sexuality, including same sex sexuality, and favored heterosexual relationships, which have been regarded as the only legitimate foundation for family life. Despite the decriminalization of homosexuality, this historic bias continues to shape public debate about marriage and the family, as the recent debate over the PACS reveals.
Topic:
History
Political Geography:
France

15815. Comment on Robert Nye's "The Pacte Civile de Solidarité and the History of Sexuality" [Dossier: The PaCS in Historical Perspective]

Author:
Joan W. Scott
Publication Date:
03-2003
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
Robert Nye's elegant essay rightly puts the PaCS, and the debates about it into a historical context of French natalism. At least since the late nineteenth century, reproduction has been the raison d'être of the married couple and the state has often made fertility synonymous with patriotism. From this has followed all manner of representations, many of them contradictory. Although it surely was the case, as Nys shows, that marriage was eroticized and marital love idealized, it was also the case that reproduction and sexual satisfaction were considered separate domains.
Topic:
History
Political Geography:
France

15816. Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop's Democracy in America [Forum: Translating Tocqueville]

Publication Date:
03-2003
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
The new Mansfield and Winthrop translation of Tocqueville's classic text, notable for the lengthy introduction the translators provide as well as their determined effort to create the most literal word-for-word translation that has ever been published of the work, draws the critical eye of four Tocqueville specialists. Focusing on the introduction, Seymour Drescher points out that the translators' decision to regard the Democracy of 1935 and the one of 1840 as a single work, a decision made against the grain of recent scholarship, leads them into misunderstandings of how Tocqueville came to view the strengths and weaknesses of American democracy by the 1840s. Arthur Goldhammer, at work on his own translation of Democracy, goes beyond the longstanding debates over literal versus interpretive translation to point out a large number of errors in rendering French expressions into English. Melvin Richter explores a number of instances where the pursuit of literalness leads to distortions, and then focuses on the consequences translating l'état social as "social state" rather than "state of society." Cheryl Welch examines how the decision to translate inquiet as "restive" rather than "restless" or "anxious," as she would have preferred, leads the translators to underestimate how much Tocqueville's views of religion and women were informed by his own anxieties about moral disorder in a democratic society. Mansfield and Winthrop respond to their critics with a detailed discussion of several of their most controversial word choices and with a defense of their strategy of literal translation.
Political Geography:
America

15817. Review Essay: Tocqueville entre l'ancien et le nouvel monde

Author:
Françoise Mélonio
Publication Date:
03-2003
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
Sheldon Wolin propose de Tocqueville une interprétation dont le principe est énoncé dès le titre: «Tocqueville entre deux mondes». Tocqueville est pour Wolin un démocrate réticent, attaché a la démocratie comme à une épreuve inévitable, tant il reste lié à ce que Wolin appelle, d'un mot que Tocqueville n'emploie guère, «l'ancienneté», c'est à dire les valeurs de la société hiérarchique. La thèse n'est pas nouvelle, mais elle fait l'objet ici d'une argumentation extrèmement fouillée.

15818. Constructing French-American Understanding: The Cultura Project

Author:
Gilberte Furstenberg
Publication Date:
06-2003
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
The MIT Cultura project juxtaposes French/American opinion and expression, in order to involve respondents in a collaborative and ongoing process designed to identify perspectives and values, and so to undermine cross-cultural misconceptions and stereotypes.
Political Geography:
America and France

15819. If France Did Not Exist, Americans Would Have to Invent It

Author:
Sophie Body-Gendrot
Publication Date:
06-2003
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
Analysis of opinion polls shows that even Americans unfamiliar with France are prepared to hold opinions about the country. Many see France as a non-America, a positive or negative counter-model. Moreover, "Americans" comprise many different perspectives and so "France" does not mean the same thing to everyone.
Political Geography:
America and France

15820. The System of Francophobia

Author:
Jean-Phlippe Mathy
Publication Date:
06-2003
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
Francophobia is at base a systematic and recurrent critique of an alleged societal model based on political centralization and cultural elitism, seen as beginning with the monarchy and continuing on into the Republic, and contrasting with American liberalism, democracy, egalitarianism, and anti-statism.
Political Geography:
America