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14621. Culture-As-Race Or Culture-As-Culture: Caribbean Ethnicity and the Ambiguity of Cultural Identity in French Society

Author:
David Beriss
Publication Date:
09-2000
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
"Notre père, un nègre de la Guadeloupe, a coutume de rétorquer à ceux qui, en France, l'importunent au sujet de sa couleur ou de son origine: "Je suis Français depuis 1635, bien avant les Niçois, les Savoyards, les Corses ou même les Strasbourgeois." Yes, but aren't these people black?" This is perhaps the most common question Americans ask about my research among West Indian activists in Paris and Martinique. It is asked in a tone that suggests that the answer itself is obvious and, more than that, that the questions I ask about West Indian claims to identity would be almost moot if I were to just get that answer through my head. This question has always confused me. "It's not that simple," is my usual response, but the truth is that I have always suspected that these people know something about the significance of blackness that I have failed to grasp. Most of these commentators on my research, I should point out, are not social scientists. But there is a social science variant to this question. Among colleagues, it takes the form of a directive: "You really have to deal with race more directly." This suggestion that I examine race generally raises another question. Are French people white?
Political Geography:
America, India, and Caribbean

14622. Antiracism Without Races: Politics and Policy in a "Color-Blind" State

Author:
Erik Bleich
Publication Date:
09-2000
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
Since the end of the Second World War, millions of immigrants have arrived on French shores. Although such an influx of foreigners has not been unusual in French history, the origin of the postwar migrants was of a different character than that of previous eras. Prior to World War II, the vast majority of immigrants to France came from within Europe. Since 1945, however, an important percentage of migrants have come from non- European sources. Whether from former colonies in North Africa, Southeast Asia, or sub- Saharan Africa, from overseas departments and territories, or from countries such as Turkey or Sri Lanka, recent immigration has created a new ethnic and cultural pluralism in France. At the end of the 1990s, the visibly nonwhite population of France totals approximately five percent of all French residents. With millions of ethnic-minority citizens and denizens, the new France wears a substantially different face from that of the prewar era.
Topic:
Politics and History
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, Turkey, France, Sri Lanka, North Africa, and Southeast Asia

14623. Les Politiques Françaises De Lutte Contre Le Racisme, Des Politiques En Mutation

Author:
Gwénaële Calvès
Publication Date:
09-2000
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
Il pouvait sembler évident, jusqu'à une période très récente, que la formule célèbre du juge Blackmun selon laquelle, "pour en finir avec le racisme, nous devons d'abord prendre la race en compte" n'avait aucune chance de s'acclimater en France. La culture politique républicaine, exprimée et confortée par des principes constitutionnels fermement énoncés, s'opposait à la prise en compte d'un critère de catégorisation tenu pour intrinsèquement infamant et dénué de tout contenu positif: le droit français contemporain ne mentionne la "race" que pour en proscrire la prise en compte; la seule "race" qu'il connaisse est la race du raciste.
Political Geography:
France

14624. Half-Measures: Antidiscrimination Policy in France

Author:
Alec G. Hargreaves
Publication Date:
09-2000
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
Since the Left returned to power in 1997, there have been remarkable changes in the debate over the "integration" of immigrant minorities in France. After a long period in which political elites emphasized the challenges associated with minority ethnic cultures and social disadvantage, the spotlight has shifted to the blockages arising from racial discrimination by members of the majority ethnic population. No less remarkably, there has been a significant abatement in the demonization of so-called Anglo-Saxon approaches to the management of ethnic relations, habitually branded by politicians and civil servants as the antithesis of France's "républicain" model of integration. Whereas British and American policies have encouraged "race" awareness in combating both direct and indirect forms of discrimination and have established powerful agencies to assist minorities suffering from unfair treatment, until recently there was a wide consensus in France that "integration" policy could best be served by erasing as far as possible any reference to ethnicity.
Topic:
Politics
Political Geography:
Britain, America, and France

14625. Forum -- Capitalism And Its Spirits?

Author:
George Ross
Publication Date:
09-2000
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
Le Nouvel Esprit du capitalism:Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello (Paris: Gallimard, 1999). Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello's Le Nouvel Esprit du capitalisme is 843 pages long. Its considerable heft, however, has not prevented it from being widely read and commented upon. Herein lies a mystery. Why has such a dense and difficult book struck such a chord? Perhaps the first reason has to do with its general approach. "Spirits of capitalism"-borrowing from Max Weber is intentional - refers to the ways by which capitalism, at heart profoundly amoral, is "moralized." French readers worry, and they should, that contemporary capitalism makes less and less moral sense. Le Nouvel Esprit promises new understanding, if not new morality. To Boltanski and Chiapello, individuals and groups need to acquire sufficient personal commitment, in terms of a sense of justice in operation, to allow the system to function successfully. They see three successive ideal-typical "esprits du capitalisme," each with its own particular mixture of methods of moralization. The contemporary moment, they claim, is a major change from the previous spirit to something quite new. The "justifications" that key actors use to create morally acceptable social environments - and which, in turn, help make structures happen - have been shifting.
Topic:
Environment

14626. Forum -- Deconstructing The Reconstruction Of Capitalism

Author:
Michael J. Piore
Publication Date:
09-2000
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
This is a big, ambitious book with an intricate, engaging, and important argument. I picked it up in Paris in January and read it on the flight home. It made me happy to be an intellectual and a scholar; happy to be able to read French; happy, for the first time I can remember, to have seven and a half hours of uninterrupted time on a transatlantic flight. The book poses the question of why an active critique of capitalism has virtually disappeared in our times. The answer it provides is that capitalism itself has changed in ways that evade the criticisms that had been directed against it in the past. But it argues that these changes themselves are giving rise to a new moral framework from which a new critical perspective is emerging, and attempts to identify what that perspective is.
Political Geography:
Paris

14627. Forum -- Not Your Father's Capitalism

Author:
Donald Reid
Publication Date:
09-2000
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
Le Nouvel Esprit du capitalisme is a socio-cultural response to the neoliberal explanation of the successes and failures of capitalism in France during the last three decades in terms of individual rational actors and markets. Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello draw their inspiration from critical readings of sociologists who interpreted earlier incarnations of capitalism, including Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Max Weber, and Emile Durkheim. The sesquicentennial of The Communist Manifesto elicited many commentaries praising Marx and Engels for their insightful evocation of the revolutionary nature of capitalism. Starting here, Boltanski and Chiapello point to the contradictory nature of capitalism, which thrives on destruction and expansion, yet requires checking mechanisms to avoid self-destruction through the alienation of precisely those who have driven the processentrepreneurial bourgeoisie, directors, and managers. To the obvious capitalist project of continually creating consumers must be added that of selling capitalism to those producers whose allegiance to capitalism Marx and Engels took for granted.
Political Geography:
France

14628. Forum : A Reply

Author:
Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello
Publication Date:
09-2000
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
Le plaisir principal que l'on peut tirer du fait d'avoir écrit un livre (qui est différent du plaisir que l'on peut avoir pris à l'écrire) est de pouvoir confronter sa propre vision de ce que l'on a fait avec les représentations qu'en donnent différents lecteurs. L'ouvrage ne trouve finalement son achèvement que dans cette confrontation entre un projet d'écriture et les critiques des lecteurs qui, par leurs interprétations, se l'approprient. Ce plaisir est particulièrement grand lorsque, comme c'est le cas du dossier constitué à l'initiative de la rédaction de French Politics, Culture Society, ces lectures, par leur acuité, leur perspicacité et leur diversité, jettent des éclairages nouveaux sur le travail accompli. Nous pouvons dire que chacune des lectures rassemblées ici nous a appris quelque chose sur notre ouvrage, ce dont nous sommes grandement reconnaissants aux quatre éminents spécialistes qui ont pris de leur temps pour décortiquer Le Nouvel Esprit du capitalisme ainsi qu'à l'équipe de la revue qui a suscité cet ensemble de textes.
Topic:
Politics and Culture

14629. Forum -- Making Networks Accountable

Author:
Bruce Kogut
Publication Date:
09-2000
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
The book by Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello on the new spirit of capitalism returns to the question that puzzled the social thinkers of an earlier time: How does capitalism manufacture the ideological foundations of social peace, despite its hollow spiritual core and its creation of inequities? Their argument, reminiscent of Gramsci's, is that capitalism is richly inventive in appropriating cultural systems to justify itself. To address the ills of contemporary society, one must deconstruct the ideologies that make excessive levels of stress, unemployment, and inequality appear unavoidable. Boltanski and Chiapello cite Durkheim's thesis that capitalism is marred by the insatiable pursuit of self-interest, a view that resonates with the Chinese parable of the mask with no lower jaw. The mask is the face of a god or spirit that in its greed consumed its body and eventually its lower jaw, until it was unable to consume more. Capitalism needs an ideological restraint to this logic, but is unable to generate it by its own tenets. It must borrow elsewhere to justify itself and to preserve its own survival.

14630. Review Essay: Histories of Race in France

Author:
Tyler Stovall
Publication Date:
09-2000
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
Tzvetan Todorov, On Human Diversity: Nationalism, Racism, and Exoticism in French Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). Sue Peabody, "There Are No Slaves in France": The Political Culture of Race and Slavery in the Ancien Régime (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). Patricia M. E. Lorcin, Imperial Identities: Stereotyping, Prejudice and Race in Colonial Algeria (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 1995). Maxim Silverman, Deconstructing the Nation: Immigration, Racism and Citizenship in Modern France (London and New York: Routledge, 1992). In the final decade of the twentieth century, few issues have seemed more central, and disturbing, to French society than considerations of race. Questions of racial tolerance and difference have led France to reconsider the cherished right of all those born on the nation's soil to French nationality, have (until its recent split) prompted the rise of the biggest new political party in France since the Parti communiste français, and suffused debates about nationality and citizenship. Such has been the importance of this phenomenon that French intellectuals recently found themselves praising, of all things, the Disney animated version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, because of its topical relevance to the plight of African immigrants seeking asylum in a Parisian church. In contrast to the traditional rosy view of France as a land without color prejudice, race and racism now seem unavoidable aspects of life in the Hexagon.
Political Geography:
Africa and France