What France?

Cordellier, S. [et al.], L'Etat de la France 1992 (La Découverte, 1992), 635pp., 149F., ISBN 2 7071 2100 2

Kimmel, A., Vous avez dit France? Pour comprendre la société française actuelle (Hachette/CIEP, 1992), 191pp., 106F., ISBN 2 01 018890 X     

Les deux identite´s de la France

Regionalism is an important element in the representation of French identity. Often considered as a right-wing ideology, it appeared as a left-wing movement in the 1960s, and references to regionalism are to be found in much French political discourse today. This article highlights the place of the regionalist element in French identity by advancing the hypothesis that for more than a century there has been a dual French identity. The Third Republic asserted that France was 'one and indivisible', but also that the country was richly diverse. The exaltation of diversity permitted the reaffirmation of French superiority over other nations. In order to develop a mass education grounded on patriotic feeling, those responsible for education declared that this had to be based on children's spontaneous affection for their 'petite patrie'. The regional identities celebrated in republican France are not at odds with national identity. The process of constructing national identities in Europe led to the creation of a 'check-list' forming the basis of all national identities. Regional identities were constructed on the basis of a dual relationship between the local and the national: the model of the national as a perfect mosaic of diversity, or the model of the 'mise en abyme', that is, the local representing the national in miniature.     

Specialized Early Upper Palaeolithic Hunters in Southwestern France?

Paul Mellars has long used cave and rockshelter ungulate faunal assemblages from southwestern France to argue that the early Upper Palaeolithic people of this region focused their hunting on reindeer (Rangifer tarandus), and that such specialized hunting distinguishes the Upper from the Middle Palaeolithic in at least this region. We examine this argument quantitatively, using a sample of 133 Mousterian, Châtelperronian, and Aurignacian ungulate assemblages. We show that only five Aurignacian assemblages, from three sites, stand out in terms of the degree to which their ungulate faunas are dominated by a single taxon. We also show that some Mousterian cave and rock shelter ungulate assemblages are more heavily dominated by large bovids than Aurignacian assemblages are dominated by reindeer, and that Mellars' argument is highly dependent on the exclusion of open sites from the analysis and on the numerical threshold he has selected to indicate hunting specialization.     

France and the New World Order, 1940–1947

Using a number of archive sources concentrating on the Occupation years and the period just after the Liberation, this article throws light on the contribution of France to the ‘New World Order’, a concept normally thought of as ‘Anglo-Saxon’ or ‘Anglo-American’. Even in defeat, those looking forward to the reconstruction of France in the postwar period considered a number of approaches as to how a French state-oriented system would work in a world which would supposedly be dominated by American-style liberal capitalism.     

How green is their valley? Political ecology in France

Abélès, M., Le Défi écologiste (L'Harmattan, 1993), 188pp., 110F., ISBN 2 7384 1820 1

Lipietz, A., Vert espérance. L'avenir de l'écologie politique (La Découverte, 1993), 144pp., 85F., ISBN 2 7071 2207 6

Piétrasanta, Y., L'Echarpe verte. Combats pour une nouvelle écologie (Albin Michel, 1993), 301pp., 98F., ISBN 2 226 06645 4     

France and Africa: the Emergence of Essential Reforms?

The traditional framework of relations between France and its former colonies in Africa is in crisis. Though this crisis is of long standing, events in Rwanda, Congo and elsewhere on the continent in the 1990s have shown up starkly the deficiencies in French policy. However, this article shows that it would be wrong to conclude, as some have done, that France will disengage from Africa; rather, France may well redefine its relationships with the continent by developing new priorities.