Remaking France

Remaking France PDF Author: Brian A. McKenzie
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 0857455613
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Public diplomacy, neglected following the end of the Cold War, is once again a central tool of American foreign policy. This book, examining as it does the Marshall Plan as the form of public diplomacy of the United States in France after World War Two, offers a timely historical case study. Current debates about globalization and a possible revival of the Marshall Plan resemble the debates about Americanization that occurred in France over fifty years ago. Relations between France and the United States are often tense despite their shared history and cultural ties, reflecting the general fear and disgust and attraction of America and Americanization. The period covered in this book offers a good example: the French Government begrudgingly accepted American hegemony even though anti-Americanism was widespread among the French population, which American public diplomacy tried to overcome with various cultural and economic activities examined by the author. In many cases French society proved resistant to Americanization, and it is questionable whether public diplomacy actually accomplished what its advocates had promised. Nevertheless, by the 1950s the United States had established a strong cultural presence in France that included Hollywood, Reader’s Digest, and American-style hotels.

Remaking France

Remaking France PDF Author: Brian A. McKenzie
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 0857455613
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Get Book Here

Book Description
Public diplomacy, neglected following the end of the Cold War, is once again a central tool of American foreign policy. This book, examining as it does the Marshall Plan as the form of public diplomacy of the United States in France after World War Two, offers a timely historical case study. Current debates about globalization and a possible revival of the Marshall Plan resemble the debates about Americanization that occurred in France over fifty years ago. Relations between France and the United States are often tense despite their shared history and cultural ties, reflecting the general fear and disgust and attraction of America and Americanization. The period covered in this book offers a good example: the French Government begrudgingly accepted American hegemony even though anti-Americanism was widespread among the French population, which American public diplomacy tried to overcome with various cultural and economic activities examined by the author. In many cases French society proved resistant to Americanization, and it is questionable whether public diplomacy actually accomplished what its advocates had promised. Nevertheless, by the 1950s the United States had established a strong cultural presence in France that included Hollywood, Reader’s Digest, and American-style hotels.

Citizenship between Empire and Nation

Citizenship between Empire and Nation PDF Author: Frederick Cooper
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691171459
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 511

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Book Description
A groundbreaking history of the last days of the French empire in Africa As the French public debates its present diversity and its colonial past, few remember that between 1946 and 1960 the inhabitants of French colonies possessed the rights of French citizens. Moreover, they did not have to conform to the French civil code that regulated marriage and inheritance. One could, in principle, be a citizen and different too. Citizenship between Empire and Nation examines momentous changes in notions of citizenship, sovereignty, nation, state, and empire in a time of acute uncertainty about the future of a world that had earlier been divided into colonial empires. Frederick Cooper explains how African political leaders at the end of World War II strove to abolish the entrenched distinction between colonial "subject" and "citizen." They then used their new status to claim social, economic, and political equality with other French citizens, in the face of resistance from defenders of a colonial order. Africans balanced their quest for equality with a desire to express an African political personality. They hoped to combine a degree of autonomy with participation in a larger, Franco-African ensemble. French leaders, trying to hold on to a large French polity, debated how much autonomy and how much equality they could concede. Both sides looked to versions of federalism as alternatives to empire and the nation-state. The French government had to confront the high costs of an empire of citizens, while Africans could not agree with French leaders or among themselves on how to balance their contradictory imperatives. Cooper shows how both France and its former colonies backed into more "national" conceptions of the state than either had sought.

The Invention of Decolonization

The Invention of Decolonization PDF Author: Todd Shepard
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801443602
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
In this account of the Algerian War's effect on French political structures and notions of national identity, Todd Shepard asserts that the separation of Algeria from France was truly a revolutionary event with lasting consequences for French social and political life. For more than a century, Algeria had been legally and administratively part of France; after the bloody war that concluded in 1962, it was other--its eight million Algerian residents deprived of French citizenship while hundreds of thousands of French pieds noirs were forced to return to a country that was never home. This rupture violated the universalism that had been the essence of French republican theory since the late eighteenth century. Shepard contends that because the amputation of Algeria from the French body politic was accomplished illegally and without explanation, its repercussions are responsible for many of the racial and religious tensions that confront France today. In portraying decolonization as an essential step in the inexorable "tide of history," the French state absolved itself of responsibility for the revolutionary change it was effecting. It thereby turned its back not only on the French of Algeria--Muslims in particular--but also on its own republican principles and the 1958 Constitution. From that point onward, debates over assimilation, identity, and citizenship--once focused on the Algerian "province/colony"--have troubled France itself. In addition to grappling with questions of race, citizenship, national identity, state institutions, and political debate, Shepard also addresses debates in Jewish history, gender history, and queer theory.

The Radiance of France, new edition

The Radiance of France, new edition PDF Author: Gabrielle Hecht
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262266172
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 497

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Book Description
How it happened that technological prowess and national glory (or “radiance,” which also means “radiation” in French) became synonymous in France as nowhere else. In the aftermath of World War II, as France sought a distinctive role for itself in the modern, postcolonial world, the nation and its leaders enthusiastically embraced large technological projects in general and nuclear power in particular. The Radiance of France asks how it happened that technological prowess and national glory (or “radiance,” which also means “radiation” in French) became synonymous in France as nowhere else. To answer this question, Gabrielle Hecht has forged an innovative combination of technology studies and cultural and political history in a book that, as Michel Callon writes in the new foreword to this edition, “not only sheds new light on the role of technology in the construction of national identities” but is also “a seminal contribution to the history of contemporary France.” Proposing the concept of technopolitical regime as a way to analyze the social, political, cultural, and technological dynamics among engineering elites, unionized workers, and rural communities, Hecht shows how the history of France's first generation of nuclear reactors is also a history of the multiple meanings of nationalism, from the postwar period (and France's desire for post-Vichy redemption) to 1969 and the adoption of a “Frenchified” American design. This paperback edition of Hecht's groundbreaking book includes both Callon's foreword and an afterword by the author in which she brings the story up to date, and reflects on such recent developments as the 2007 French presidential election, the promotion of nuclear power as the solution to climate change, and France's aggressive exporting of nuclear technology.

Race in France

Race in France PDF Author: Herrick Chapman
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1782381791
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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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.

General de Gaulle's Cold War

General de Gaulle's Cold War PDF Author: Garret Joseph Martin
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1782380167
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
The greatest threat to the Western alliance in the 1960s did not come from an enemy, but from an ally. France, led by its mercurial leader General Charles de Gaulle, launched a global and comprehensive challenge to the United State’s leadership of the Free World, tackling not only the political but also the military, economic, and monetary spheres. Successive American administrations fretted about de Gaulle, whom they viewed as an irresponsible nationalist at best and a threat to their presence in Europe at worst. Based on extensive international research, this book is an original analysis of France’s ambitious grand strategy during the 1960s and why it eventually failed. De Gaulle’s failed attempt to overcome the Cold War order reveals important insights about why the bipolar international system was able to survive for so long, and why the General’s legacy remains significant to current French foreign policy.

Stardom in Postwar France

Stardom in Postwar France PDF Author: John Gaffney
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 0857450093
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
The 1950s and 1960s were a key moment in the development of postwar France. The period was one of rapid change, derived from post-World War II economic and social modernization; yet many traditional characteristics were retained. By analyzing the eruption of the new postwar world in the context of a France that was both modern and traditional, we can see how these worlds met and interacted, and how they set the scene for the turbulent 1960s and 70s. The examination of the development of mass culture in post-war France, undertaken in this volume, offers a valuable insight into the shifts that took place. By exploring stardom from the domain of cinema and other fields, represented here by famous figures such as Brigitte Bardot, Johnny Hallyday or Jean-Luc Godard, and less conventionally treated areas of enquiry (politics [de Gaulle], literary [Françoise Sagan], and intellectual culture [Lévi-Strauss]) the reader is provided with a broad understanding of the mechanisms of popularity and success, and their cultural, social, and political roles. The picture that emerges shows that many cultural articulations remained or became identifiably "French," in spite of the American mass-culture origins of these social, economic, and cultural transformations.

Catholic Modern

Catholic Modern PDF Author: James Chappel
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674972104
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
Catholic antimodern, 1920-1929 -- Anti-communism and paternal Catholicism, 1929-1944 -- Anti-fascism and fraternal Catholicism, 1929-1944 -- Rebuilding Christian Europe, 1944-1950 -- Christian democracy and Catholic innovation in the long 1950s -- The return of heresy in the global 1960s

Emmanuel Macron and the Two Years That Changed France

Emmanuel Macron and the Two Years That Changed France PDF Author: Alistair Cole
Publisher: Pocket Politics
ISBN: 9781526140494
Category : France
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
This book looks at the period 2015-18 in French politics, which witnessed the emergence of a new political order centred on Emmanuel Macron. It asks whether modern political leadership is capable of restoring trust in political institutions and investigates the transformative nature of the Macron presidency.

Aftermath

Aftermath PDF Author: Susan J. Brison
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691245746
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
A powerful personal narrative of recovery and an illuminating philosophical exploration of trauma On July 4, 1990, while on a morning walk in southern France, Susan Brison was attacked from behind, severely beaten, sexually assaulted, strangled to unconsciousness, and left for dead. She survived, but her world was destroyed. Her training as a philosopher could not help her make sense of things, and many of her fundamental assumptions about the nature of the self and the world it inhabits were shattered. At once a personal narrative of recovery and a philosophical exploration of trauma, this bravely and beautifully written book examines the undoing and remaking of a self in the aftermath of violence. It explores, from an interdisciplinary perspective, memory and truth, identity and self, autonomy and community. It offers imaginative access to the experience of a rape survivor as well as a reflective critique of a society in which women routinely fear and suffer sexual violence. As Brison observes, trauma disrupts memory, severs past from present, and incapacitates the ability to envision a future. Yet the act of bearing witness, she argues, facilitates recovery by integrating the experience into the survivor's life's story. She also argues for the importance, as well as the hazards, of using first-person narratives in understanding not only trauma, but also larger philosophical questions about what we can know and how we should live.