Alex Hughes. Encyclopedia of Contemporary French Culture

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Classified contents listxx

Casarès, Maria

Caubère, Philippe

Césaire, Aimé

Chalem, Denise

Chartreux, Bernard

Chéreau, Patrice

choreographers

circus

collective creation

Coluche

Comédie-Française

Copi

Cormann, Enzo

Cousin, Gabriel

Cousse, Raymond

Cuny, Alain

da Silva, Éric

dance

dance troupes

Dasté, Jean

Decroux, Étienne

Demarcy, Richard

Desarthe, Gérard

Deschamps, Jérôme

Deutsch, Michel

director’s theatre

Dort, Bernard

Doutreligne, Louise

Dubillard, Roland

Durif, Eugène

existentialist theatre

François, Guy-Claude

francophone performing arts: Belgium

francophone performing arts: Indian Ocean

francophone performing arts: North Africa

francophone performing arts: Switzerland

Fresson, Bernard

Garcia, Victor

Gatti, Armand

Grand Magic Circus, Le

Grumberg, Jean-Claude

Hirsch, Robert

Ionesco, Eugène

Jourdheuil, Jean

Kalisky, René

Kokkos, Yannis

Koltès, Bernard-Marie

Kraemer, Jacques

Lassalle, Jacques

Lavelli, Jorge

Lecoq, Jacques

Lemahieu, Daniel

Manet, Éduardo

Marceau, Félicien

Marceau, Marcel

Maréchal, Marcel

Mauclair, Jacques

Michel, Georges

mime

Minyana, Philippe

Mnouchkine, Ariane

Namiand, Arlette

Nichet, Jacques

Novarina, Valère

Obaldia, René d’

Orlan

Peduzzi, Richard

Penchenat, Jean-Claude

Périer, François

Planchon, Roger

Renaud, Madeleine

Rétoré, Guy

Reza, Yasmina

Rezvani, Serge

Salacrou, Armand

Sarrazin, Maurice

Savary, Jérôme

Serrault, Michel

Tardieu, Jean

Terzieff, Laurent

theatre

Théâtre du Quotidien

Théâtre du Soleil

Theatre of Cruelty

Theatre of the Absurd

theatres, national

theatres, private

Vauthier, Jean

Vilar, Jean

Vinaver, Michel

Vincent, Jean-Pierre

Vitez, Antoine

Wenzel, Jean-Paul

Yacine, Kateb

Politics

Auriol, Vincent

Balladur, Édouard

xxiClassified contents list

Barre, Raymond

Bérégovoy, Pierre

Chaban-Delmas, Jacques

Chirac, Jacques

civil rights

Cohn-Bendit, Daniel

constitution of the Fifth Republic

Cresson, Édith

Crozier, Michel

Debray, Régis

defence and security

Delors, Jacques

European Union

Fabius, Laurent

foreign policy

Gaulle, Charles de

Geismar, Alain

Giscard d’Estaing, Valéry

green politics

Humanité, L’

Jospin, Lionel

Juppé, Alain

Le Pen, Jean-Marie

left-wing press

Léotard, François

Madelin, Alain

Marcellin, Raymond

Marchais, Georges

Marxism and Marxian thought

Mauroy, Pierre

Mendès France, Pierre

Mitterrand, François

Mollet, Guy

nationalism

nationalization and privatization

parties and movements

parties and movements in francophone

countries: DOM-TOMs

Pasqua, Charles

Pompidou, Georges

regionalism

revolutionary groups

Rocard, Michel

Roudy, Yvette

Rouge

Sartre, Jean-Paul

Séguin, Philippe

Servan-Schreiber, Jean-Jacques

situationism

Soustelle, Jacques

Tapie, Bernard

Thorez, Maurice

Veil, Simone

Vichy

women and politics

Religion

Catholicism and Protestantism

Islam in France

Judaism

Society

abortion/contraception

AIDS

alcohol, cigarettes, drugs

armed forces

BCBG (bon chic bon genre)

beur cinema

beur comics

beur radio

beur writing

beurs

child care

cinéma de banlieue

civil rights

class

Delphy, Christine

demographic developments

Désir, Harlem, and SOS Racisme

electronic revolution

family

feminism (movements/groups)

feminist thought

gay activism

gay cinema

green issues

health

housing

immigration

Institute of the Arab World

Lalonde, Brice

language and the French regions

legal system

lesbian activism

marriage/cohabitation

Medecins Sans Frontières

minimum wage (SMIC)

nuclear power

Classified contents listxxii

pornography

prostitution

racism/anti-semitism

restaurants du coeur

slang/argot/verlan

social policy

social security

street papers

suburbs

Waechter, Antoine

women and employment

women and social policy

Sport and leisure

athletics

cycling

football

horse racing

motor sport

pétanque

rugby

sport

sport and education

sports funding

tennis

theme parks

Tour de France

water sports

winter sports

Visual arts

Arp, Jean

art brut

art criticism

art galleries/museums

art informel

Atlan, Jean-Michel

Balthus

Bazaine, Jean

Bloc, André

Braque, Georges

Bryen, Camille

Buffet, Bernard

Buren, Daniel

Cartier-Bresson, Henri

Chagall, Marc

Christo

Doisneau, Robert

Dubuffet, Jean

Duchamp, Marcel

Dufy, Raoul

Fini, Léonore

Giacometti, Alberto

Klein, Yves

Lartigue, Jacques

Léger, Fernand

Lipchitz, Jacques

Maeght Foundation

Man Ray

Manessier, Alfred

Mathieu, Georges

Matisse, Henri

painting

photography

Picasso, Pablo

Poliakoff, Serge

Ronis, Willy

Rouault, Georges

Saint-Phalle, Niki de

sculpture

Soulages, Pierre

Staël, Nicolas de

Supports/Surfaces

Tinguely, Jean

Utrillo, Maurice

Vasarély, Victor

Wols

abortion/contraception

In 1945, French women had little control over

their fertility and their reproductive processes.

Laws passed in the early 1920s had prohib-

ited not only abortion, but also the dissemina-

tion of information concerning contraception

and the distribution of contraceptive material.

During World War II, the Vichy regime firmly

established motherhood as women’s lot,

equating abortion with treason against the

state and guillotining an abortionist, Marie-

Louise Giraud. In the decades following the

war, a series of campaigns against the pro-

natalist climate which prevailed in France

eventually afforded French women the kind

of sociosexual rights in force in other Euro-

pean countries. Change was, however, slow in

coming.

In the late twentieth century, French women

have full and free access to a range of contra-

ceptive methods, and can obtain an abortion

(an IVG, or interruption volontaire de

grossesse) within the first ten weeks of their

pregnancy. Abortion is reimbursable by social

security and, in the wake of AIDS and grow-

ing public concern about unwanted pregnan-

cies, pro-contraceptive publicity is no longer

subject to restriction. That this is the case is

due to campaigning activities mounted in the

postwar period by diverse groups and move-

ments, such as the Mouvement pour le Plan-

ning Familial (the French Family Planning As-

sociation, initially formed by Evelyne Sullerot

and Marie-Andrée Weill-Hallé), the

Mouvement pour la Libération de

l’Avortement et la Contraception or MLAC

(the Association for the Liberation of Abor-

tion and Contraception), the Groupe Informa-

tion Santé (Health Information Group) and

Choisir (Choice). These activities, whose aim

was to generate reform of the 1920s laws, took

off in the 1950s, with support from the par-

liamentary Left and Centre Left, from elements

of the left-wing and the women’s press, and

from numerous women’s associations. They

derived further impetus with the emergence,

in the late 1960s and early 1970s, of the

Mouvement de la Libération des Femmes (the

MLF, or French Feminist Movement). In 1971,

for example, the MLF demonstrated in favour

of the liberalization of abortion. A manifesto

signed by 343 women in the public eye, and

published by Le Nouvel Observateur on 5

April, declared that they had had illegal abor-

tions and called for free access to abortion and

contraception. In 1972, French feminists, in-

cluding lawyer Gisèle Halimi, used the

Bobigny procès—the trial of four women ac-

cused of procuring a backstreet abortion—to

draw public attention to the consequences of

the repressive status quo. In 1973, feminist

women joined with doctors and unionists to

form MLAC.

Key laws marking French women’s gradual

acquisition of control over their bodies in-

clude:

• the loi Neuwirth (19 December 1967), a

law which was proposed by the Gaullist

député Lucien Neuwirth and which set in

train a liberalization of contraception com-

pleted by a further law of 4 December

1974;

• the loi Veil (17 January 1975), which legal-

ized abortion; and

• the loi Roudy (31 December 1982), which

legislated to authorize state reimbursement

of IVG.

The existence of these laws reflects the extent

to which reform of legislation about women’s

sexual rights had elicited widespread popular

support in France by the mid-1960s. This is

not to say that such support was (or subse-

quently became) total. Numerous anti-abor-

tion groups exist in France (e.g. SOS Tout-

Petits and Laissez-les Vivre), and commando-

style attacks on abortion clinics (by groups

such as Trève de Dieu), have proliferated in

the 1990s.

ALEX HUGHES

See also: demographic developments; femi-

nism (movements/groups)

Further reading

Duchen, C. (1986) Feminism in France from

May ’68 to Mitterrand, London: Routledge

& Kegan Paul (a history of post-1968

French feminism, which foregrounds the

key role the pro-abortion/contraception

struggle played in feminist campaigns of the

period).

——(1994) Women’s Rights and Women’s

Lives in France 1944–1968, London and

New York: Routledge (an invaluable ac-

count of French’s women’s history in the

postwar period, which illuminates their re-

lationship with issues of motherhood, fer-

tility and control over their bodies).

Mossuz-Lavau, J. (1991) Les Lois de l’amour:

les politiques de la sexualité en France,

Paris: Payot (an excellent overview of the

evolution of legislation relating to sexual-

ity and gender in postwar France).

Académie Française

The Académie Française, founded by Richelieu

in 1635, is one of the five academies that make

up the Institut de France which is housed in a

splendid building on the Quai Conti in Paris.

The Académie’s role was to promote the im-

provement of the French language, primarily

through the establishing of standard vocabu-

lary through a dictionary, of which eight edi-

tions have so far appeared. The forty members,

known as immortels, elect replacements when

a death occurs, but the election must be ap-

proved by the head of state. Any writer may

apply, and the Academy has always included

distinguished authors: however, the list of great

writers not belonging to the Academy is lengthy.

The first woman to be elected was Marguerite

Yourcenar in 1980, and occasionally foreign

writers of French are included. On formal oc-

casions academicians wear an embroidered uni-

form with cocked hat and carry a sword. An

important function of the Academy is to award

eighty prestigious literary prizes as well as 200

charitable grants, funded by the numerous be-

quests made to the Academy over the centuries.

JO REED

See also: linguistic regulation; women’s/les-

bian writing

Acquart, André

b. 1922, Vincennes

Artist and stage designer

One of the pioneers of stage design as an inte-

gral part of theatre productions, working most

notably in the 1950s and 1960s with direc-

tors Blin, Vilar, Terzieff, Miquel and Rétoré

on texts as varied as Shakespeare, Brecht and

Genet, Acquart’s designs are typified by ab-

straction and an experimental approach.

ANNIE SPARKS

Further reading

Couty, D. and Rey, A. (eds) (1995), Le

Théâtre, Paris: Bordas (general chapters on

changing scenography in postwar period,

including mentions of Acquart’s work).

Actes Sud

Publishing house

Incorporating the century-old publisher

Papiers, this Parisian publishing house, un-

der the direction of Claire David, is responsi-

ble for publishing a large number of contem-

porary theatrical texts in France, often in

collaboration with theatres staging the

plays. It is responsible for over thirty new

titles a year, and for the ‘Répliques’ series of

texts, edited for education by Michel

Vinaver.

ANNIE SPARKS

See also: publishing/l’édition; theatre

Adamov, Arthur

b. 1908, Kislovodsk, Caucasia;

d. 1970, Paris

Playwright and writer

Famous for his experimental, often confron-

tational approach, Adamov’s absurdist dream

plays such as La Parodie (Parody) and

Brechtian-style, grotesque political satires such

as Off Limits were staged by Planchon, Vilar

and Serreau.

ANNIE SPARKS

See also: theatre; Theatre of the Absurd

Further reading

Abirached, R. (ed.) (1983) Lectures

d’Adamov, Tübingen: Gunter Narr (es-

says).

Bradby, D. (1975) Adamov, London: Grant

and Cutler (bibliography).

Adjani, Isabella

b. 1955, Paris

Actor

Adjani’s career was launched in a 1975

François Truffaut film, L’Histoire d’Adèle H.

During the 1980s she mixed comic roles and

the enigmatic, tormented and sexually con-

fused femme fatale, culminating in Camille

Claudel (1988), produced by Adjani and di-

rected by Bruno Nuttyens and, in 1994,

Patrice Chéreau’s La Reine Margot. Often

called the only French star, her mythical sta-

tus has been magnified by a secretive private

life, coupled with a relatively small number of

films (an average of one a year since 1975).

She was the 1987 president of the Commis-

sion d’Avance sur Recettes. In May 1997 she

chaired the jury at the Cannes Film Festival.

PHIL POWRIE

See also: avance sur recettes; cinema; stars

Further reading

Roques-Briscard, C. (1987) La Passion

d’Adjani, Lausanne: Favre (hagiographic

biography).

advertising

The importance of advertising within con-

temporary French popular culture has

grown considerably since 1945, and the

advertising

forms of advertising discourse have been

evolving alongside changes in technology and

communication. Controversy as to its cultural

and ethical value has long been a feature of

ideological debate in France.

Advertising’s massive expansion since 1945

can be linked initially to the emergence of the

consumer society and the economic confidence

of the 1950s and 1960s and, later, to increased

commercial competition alongside massive

media expansion. Total advertising expendi-

ture represents 1.25 per cent of the French

gross domestic product and the sector employs

on a regular basis an estimated 50,000 peo-

ple. Although this is small compared with

countries such as the United States, the French

advertising sector has continued to grow even

during periods of recession. However, the late

twentieth century is seeing a period of turmoil.

The long-established tradition of agencies such

as Havas and Publicis has enabled the sector

successfully to resist infiltration by foreign

competitors, so that the largest French adver-

tising groups—EURO-RSCG (the result of a

1991 merger between Havas-EUROCOM,

and RSCG: Roux-Séguéla-Cayzac-Goudard),

Publicis and BDDP: Boulet-Dru-Dupuy-

Petit—still command the largest share of the

national market, but their position on the in-

ternational market remains modest.

Following a succession of changes in the

regulation and funding of the broadcasting

media, advertising (which had started to ap-

pear from 1968 on state-owned radio stations

and television channels) became a major

source of funding for both television and ra-

dio in the 1980s (particularly affecting the fast-

expanding private stations and channels),

thereby vastly extending its influence as a

means of mass communication. Even in the

case of state-owned television channels, adver-

tising revenue has grown faster than licence

revenue, taking the maximum advertising time

per hour to twelve minutes in 1995. As a so-

cial practice, advertising has itself started to

attract media attention (the M6 television

channel offers a popular weekly programme

Culture pub), and publicitaires (admen) have

gained in social recognition via such figures

as Jacques Séguéla of RSCG (who master-

minded the 1988 Mitterrand presidential cam-

paign) and Bernard Cathelat of the Centre de

Communication Avancée (Centre for Ad-

vanced Communication), linked to the group

Havas, who has published many books on

socio-styles or styles de vie (lifestyles), outlin-

ing a sociological method for analysing con-

sumer motivations.

Advertising is a communication process

which involves a number of social actors: ad-

vertisers (manufacturing or service industries,

state or other public agencies, etc.), advertis-

ing agencies which create the advertising mes-

sages, the media (the five traditionally recog-

nized grands médias: cinema, press, radio, tel-

evision and ‘outdoors’ which includes bill

boards, to which one must add the new elec-

tronic technologies, particularly relevant to

France since the launching of Minitel) and the

consumers as target audience. The growing

importance of a category of intermediate com-

panies, the centrales d’achat, such as Carat

France, who purchase the crucial advertising

space and time and negotiate between adver-

tisers, agencies and media companies, is one

of the more striking organizational changes

which have affected this sector in France since

the 1960s. The reliance of advertising on the

media to deliver commercial messages, and,

conversely, the increasing financial depend-

ence of the media on advertising revenue, raise

the issue of whose voices are heard and com-

pete for influence in society. The new practice

of advertisers sponsoring programmes is likely

to extend their influence. The idea of public

space and public service (which has been an

important concept in the cultural history of

France and which is echoed in the French term

for advertising, publicité) is often seen by crit-

ics as losing out to commercial forces.

Advertising as a discourse is one of the

most pervasive means of mass communica-

tion and lies at the heart of popular culture;

its omnipresence ensures that all members of

society receive advertising messages in the

course of their most mundane activities and,

as such, these messages are a powerful

indicator of a society’s values and practices.

advertising

Whether advertising is seen as a mirror of

society or as capable of shaping attitudes and

inhibiting or initiating social change has

always been a fiercely debated ideological

question. A number of laws regulate

advertising—for instance when it involves

children or where it concerns particular types

of products or services. Advertising of tobacco

was banned in 1991 (Evin law) and alcohol

advertising subjected to restrictions. The Sapin

law of 1993, aimed at preventing political and

economic corruption, introduced strict

financial rules affecting advertising groups.

The BVP (Bureau de Vérification de la

Publicité) and the CSA (Conseil Supérieur de

l’Audiovisuel) are the main bodies concerned

with the regulation and fairness of advertis-

ing. Comparative advertising was made legal

in 1992 but is strictly regulated.

In the 1950s, Roland Barthes pioneered

academic interest in popular discourses by his

bold semiological analyses published in My-

thologies; meanwhile, the forms of advertising

discourse have evolved and become increas-

ingly sophisticated as both creators and receiv-

ers of messages have become conversant with

the codes of this communication process. Since

advertising messages are ephemeral and de-

pendent on media space and time, the optimum

conditions of reception necessitate a frequent

renewal of forms and techniques. Initially a

discourse that spoke directly to passive

consumers and attempted to persuade them

with arguments for the superiority of a prod-

uct or a service, it has gradually resorted to

more subtle forms of seduction: an attractive

lifestyle or highly desirable but often

unreachable qualities such as glamour, beauty

or a return to an ideal state of nature are pre-

sented, by means of visual juxtaposition and

semantic transfer, as irresistibly within the con-

sumer’s grasp. A new form of seduction which

seeks to entertain the receiver signals a shift in

the positions of the participants in the process

of mass communication: potential consumers

are invited to partake in a narrative (a brief

soap opera) or a humorous scenario, or to solve

a puzzle, the product or service sometimes only

performing an accessory function. The need to

provide instant viewer’s interest, given the cost

of advertising space, is thus generating new

forms of exchange and interactive behaviour.

The multiplicity of art forms contributing to

the increasingly sophisticated production of

messages (video clips, computer-produced im-

ages and graphics, special visual effects, elec-

tronically mixed jingles), while providing an

experimental ground for musicians and artists,

is also pointing at a redistribution of bounda-

ries between discourses. Advertising is increas-

ingly intertextual. It has been described as an

unstable and parasitic discourse which feeds on

the whole range of cultural forms of expres-

sion of a society. The culture of advertising,

meanwhile, is becoming internationalized; the

cost of producing advertising films for televi-

sion is so high that agencies seek to produce

messages which can be recognized and decoded

everywhere in the world for products (such as

cars or training shoes) which are equally

available everywhere. The now frequent use of

internationally acclaimed film stars, athletes or

supermodels adds to this process of

globalization. Analysing the specificity of

French advertising discourse is thus becoming

less relevant. Although French agencies are

proud of some of their creative achievements,

the sophistication of some of the British adver-

tisements from the 1960s onwards has been

rarely matched, it seems, by their French (or

North American) counterparts. However, there

are a number of ways in which the national

environment is relevant.

Borrowings from other cultural discourses,

including high culture, demonstrate the ability

of French advertisements to rely readily on a

shared cultural heritage transmitted through the

education system. The French as a nation have

always enjoyed games involving language:

advertising slogans constitute an immensely

rich field where language-specific creativity is

deployed and where the receiver’s attention is

engaged with riddles and puns or highly

organized rhythms and sound patterns. It is also

a good experimental ground for new modish

words: advertisements promptly pick up on

shared but elusive linguistic innovations, even

if regulators will occasionally attempt to

advertising

intervene in the process (the case of the 1994

Toubon law banning the use of foreign words

in advertising is a good example).

National stereotypes frequently used to

promote certain foreign products will clearly

depend on a specifically French perception of,

for instance, Italian, English or American be-

haviour patterns.

More importantly, gender stereotyping

needs to be considered in the light of French

cultural practices. Nudity, particularly female

(and increasingly, since the 1970s, male), is

used considerably more in French advertising

than it is in Britain or the United States (but

probably less than in some Scandinavian

countries). This is often seen as reflecting

French people’s less puritanical outlook and

their easy relationship with the body; none

the less, the casual and constant representa-

tion of people as sex objects cannot be ig-

nored as irrelevant. More controversial is the

subservient, not to say degrading, role often

assigned to women in French advertising dis-

course. The objective situation of women in

French society has changed considerably

since 1945. French advertising seemed for

several decades impervious to this new situa-

tion, but since the 1970s a number of changes

have become visible. Society’s changed per-

ception of gender roles and sexuality has

found many echoes; particularly in the 1980s,

when Yvette Roudy, the Ministre de la Condi-

tion Féminine, started a campaign protesting

against the humiliating representation of

women in advertising and a deliberate at-

tempt was made to convey both men and

women in a new light: images of caring or

domesticated fathers, and assertive business-

women displaying their new social confidence

in traditionally male environments and occu-

pations, began to appear. However, given the

capacity for advertising discourse to function

intertextually and its increasing use of hu-

mour, which is one of the hallmarks of the

new styles of advertisements, many of these

examples can arguably be interpreted as more

of a playful acknowlegement that gender rela-

tions have become high-profile than a genuine

attempt to reflect women’s changed reality

and aspirations to social equality. Reversals

of (or allusions to) old stereotypes, allowing

the receiver to engage humorously with a

scene from which he or she can feel detached,

do little to change deeply ingrained percep-

tions. Judging by the dominant messages con-

veyed by advertisements in women’s maga-

zines, there is little evidence that the late

twentieth century is offering new perspectives

on gender (and indeed race and class) repre-

sentation. French feminist organizations seem

reluctant to intervene.

Advertising as a prime vehicle of mass com-

munication and mass culture has been at the

heart of the cultural debate in France since 1945.

More than in many Western countries, it has

been held in utter contempt for its vulgarity or

accused of being manipulative and degrading

by successive generations of intellectuals scorn-

ful of mass culture generally. Its link with capi-

talism has been one of the reasons for its low

esteem among left-wing intellectuals, but offi-

cial cultural policy under the Gaullist regime

also denied it any value, favouring all forms of

high culture which it tried to disseminate among

the masses. The first signs of a change came in

the 1980s, when some high-profile intellectuals

started to embrace the new Americanized way

of life. The younger generations are particularly

open in their enjoyment of the newly shared

media and advertising culture, as is demon-

strated by the success of ‘la nuit des publivores’

(an all-night event where advertisements from

all over the world are shown to a jingle-chant-

ing audience). However, advertising and its eas-

ily attainable pleasures is still regarded with deep

suspicion by sections of the more educated

French population.

BÉATRICE DAMAMME-GILBERT

Further reading

Barthes, R. (1973) Mythologies, St Albans:

Paladin. (French edition (1957) Paris: Seuil.)

advertising

Brochand, B. and Landrevie, J. (1993), Le

Publicitor, Paris: Dalloz (a mine of informa-

tion on French advertising).

Chapman, R. and Hewitt, N. (eds) (1992)

Popular Culture and Mass Communication

in Twentieth-Century France, Lampeter:

Edwin Mellen Press (contains several arti-

cles presenting different perspectives on

French advertising).

Cornuéjols, C. (1992) ‘Gender Roles in French

Advertisements in the 1980s’, French Re-

view, 66, 2:201–21 (an upbeat review of

changes).

Grunig, B. (1990), Les Mots de la publicité,

Paris: Presses du CNRS (a detailed analysis

of French advertising slogans).

agriculture

French agriculture is by far the most impor-

tant in Europe. A radical policy of moderniza-

tion was implemented from the 1950s, later

associated with Europe’s Common Agricul-

tural Policy (CAP). The strategy has been suc-

cessful, but its consequences include a series

of social problems such as regional

desertification, the ageing of farming commu-

nities and the disappearance of debt-ridden

small farms, together with a deterioration of

the rural environment. Recent reforms of the

CAP and the gradual opening of agricultural

markets to international competition signal

the ultimate failure of the ‘modern family

farm’ model which was at the root of the

policy consensus since the 1950s.

French agriculture is diverse. There is little

common ground between large wheat produc-

ers such as Champagne, where extensive cul-

tivation of fields extends way over the hori-

zon, creating one of the most deserted land-

scapes to be found in Europe; specialized vine-

yards in Burgundy; and areas in the Alp foot-

hills or around the Massif Central, where age-

ing communities die out, still practising mixed

production in small farms. A common feature,

however, is that all of the above are beset with

problems and conflicts born of a rapid and

brutal modernization process which has

changed the face of French agriculture beyond

recognition. These often assume an impor-

tance in French political life which may seem

disproportionate to the actual social weight

of agriculture. But the lateness of the mod-

ernization process, the continued pace of ru-

ral exodus, and nostalgia for a fast-disappear-

ing ‘traditional’ society, form part of the cul-

tural background of a majority of the adult

population; hence the frequent support given

to farmers in their protest actions.

The cultural relevance of agriculture is still

considerable. French children still learn the

adage pronounced by Sully, a minister of King

Henry IV, according to whom ‘Labourage et

pâturage sont les deux mamelles de la France’

(‘Ploughing and grazing are breasts feeding

France’). France was indeed the corn-belt of

Europe in the seventeenth century. However,

it fell behind in the early twentieth century,

withdrawing into a protectionist stance and

lacking in investments. Then the French coun-

tryside took on the forms which have been

used by writers such as Giono, in Regain, or

Pagnol, in his L’Eau des collines novel or in

recollections such as La Gloire de mon père.

Both, in different ways, set their writing in an

early twentieth-century Provence left behind

by a fast-changing urban France.

Prospects for French agriculture changed in

the 1950s. Modernization policies were pur-

sued by successive governments, supported by

the main farmers’ union, the FNSEA. This

consensual approach aimed to preserve the

family farm unit by providing the means to

modernize. Policies were organized around

market stabilization strategies, cheap finances

(through the Crédit Agricole), processing and

marketing tools (especially through co-opera-

tives which developed considerably since the

1960s), the restructuring of land property (for

instance, remembrement (reassembling) seeks

to create larger fields through land exchanges

in order to facilitate mechanization), and hefty

subsidies for drainage, hedge cutting, etc. The

CAP reinforced this approach, guaranteeing

and subsidizing internal prices and protecting

European production against imports through

agriculture