CIAO DATE: 12/2008
Volume: 25, Issue: 2
Summer 2007
Laïcité, Part I: Introduction
Existe-t-il une religion civile républicaine? (PDF)
Jean Baubérot
The question of "civil religion" constitutes the impensé of French secularism, and this is necessarily so due to the term's ideological function. Using Jean-Jacques Rousseau's definition--revisited by sociologists--, this article considers the relationship between secularism and civil religion at two periods. During the period 1901-1908, two types of secularism opposed each other: the first, close to civil religion, was dominant until 1904; the second, which emerged in 1905-1908 (the laws on the separation of Church and State) distanced itself from it. The second period is the beginning of the twenty-first century, when elements of a "lay-Catholic" civil religion are thwarted, however, by several factors. In conclusion, the author offers several avenues of comparison between American civil religion and French civil religion.
Religions, genre, et politiques laïques en France, XIXe-XXe siècles
Florence Rochefort
In the French polemics over the Islamic headscarf, the relationship between secularism and sexual equality has sometimes been made out to be an artificial one. The articulation between politics, religion, secularism, and women’s rights is examined here over the longue durée. Since the beginning of the secularization process during the French Revolution, a minority has championed an egalitarian conception of secularization. Rivalries between or convergences of political and religious authorities have driven an ambivalent and not very equal secularization, creating secular pacts that rely on gender pacts to the detriment of equality. This dynamic reversed itself beginning in the 1960s with the battle for legal contraception and abortion, which shook one of the very bases of French Catholicism to its foundation. The headscarf affairs revealed the egalitarian effects of secularism and favored the elaboration of thought about secularism in conjunction with sexual equality, which, whatever the various interpretations of that thought may be, could prove to be a non-negligible benefit.
The Muslim Presence in France and the United States: Its Consequences for Secularism
Jocelyne Cesari
All too often, the question of Muslim minorities in Europe and America is discussed solely in socioeconomic terms or with a simplistic focus on the Islamic religion and its purported incompatibility with democracy. This article focuses instead on the secularism of Western host societies as a major factor in the integration of Muslim minorities. It compares French and American secularism and argues that while French-style secularism has contributed to present tensions between French Muslims and the French state, American secularism has facilitated the integration of Muslims in the United States-even after 9/11.
Fascinating Les Halles
Rosemary Wakeman
This article considers the site and space of Les Halles as an ongoing intellectual fascination. It specifically looks at how architects have historically approached Les Halles as a “site of modernity” and puts into context the most recent renovation and the architectural competition to design Les Halles in 2004-2005. It will consider the projects and their viability from a cultural perspective and open the question of the site and the city’s future form.
Architecture and Biopolitics at Les Halles
Meredith TenHoor
Until 1969, when Paris’s wholesale food markets were moved to the Parisian suburb of Rungis, Les Halles, the market district in the center of Paris, fed much of the city’s urban population. Les Halles was not simply a place where food was bought and sold, but also a highly visible and symbolically charged node of communication between the countryside, the state, and the bodies of Parisian citizens. Due to its centrality and visibility, Les Halles came under enormous pressure to physically symbolize the state’s relationship to the “market.” In turn, the architecture of the markets at Les Halles came to stand in for the powers of the state to organize a flow of goods from farm to body. From the 1763 construction of the Halle au blé, to the 1851 ground-breaking on Victor Baltard’s iron and glass market pavilions, to the construction of the Centre Pompidou and the Forum des Halles in the 1970s and 1980s, the markets at Les Halles were regularly redesigned and rebuilt to accommodate and/or produce shifting notions of architectural, social, and financial order.
L’enjeu métropolitain des Halles
Thierry Baudouin, Michèle Collin
During the Fordist period, the state transformed the historic site of Les Halles, in the heart of Paris, into the agglomeration’s chief mass transit gateway. Efforts to make the site into a veritable tool of social, cultural, and economic metropolitan development are struggling because of governmental modalities that remain very marked by centralism. A majority of citizens, notably those living in suburban Paris, actively stake a claim to this metropolitan dimension and to the rich possibilities of this tool. The article principally analyzes the territorializing practices of suburban youths, whose multiple subjectivities are still poorly integrated into the site. Les Halles thus reveals the question of the correspondence of these establishing metropolitan practices to the reality of the centralized institutions around Paris intramuros.
Les rapports ambigus entre politiques et citoyens: le cas du réaménagement du quartier des Halles à Paris
Pierre Diméglio, Jodelle Zetlaoui-Léger,
While Mayor Bertrand Delanoë had omitted the renovation of Les Halles in his plans for the city in his 2001 inaugural address, in 2002, at the urging of the RATP and Espace Expansion, he decided to create a working group to undertake this project during his tenure. Having made citizen participation a new goal for local government, he also announced that the project would be undertaken with Parisians, especially local associations. The first part of this article emphasizes the different postures that elected politicians, engineers, and experts have adopted over the course of forty years vis-à-vis the question of citizen participation in urban planning. The second part explores the decision- making process for the Les Halles renovation over the last four years; it considers the issues and difficulties linked to the implementation of participatory plans incorporating residents––whether they are members of local groups or not––in complex urban planning projects.
Available in Hell: Germaine Tillion's Operetta of Resistance at Ravensbrück
Donald Reid
Renouveau et décentralisation du théâtre 1945-1981
Pascale Goetschel
Getting into Local Power: The Politics of Ethnic Minorities in British and French Cities
Romain Garbaye