- The Oxford Handbook of French Politics
- Acknowledgments
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- List of Abbreviations
- Notes on Contributors
- A Framework for a Comparative Politics of France
- Republicanism: a transatlantic misunderstanding
- The State Imperative
- The French Welfare System
- Identity, Culture, and Politics: the other and the self in France
- The French Way to Multi-Level Governance: governance with government
- The Europeanization of Public Policy in France: actor-centered approaches
- Globalization: French ambivalence as a critical case
- Executive Politics in France: from leader to laggard?
- Legislative Politics: going international, while staying native
- Constitutional Politics: the French case and theory-building
- Challenges to French Public Administration: mapping the vitality of its knowledge sources
- Regional and Local Government: interpreting territorial politics
- Political Representation: bringing elections back in
- How to Study Political Culture Without Naming It
- Explaining French Elections: the need to meet in the middle
- Parties and Party Systems: making the French sociocultural approach matter
- Political Communication: from international institutionalization to national conquest of scientific legitimacy
- Interest Groups: moving beyond state-centric models
- The Study of Social Movements in France: the “French touch” and a comparative contribution
- Women’s Movements and Feminism: French political sociology meets a comparative feminist approach
- National Identity in France: a blind spot
- French Economic Policy: theory development and the three “I”s
- Environmental and Energy Policy in France: a critical case for comparative political research?
- Gender Policy Studies: distinct, but making the comparative connection
- France and the Evolution of European Integration: the exemplary and pivotal case for broader theories
- Varieties of Capitalism: a distinctly French model?
- Defense and Security Policy: beyond French exceptionalism
- French Aid Through the Comparative Looking Glass: a representative, deviant, or agenda-setting case?
- Toward a Comparative Politics of France
- Index
Abstract and Keywords
This chapter deals with the emergence of social movement studies in the French social sciences in the 1990s and its development since then. We show how the exponential growth of this field largely relied on knowledge accumulated from the North American literature, but always with a critical appraisal of its concepts, methods, and results. We stress some theoretical and methodological specificities of the French contribution to the field: the greater recourse to qualitative and in-depth methodologies and the focus on the micro-level of individual activism and micro-level processes; the dissemination of its issues and concepts into a great number of academic domains, hence its trans-disciplinary framework; and finally its long-standing reluctance to engage in comparative studies. We conclude with some reflections on a possible agenda for future research.
Keywords: social movements, qualitative analysis, individual activism, repertoires of action, protest, socialization, interactionism
Olivier Fillieule is senior researcher at CNRS (research associate at CESSP-Paris) and currently professor of political sociology at the Institute of Political and International Studies of the University of Lausanne (UNIL-IEPI) of which he was director from 2008 to 2011.
Access to the complete content on Oxford Handbooks Online requires a subscription or purchase. Public users are able to search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter without a subscription.
Please subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you have purchased a print title that contains an access token, please see the token for information about how to register your code.
For questions on access or troubleshooting, please check our FAQs, and if you can''t find the answer there, please contact us.
- The Oxford Handbook of French Politics
- Acknowledgments
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- List of Abbreviations
- Notes on Contributors
- A Framework for a Comparative Politics of France
- Republicanism: a transatlantic misunderstanding
- The State Imperative
- The French Welfare System
- Identity, Culture, and Politics: the other and the self in France
- The French Way to Multi-Level Governance: governance with government
- The Europeanization of Public Policy in France: actor-centered approaches
- Globalization: French ambivalence as a critical case
- Executive Politics in France: from leader to laggard?
- Legislative Politics: going international, while staying native
- Constitutional Politics: the French case and theory-building
- Challenges to French Public Administration: mapping the vitality of its knowledge sources
- Regional and Local Government: interpreting territorial politics
- Political Representation: bringing elections back in
- How to Study Political Culture Without Naming It
- Explaining French Elections: the need to meet in the middle
- Parties and Party Systems: making the French sociocultural approach matter
- Political Communication: from international institutionalization to national conquest of scientific legitimacy
- Interest Groups: moving beyond state-centric models
- The Study of Social Movements in France: the “French touch” and a comparative contribution
- Women’s Movements and Feminism: French political sociology meets a comparative feminist approach
- National Identity in France: a blind spot
- French Economic Policy: theory development and the three “I”s
- Environmental and Energy Policy in France: a critical case for comparative political research?
- Gender Policy Studies: distinct, but making the comparative connection
- France and the Evolution of European Integration: the exemplary and pivotal case for broader theories
- Varieties of Capitalism: a distinctly French model?
- Defense and Security Policy: beyond French exceptionalism
- French Aid Through the Comparative Looking Glass: a representative, deviant, or agenda-setting case?
- Toward a Comparative Politics of France
- Index