- 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 way in which French social scientists study their fellow citizens’ national identity. Following Billig, national identity refers here to the way people feel “emotionally situated” within nations, whatever these emotions are; how and to what extent they believe that being French is part of their personal identity. Over recent decades, social scientists all over the world have investigated the complex feelings citizens have about their nations. In France, however, this issue has been somewhat overlooked. This disparity is a consequence of the political context and the role of social scientists in French public debates, as well as a legacy of Bourdieu’s work which has made them well aware of the power of categorization. As a conclusion, the chapter outlines a research agenda in order to overcome this sociological blind spot.
Keywords: national identity, banal nationalism, Bourdieu, Billig, everyday nationhood, constructivism
Sophie Duchesne is CNRS senior researcher and member of the Institut des Sciences Sociales du Politique (ISP) at Nanterre University. She coordinated the CITAE project (Citizens Talking about Europe), a joint qualitative and comparative project research between Sciences Po, the University of Oxford, and the Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve, on attitudes toward European integration. She is the (co-)author with E. Frazer, F. Haegel and V. Van Ingelgom of Citizens’ Reactions to European Integration: Overlooking Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and the editor of issue 30 of Politique Européenne, “L’identité européenne entre science politique et science fiction” (2010).
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- 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