The elections, the banlieues and discrimination

I’d be the first to admit that recently there hasn’t been a huge amount of French news and politics on this blog. This is partly because I’m spending a lot of time trying to write and developments in the news seem less relevant when I’m writing chapters on community participation in museums, for example. When [...]

Spring exhibitions

My mention of the ‘First nations: royal collections‘ exhibition at the Quai Branly in my last post reminded me that there are a number of exhibitions worth cathing in Paris at the moment from a museum anthropology/museology perspective.

The Musee de l’homme has just launched the first phase (or ‘episode’) of its refit with ‘La saga [...]

A nasty tale of ethnic cleansing – and my ‘responsibility’ for it

Last night I went to see the film ‘Northwest passage‘ as part of the King Vidor season at the Cinematheque. This was slightly be accident – the only way to choose films at the Cinematheque really, give their range – although I did know it would be a Hollywood epic on some level about the [...]

Visite du chantier: on site and in a hard hat!

The Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration opened its building site to the public last week. Free tours take place twice a week on Thursday evenings and Friday afternoons. Anyone can attend – you just have to reserve in advance [link]. I have to say I think this is unprecedented; it really is a [...]

Mental health and graduate students

For a while now I’ve been thinking about the mental health problems faced by graduate students. Sometimes problems are triggered by the same things that undergraduates face – stress, deadlines, low self-esteem, anxiety about debt, the future etc. – but I genuinely think there are some very specific issues. Life for PhD students is so [...]

Looking-back on French history: Chirac’s African policy, the Presidential candidates tell it how it was and the death of a ‘respectable bastard’ (Web round-up#5)

Franceafrique: time to turn the page?
There was lots of discussion in the press last week about Chirac’s (neo-colonial?) foreign policy in Africa. For example, Le Monde (13/02/07) summed it up thus:
Mais l’actualité, le cours de l’Histoire donnent une image de la relation France-Afrique qui n’est pas que diplomatique. C’est celle d’une ancienne puissance impériale toujours [...]

Anti-colonial week

This week there is a programme of events taking place entitled ‘la semaine anti-coloniale’. It’s not clear who the organisers are but you can check out the programme here. Highlights included a symbolic naming of a new metro station in Gennevilliers ‘17 October 1961′ (last weekend, the day after Maurice Papon died, appropriately enough) (the [...]

Designing identity

For hardened followers of the CNHI project there’s an article in this month’s ‘Etapes‘ (a graphic design magazine) about the design of the corporate identity (‘identite visuelle’ in French, funnily enough…). (Fortunately I have my spies out there – I don’t thing even with the most esoteric reading strategy I’d have stumbled across this myself…) [...]

How am I getting on…?

It’s a while since I’ve written much about what I’m up to. Well, since the middle of last month I’ve been making slow progress on my thesis. My self-imposed deadline for my first chapter (of 9, or maybe 8 – each about 8-9,000 words, or at least that’s the idea) is the end of this [...]

Web round-up #4: Royal’s immigration plans, British national identity (again) and memory and power (or some thoughts about Iranian women’s writing…!)

French politics
- The two police officers face severe negligence charges over the deaths of the teenagers Zyed and Bouna which sparked the riots of 2005. [BBC]
- As I mentioned in my last round-up on the 8th February Paris acquired a new square in honour of those who died in the Charonne metro station in 1962. [...]