The Pride of Place : Local Memories and Political Culture in Modern France / Stephane Gerson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gerson, Stephane, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Elite (Social sciences)--France.

Elite (Social sciences).

National characteristics, French.

Decentralization in government--France--19th century.

Decentralization in government.

Politics and culture--France--History--19th century.

Politics and culture.

Regionalism--France--History--19th century.

Regionalism.

France--Cultural policy.

France.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 324 p. :) ill., maps ;

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [2018]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Nineteenth-century France grew fascinated with the local past. Thousands of citizens embraced local archaeology, penned historical vignettes and monographs, staged historical pageants, and created museums and pantheons of celebrities. Stéphane Gerson's rich, elegantly written, and timely book provides the first cultural and political history of what contemporaries called the "cult of local memories," an unprecedented effort to resuscitate the past, instill affection for one's locality, and hence create a sense of place. A wide range of archival and printed sources (some of them untapped until now) inform the author's engaging portrait of a little-known realm of Parisian entrepreneurs and middling provincials, of obscure historians and intellectual luminaries. Arguing that the "local" and modernity were interlaced, rather than inimical, between the 1820s and 1890s, Gerson explores the diverse uses of local memories in modern France-from their theatricality and commercialization to their political and pedagogical applications. The Pride of Place shows that, contrary to our received ideas about French nationhood and centralism, the "local" buttressed the nation while seducing Parisian and local officials. The state cautiously supported the cult of local memories even as it sought to co-opt them and grappled with their cultural and political implications. The current enthusiasm for local memories, Gerson thus finds, is neither new nor a threat to Republican unity. More broadly yet, this book illuminates the predicament of countries that, like France, are now caught between supranational forces and a revival of local sentiments.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

INTRODUCTION: Local Memories and Modernity

PART 1: Le Pays

ONE. The Field of Local Memories

PART II: L'Amour du Pays

TWO. Recomposing Self and Nation

THREE. The Pedagogy of Place

FOUR. Local Memories and the Governing of the Minds

PART III: Le Mal du Pays

FIVE. Town, Nation, or Humanity?

SIX. Local Difference and the State

SEVEN. The Quandary of Local Initiative

EIGHT. Sur les Lieux PROVINCIAL ELITES BEFORE THE STATE

EPILOGUE: The Return to the Local

Selected Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (p. 291-314) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 26. Mrz 2019)

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9781501724312

1501724312

OCLC:

1080549803