France
Where the yellow vests are heading next
Quick! Are there other lives? – Sleep in wealth
is impossible. Wealth has always been public property.
~Arthur Rimbaud
It has been a quiet few months for the gilets jaunes, until recently omnipresent in their fluorescent yellow, roadside emergency vests, protesting on roundabouts throughout France and television sets around the world. After shaking the foundations of the French political establishment as much as any protest movement of the past generation – each Saturday upon the next, long after Very Serious ...
read more "Which way off the roundabout"
read more "Which way off the roundabout"
Burning issues in French politicsA Season in Hell, the masterwork of French poet Arthur Rimbaud, was written amidst the conservative backlash to the revolutionary Paris Commune of 1871. From a farmhouse north of the city, the enfant terrible of French poetry ruminated on the failure of his own radical experiment with freedom, and the confusion, disillusionment and doubt that followed. Nearly 150 years later, contemporary France is roiled by its own Season in Hell, a deeply fractured and unsettled political moment in which dark phantasms grow large and the path to a ...
read more "Introducing a new project"
read more "Introducing a new project"
Quantité Critique (Critical Mass) is a group of sociology lecturers, doctoral students and undergraduates who have been investigating social movements in France since September 2018. For their survey on the ‘gilets jaunes’ (yellow vests) movement, they distributed questionnaires in a number of national Facebook groups linked to the movement. A total of 526 questionnaires were returned, covering the respondents’ degree of politicisation and links to the world of work. The group is also carrying out field work on several ...
read more "The core of the yellow vest movement rejects the far right"
read more "The core of the yellow vest movement rejects the far right"
The ongoing mobilisation of yellow vest adherents is arguably the most enduring and significant social movement in France since May 1968. It will have profound political consequences, though it is still too early to gauge their extent. Today, one of the most pressing questions for understanding what these long-term consequences might be is the political direction taken by the movement.
This article highlights the atypical, even paradoxical political profile of this movement, which is caught in a dilemma between unifying its demands, and...
read more "Ideological divisions in the ‘yellow vest’ movement"
read more "Ideological divisions in the ‘yellow vest’ movement"
The car drivers' uprising?Since November 17th, in response to Macron's announcement of a tax increase on petrol and diesel, France has been experiencing mass blockades of road traffic. Macron wants to use this eco-tax to finance climate protection measures. According to media reports, almost 300,000 people participated in blockades on the first day of protest, and there have already been more than 2,000 protests throughout the country. In addition to several hundred injured, two people have already lost their lives. The following Saturday there were visibly fewer ...
read more "The Yellow Vests in France"
read more "The Yellow Vests in France"