French Ambivalence Towards the Concept of ‘Indigenous People’: Museums and the Māori

ABSTRACT

Museums around the globe have experienced important changes in recent years in response to decolonisation processes and the demands of indigenous peoples. French museums are no exception, but the transformations have certain French hallmarks. This article explores the way France is dealing with its colonial legacy and, by means of two case studies, unravels the diverse political and historical particularities of the French context. The first looks at the results of a comparative analysis of the French and Québécois public’s response to the travelling exhibition E tū ake: Standing Strong produced by the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. The second focuses on the repatriation ceremony of Māori toi moko (tattooed preserved heads) that took place in Paris in January 2012. These two case studies examine the French uses of concepts such as ‘community’, ‘minority’, and ‘indigeneity’ as well as the complex relations between religion and rationality, ancestral presence and materialism in French public life. The article investigates how these concepts participate in the fabric of French society, and thus in shaping contemporary museum landscapes.     

Ethnocentrism and ideology*

Ethnic politics is a paradoxical phenomenon in France. While predominant French ideologies and institutional arrangements reinforce a ‘no ethnic politics’ model, there have been substantive challenges to this traditional model, including changes in state practices, and the political emergence of Franco‐Maghrebis and the immigrant association movement. Using the affaire des foulards [headscarves affair] of 1989 as a case‐study, the article seeks to clarify the ethnic politics paradox in France. I argue that the emergence and configuration of ethnic politics in France are being shaped by a series of constraints. These constraints are reflected in the ways in which the headscarves affair was created, defined, and managed. I suggest that the constraints are rooted not only in French ideologies and institutional arrangements, but also in the ‘nationalist logic’ of contemporary French immigration politics, the integrationist strategies of Franco‐Maghrebi groups, and the immigré perspective of the state and political community.     

The invader,the enemy within and they-who-must-not-be-named: how police talk about minorities in Italy,the Netherlands and France

How people talk about ethnic minorities is a sensitive subject, especially in law enforcement. We know little about it as far as continental Europe is concerned. This article is about how police officers talk about minorities in France, in Italy and in the Netherlands. How do speech norms (‘political correctness’) apply outside the anglophone world? Is there a relation between speech norms and practices? This exploratory study is based on interviews with fifty-five police officers from France, Italy and the Netherlands. In these countries, police officers are aware that displaying overt racism is not socially desirable. Interviews show that there are vastly different speech norms governing decent race talk in the three countries. Specifically, we compare: how police use ethnic categories; how police anticipate accusations of discrimination; and how police theorize the over-representation of ethnic minorities in crime. French respondents respect much stricter speech norms than Dutch or Italian ones.     

The mainstream right and the politics of immigration in France: Major developments in the 1980s

This article describes a typology of international migrants, particularly as applies to the situation in western Europe since World War II, and it discusses the applicability of the various types of migrant categories thus identified for the analysis of immigration policy in France during the 1980s. Approaches and criteria in the political analysis of immigration policy are discussed. The subsequent presentation focuses especially on the orientations about immigration of the country's mainstream right‐wing parties, while in and out of government. In conclusion, the article addresses likely future concerns of the politics of immigration in France, especially in the light of an increasing nervousness that Islamic fundamentalism in former north‐African colonies in the French sphere of influence will lead to greater ethno‐religious tensions in mainland France.     

Beyond blasphemy or devotion: art,the secular,and Catholicism in Paris

In this article I explore the relationship between the secular and ‘cultural’ Catholicism in France through the lens of a contemporary art exhibit displayed at a new project of the French Catholic Church. Visitors’ varied responses to the exhibit, I argue, ultimately reinforced the organizers’ claim that the activities that occur within this ‘non‐religious’ space of the French church are self‐evident aspects of a broadly recognizable and ‘secular’ French or European culture.     

Counterpolitics of Liberation in Contemporary China: Corruption,Law, and Popular Religion

This article explores the hidden transfers between law and religion by focussing on the conditions of existence of ‘liberated’ peasant subjects in contemporary China. The post-Maoist era sought to create new citizens from the collectivised Maoist masses who are subject to market reforms and a new politics of ‘governing through law’ (fazhi). At the same time, new religiousities have blossomed in the Chinese countryside. Representing ‘feudal superstition’, their collective practices remain illegal until today. I argue that, beyond the issue of belief, contemporary ‘feudal superstition’ does not represent a form of anti-secular resistance, but rather confirms the central tenets of Chinese secularism from the perspective of ‘failed’ peasant subjects. Where the realities of market liberalisation and governing through law are experienced as corruption, feudal superstition recreates the conditions to realise liberated peasant subjects: a participatory local public sphere, political visibility, investments in the public good, and a new collective property.     

Does French Islam Have Borders? Dilemmas of Domestication in a Global Religious Field

Although many accounts of transnational religious movements emphasize mobility and communication, equally important are efforts by both political actors and religious leaders to carve out distinctive national forms of religion. In this article I examine dilemmas faced by Muslims in France who seek both to remain part of the global Muslimcommunity and to satisfy French demands for conformity to political and cultural norms. I consider the history of immigration and the importance of French notions of laïcité but emphasize the structural problem of articulating a global religious field onto a self-consciously bounded French nation-state. I then draw on recent fieldwork in Paris to analyze two recent public events in which attempts by Muslim public intellectuals to develop an "Islam of France" are frustrated by internal, structural tensions concerning religious authority and political legitimacy, and not simply by a conflict between "Muslims" and "France."     

Prediction of beef eating quality in France using the Meat Standards Australia system

An experiment was set up for (i) comparing Australian and French consumer preferences to beef and to (ii) quantify how well the Meat Standards Australia (MSA) grading model could predict the eating quality of beef in France. Six muscles from 18 Australian and 18 French cattle were tested as paired samples. In France, steaks were grilled ‘medium’ or ‘rare’, whereas in Australia ‘medium’ cooking was used. In total, 360 French consumers took part in the ‘medium’ cooking test, with each eating half Australian beef and half French beef and 180 French consumers tested the ‘rare’ beef. Consumers scored steaks for tenderness (tn), juiciness (ju), flavour liking (fl) and overall liking (ov). They also assigned a quality rating to each sample: ‘unsatisfactory’, ‘satisfactory everyday quality’ (3*), ‘better than everyday quality’ (4*) or ‘premium quality’ (5*). The prediction of the final ratings (3*, 4*, 5*) by the French consumers using the MSA-weighted eating quality score (0.3 tn + 0.1 ju + 0.3 fl + 0.3 ov) was over 70%, which is at least similar to the Australian experience. The boundaries between ‘unsatisfactory’, 3*, 4* and 5* were found to be ca. 38, 61 and 80, respectively. The differences between extreme classes are therefore slightly more important in France than in Australia. On average, even though it does not have predictive equations for bull meat, the mean predicted scores calculated by the MSA model deviated from observed values by a maximum of 5 points on a 0 to 100 scale except for the Australian oyster blade and the French topside, rump and outside (deviating by <15). Overall, the data indicate that it would be possible to manage a grading system in France as there is high agreement and consistency across consumers. The ‘rare’ and ‘medium’ results are also very similar, indicating that a common set of weightings and cut-offs can be employed.     

BIOETHICS AND DEMOCRACY: COMPETING ROLES OF NATIONAL BIOETHICS ORGANISATIONS

In establishing National Bioethics Organisations (NBOs), liberal democracies seek to acknowledge the diversity of strongly held ethical positions and the imperative to engage in public debate about important bioethical decisions. NBOs are typically given a range of responsibilities, including contributing to and stimulating public debate; providing expert opinion on relevant issues for policy deliberations; and developing public policy. The state is now found to have an interest in areas previously thought to be a matter of individual choice. NBOs can provide one way of opening up public debate to allow the diversity of views to be heard in a manner that is well‐informed, articulate and responsive to both expert and ‘lay’ public views. We draw on debates in political theory about democratic decision‐making and on the policy making roles of some key NBOs. We are particularly interested in examining the capacity of NBOs to meet the democratic ideal of effective participation by the public, or citizenry, especially by those who are directly affected by the policies, in the development of effective public policy. We provide a basic framework for policy development involving NBOs that can begin to meet this ideal, a process of ‘contested deliberation’.     

Explicating the Air: The new Smokefree (and beyond)

In this paper, I examine how the explication of the air has figured environments, places, politics and the constitution of ‘the public’ in the era of smokefree. I argue in this paper that an especial imaginary of the air, one that recalls and revitalises much earlier notions of the air as bearer of miasmatic pollution, and even earlier ideas about the physical quality of the air and its relationship to the political state, has shaped how persons and places are formed and subject to inclusion and exclusion as part of the new politics of ‘the public’. I draw attention to the ways in which these configurations of persons and places have relied upon the explication of the air itself, and to the consequences of explicating the air.     

The terms of the debate: Untangling language about ethnicity and ethnic movements

Theoretical debates on ethnicity suffer from a general confusion about the divergent meanings which academics ascribe to key terms. ‘Primordialist’ approaches include biological, psychological and cultural explanations, whose conflation tends to confuse proponents and critics alike. ‘Instrumentalist’ approaches conflate all ethnic movements within a profile of political opportunism, failing to recognize the varying degrees to which underlying social‐institutional incompatibilities may contribute to ethnic conflict. ‘Constructivist’ approaches vacillate between a focus on the influence of intellectual ethnic discourse and an understanding of ethnic identity as developing out of wider bodies of social experience. Greater attention to the varying contribution of ‘deep’ culture to ethnic conflict can clarify why these subschools find such differences among ethnic movements, which can indeed be understood to vary along a spectrum of political functions: at one pole, ethnic movements seek to inflate ethnic sentiment for political purposes; at the other, they seek rather to reconstruct the existing political position of a distinct cultural formation. This distinction can permit more appropriate policy‐making towards the resolution of ethnic conflict, yet raises new challenges to the biases of the researcher.     

The making and representation of Muslim identity in Britain: conversations with British Muslim ‘elites’

The common nomenclature of ethnicity, race and colour has been found wanting in theorizing and dealing with the Muslim presence in Britain. This study of 24 prominent British Muslims – including political, policy and academic/intellectual ‘elite’ – explores the making and representation of Muslim identity in Britain. We explore this through three considerations: Muslimness as a ‘master status’; leadership and representation in relation to British Muslims; and the public performance of Muslimness during ‘key moments’.     

Transnational policy migration,interdisciplinary policy transfer and decolonization: Tracing the patterns of research ethics regulation in Taiwan

Research ethics regulation in parts of the Global North has sometimes been initiated in the face of biomedical scandal. More recently, developing and recently developed countries have had additional reasons to regulate, doing so to attract international clinical trials and American research funding, publish in international journals, or to respond to broader social changes. In Taiwan, biomedical research ethics policy based on ‘principlism’ and committee‐based review were imported from the United States. Professionalisation of research ethics displaced other longer‐standing ways of conceiving ethics connected with Taiwanese cultural traditions. Subsequently, the model and its discursive practices were extended to other disciplines. Regulation was also shaped by decolonizing discourses associated with asserting Indigenous peoples’ rights. Locating research ethics regulation within the language and practices of public policy formation and transfer as well as decolonization, allows analysis to move beyond the self‐referential and attend to the social, economic and political context within which regulation operates.     

Le principe de l’anonymat du donneur de gamètes à l’épreuve de son contexte. Analyse des conceptions juridiques de l’identité

This study clarifies the lively debate surrounding the anonymity of gamete donors. This principle, which has not been challenged since 1994, is currently criticized by a number of people, who were conceived through medically assisted procreation technologies with donor and who now have reached adulthood. Their testimony has a very significant impact on French public opinion. Several official reports have already suggested that the anonymity of gamete donors may well be removed under certain circumstances. To understand why public opinion has evolved so dramatically, we must revisit the legal position of gamete donors in the specific context of less visible changes in the law. Indeed, the legal concepts of parenthood and identity have been reshuffled over time, and such changes have deeply affected the legal issues relating to the anonymity of gamete donors. Formerly, the law governing the identification of individuals was shaped by political and social objectives. Now it is more concerned with the sense of identity and personal fulfilment of people. This change, based on modern western notions of egalitarianism and individuality, has dramatically affected the outcome of parenthood trials. Moreover, biological tests have made the truth available like never before. The possibility of finding out the truth has shocked the practice of many areas of family law and has created a new set of challenges, especially when the secrecy of the genetic parents has been legally established. In France, women have traditionally been able to deliver their children anonymously. A deadlock has resulted, which may now be overcome by introducing a new concept of personal origins. Now the law is evolving to permit the children to demand their biological mothers’ identity under certain circumstances, but without affecting anyone’s rights. The concept of personal origins has been quite successful on the European scene and has also charged the debate. It is now recognized under French and European laws that individuals must have privileged access to their personal origins. Can the principle of anonymity of gamete donors remain immune from such a (r)evolution ?     

Templates and exclusions: victim centrism in Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Indian residential schools

In this article I use an ethnographic approach to consider the causes and consequences of a focus on ‘survivor’ experience in Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) on Indian residential schools. In this Truth Commission, the interconnected concepts of ‘survivor’, ‘cultural genocide’, ‘trauma’, and ‘healing’ became reference points for much of the testimony that was presented and the ways the schools were represented. Canada's Truth Commission thus offers an example of the consequences of ‘victim centrism’, including the ways that ‘truth‐telling’ can be influenced by the affirmation of particular survivor experiences and the wider goal of reforming the dominant historical narrative of the state through public education. Canada's TRC was limited by its mandate to a particular kind of institution and scope of collective harm. It was at the same time active in its creation of narrative templates, which guided the expression of traumatic personal experience and affirmed the category of residential school ‘survivor’ as the focal point for understanding policy‐driven loss of language, tradition, and political integrity.     

Growing evidence for contacts between Polish and French geologists in the middle of 19th century

The paper presents results of studies on contacts and cooperation of Polish and French geologists in the middle of 19th century. The studies carried out in France (Pierre-et-Marie-Curie University, ‘Muséum national d’histoire naturelle’, Archives of the French Academy of Sciences, ‘Societé géologique de France’ in Paris and Claude-Bernard University in Lyons) and Poland have made it possible to gather data casting new light on the scale and intensity of the cooperation. The newly gathered information is mainly related to two outstanding geologists from these times: L. Zejszner, Professor at the Jagellonian University in Krakow; and E. Hébert, Professor at Sorbonne in Paris. It was found that in these times the collections of Sorbonne already comprised very numerous Polish fossils gathered by Beicher, Curet, Hébert, Lambert, Munier-Chalmas, Petitclerc and Zejszner and other researchers and collectors. This paper also presents information on Poles who were members of the Geological Society of France, unknown letters from E. Hébert to Polish geologists, a speech by E. Hébert delivered at the meeting of the Society to commemorate achievements of L. Zejszner, and data on contacts between L. Zejszner and d’Orbigny.     

Face à une suspicion de cancer ou de récidive de cancer : pratiques,communication et difficultés des médecins nucléaires français

Nuclear imaging techniques have been occupying an increasingly large place in the study of potentially cancerous morphological abnormalities. A National French survey was conducted among members of the French Society of Nuclear Medicine (Société française de médecine nucléaire) to study the usual practices of nuclear medicine physicians regarding information and communication during the “pre-announcement” stage of a cancer diagnosis. Sixty-six doctors (with an average of 44.7 years of age and 16.3 years of experience) working in mainland France responded to the online survey between November 2013 and February 2014. Most physicians said that they were uncomfortable in this kind of situation. Half of the doctors interviewed faced that situation at least 5 times a month. Communication habits were varied: 20% of them adopted a systematic approach (chose ‘always’ or ‘never’ to communicate information regardless of the patients’ demands) and 80% adapted their approach to the situations and to the patients (communication ‘on case by case basis’ and ‘upon request’). The survey also showed that professionals have contrasting views on the relevance, interest and risks of informing patients about the results of the tests in this kind of situation. Our study shows that it is necessary to discuss the position of nuclear medicine physicians in the pre-announcement procedure set out in the French Cancer Plan so as to reduce the challenges facing them while at the same time organizing and defining their roles.     

Use and influence of composite indicators for sustainable development at the EU-level

Considering the on-going strive towards new, alternative indicators to measure our societal development pathways, and the fact that policy indicators remain largely enigmatic with regard to their patterns of embeddedness in institutional decision-making processes, it appears necessary to work towards reducing our lack of understanding of their interactions with policy-making. In the present paper, we focus on exploring the significance of composite indicators for policy making in the particular policy environment of the EU-institutions. Our research is underpinned by the conviction that such indicators are not systematically used directly, but have an indirect influence on policy making that needs to be better understood. Our analytical framework – in order to analyse the ways in which composite indicators enter policy processes – is characterised by the distinction between the ‘use’ and the ‘influence’ of indicators on the one hand, and on the other hand between 3 types of factors: indicator factors, policy factors and user factors. Our empirical results show that while most of the academic attention and political debate around indicators has tended to focus on ‘indicator factors’, such quality attributes actually mattered relatively little in our setting as determinants of indicator influence. This rejects the idea that the robustness of evidence would lie exclusively in its technical quality and in the independence of its producer, and instead calls attention to the processes of evidence-construction. Simultaneously, ‘user factors’ (beliefs and representations of policy actors) and ‘policy factors’ (institutional context) were crucial as explanatory factors of the policy mechanics we identified.     

British and French policies towards high-skilled immigration during the 2000s: policy outplays politics or politics trumps policy?

Within the context of global competition for human talent, two policy shifts in favour of the promotion of high-skilled immigration (HSI) were observed in the UK and France during the 2000s. In light of similar policy inputs, this article compares the development and implementation of the British Highly Skilled Immigration Programme between 2002 and 2008 and the French Carte de Competences et Talents (Card of Competences and Talents) from 2006 to 2009. This research explores whether there was an overall convergence across these two European countries' policies towards HSI and if they have conformed to a similar client politics model. Whereas this politics model was identified in the UK, a policy gap was observed in France. This article relates the identified divergences with the political agency of the British and French policymakers, while the conclusions argue that politics trumped policy in the two selected cases.