Is the Library a Political Institution?: French Libraries Today and the Social Conflict between Démocratie and République

Merklen, Denis Is the Library a Political Institution?: French Libraries Today and the Social Conflict between Démocratie and République. Library Trends, 2016, vol. 65, n. 2, pp. 143-153. [Journal article (Paginated)]

[img]
Preview
 Text
Library a political institution.pdf - Published version
Download (114kB) | Preview
Alternative locations: http://doi.org/10.1353/lib.2016.0027

English abstract

Public libraries in the outlying suburbs of French cities, which are called banlieues, face many conflicts, occasionally violent. These conflicts take place within the context of important social, cultural, and political transformations that have accelerated during the last fifteen years. Librarians, faced with several competing conceptions of the political role of libraries, seem to waver among démocratie (democracy), République (French Republic), and aspects of libraries that feature in social conflicts in which the classes populaires (roughly translated as “working classes”) are protagonists. The author of this paper shifts from French (his usual language) to English to highlight the place of libraries in the political sphere of contemporary French society.

Item type: Journal article (Paginated)
Keywords: public libraries, france, politics
Subjects: A. Theoretical and general aspects of libraries and information. > AZ. None of these, but in this section.
Depositing user: Stacy Konkiel
Date deposited: 14 Feb 2017 07:54
Last modified: 14 Feb 2017 07:54
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10760/30858

References

Bec, C. (2014). La sécurité sociale: Une institution de la démocratie [Social security: An institution of democracy]. Paris: Gallimard.

Benjamin, W. (1996). The task of the translator. In M. Bullock & M. W. Jennings (Eds.), Selected writings (Vol. 1). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Bertrand, A.-M. (2004). Les bibliothèques [Libraries]. Paris: La Dispute.

Dubet, F. (1985). La galère: Jeunes en survie [Hard times: Young people struggling to survive].

Paris: Fayard.

Durkheim, E. (1960). Les règles de la méthode sociologique [The rules of sociological method].

Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. (Original work published 1895)

Fleury, L. (2014). Sociology of culture and cultural practices: The transformative power of institutions.

Chicago: Lexington Books.

Fleury, L. (2015). L’Etat et la culture à l’épreuve du néo-libéralisme: Bouleversement his-

torique, retournement axiologique? [State and culture under the test of neoliberalism: Historic upheaval, axiological reversal]. In S. Dayan-Herzbrun, N. Murard, & E. Tassin (Eds.), Tumultes: L’État: Concepts et politiques [Tumult: The state: Concepts and policy] (Vol. 44) (pp. 145–157). Paris: Editions Kimé.

Geertz, C. (1988). Works and lives: The anthropologist as author. Stanford, CA: Stanford Uni- versity Press.

Kokoreff, M. (2008). Sociologie des émeutes [The sociology of riots]. Paris: Payot-Rivages. Kokoreff, M., & Lapeyronnie, D. (2013). Refaire la cité: L’avenir des banlieues [Reviving the city:

The future of suburbs]. Paris: Editions du Seuil.

Lapeyronnie, D. (2008). Ghetto urbain: Ségrégation, violence, pauvreté en France aujourd’hui [Urban ghetto: Segregation, violence, poverty in France today]. Paris: Robert Laffont.

Merklen, D. (2013). Pourquoi brûle-t-on des bibliothèques? [Why did they burn libraries?]. Vil- leurbanne, France: Presses de l’ENSSIB.

Merklen, D. (2015, February). En alguna parte del mundo: Montevideo, Buenos Aires y Paris [Somewhere in the world: Montevideo, Buenos Aires, and Paris]. Papeles del CEIC: International Journal on Collective Identity Research, 1, 1–21. Retrieved from http://www.ehu .eus/ojs/index.php/papelesCEIC/article/view/13104

Merklen, D., & Murard, N. (2013, November 7). Why are people setting fire to libraries? (K. McNaughton, Trans.). Retrieved from http://www.booksandideas.net/Why-are-people -setting-fire-to.html

Sagnas, A. (2014). Des bibliothèques populaires à la lecture publique [Popular libraries for public reading]. Villeurbanne, France: Presses de l’ENSSIB.

Wismann, H. (2012). Penser entre les langues [Thinking between languages]. Paris: Albin Michel.


Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item
Contact us
Send email Sponsors
Sponsor: AIMS Sponsor: D&P Sponsor: UniNa CAB Get connected
Facebook Facebook Twitter Twitter Linkedin LinkedIn RSS RSS