Rites of the Republic

Mark Ingram is Associate Professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures and in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland.

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction Defining culture: State cultural policy and discourse on the arts in France"Culture" in local perspective: The TRAC of Beaumes de VeniseThe Friche la Belle de Mai: Redefining state cultural policy in "Euro-Mediterranean" Marseille"Unity in Diversity" in EU and municipal cultural policy: Avignon and Marseille as European capitals of culturePerforming "citizens' theatre": Rites of the Republic between Europe and the Mediterranean"Citizens' Theatre" in post-colonial Europe: New foundations for the politics of culture? Conclusion: The state, the arts, and the polis BibliographyIndex

Ingram's study artfully demonstrates how the practices and 'rites' of state cultural policy are incorporated and negotiated at quotidian, embodied levels, even as European integration and globalization expand the scales at which individuals think and live. - French Studies Drawing on research spanning two decades, [Ingram] is well positioned to address how these cultural producers creatively respond to a perceived crisis of postcolonial French identity and to processes of Europeanization and globalization. The result is a widely accessible ethnography that will appeal to scholars of contemporary France both inside and outside the field of anthropology. - American Anthropologist [...] this work of contemporary scholarship celebrating the role of the arts in promoting dialogue and community-building, with its ample maps, images, background information, and rich ethnographic detail will be appropriate for undergraduates as well as scholars of France and beyond. It provides a welcome new perspective on French cultural policy and challenges to republican universalism. It also offers a clear, on-the-ground account of local impacts of EU cultural initiatives, and the consequences for artists of neoliberalization moves by the French state. It will be very useful for courses on theatre, the media and the arts; globalization, neoliberalism, and the state; contemporary French society; and the anthropology of Europe. - French Politics, Culture and Society