Regionalizmus Franciaországban (és tengerentúli területein)

Előadás-vázlat

Bevezetésként: fogalmi princípiumok: régió, regionalitás, regionalizálás, regionalizmus

A/ Történeti háttér, térségi örökség1- forradalmi reformok2- közigazgatási racionalitás3- intézményi komplexitás

B/ Nagytérségi gazdaság1- gyarmati korszak / európai szerepkör2- modernitás és tradicionalitás

C/ Nyelvi-kulturális tagoltság1- változás és állandóság2- „magunknak” vagy „velük”3- funciók és struktúrák

D/ Etnikai osztottság1- etnoszok a centrum ellen2- etnikumok egymás között3- etnikai kultúra reneszánsza4- szeparatizmus vagy univerzalizmus

E/ Politikai regionalizmus1- politikai érdek-regionalitás2- pártokrácia és jurisztokrácia3- helyi-ség és/vagy civil öntevékenység

F/ Makrofolyamatok:1- globalizáció2- ökopolitikai folyamatok3- eurokratizálódás

Bevezetésként:

Fogalomkörök

régió: 1) adminisztratív egység;2) földrajzi és jogi egység;3) decentralizált (helyi társadalmi) közösség széleskörű autonómiával; 4) történeti-kulturális vagy civilizatorikus entitás szimbolikus térfogalma;

Virtuális régiók (hozzávetőlegesen definiált vagy szimbolikus határokkal) A) nagytájak: Frízföld, Németalföld, magyar Alföld, balti államok, Szibéria, Mikronézia, mediterránum); B) „közép-európai régió”, eurorégiók, monszun-övezet, pálmaövezet; C) Kárpát-Európa Régió, Alpok-Duna-Adria térség, „latin-amerikai világ”, „arab világ”, „ortodoxia” vagy „muszlim térség”.Specifikusak (pl. funkcionális központ, vallási, üdülési, gazdasági tájegység, közigazgatási központ)

makro: pl. Budapest és vidéke, Pest megye Komáromig és Jászberényi; Szeged és térsége, vagy „japán piacok”, OECD-országok, Európai Unió

mezo: kb. jelenlegi magyar megyék léptéke, afro-amerikai kultúra, afrikai királyságokmikro: a volt járások, városkörnyékek, pl. Etyek Régió borai, Balaton-felvidék, stb.

regionalizmus: térbeli társadalmi törekvés, lényege a régiók közötti, alatti és fölötti dinamikus változások, kapcsolatok, hálózatok működtetésének, a nem-állami szintű önszerveződéseknek, térségi koalícióknak rugalmas egysége.

regionalizálódás: autonóm térszervező és reprezentációs eszköz, amely a régiók kialakításának állami és civil eszköztára közötti alku-mezőben teszi lehetővé az érdekek térbeli kifejeződését. Folyamata részben spontán, történeti, részben irányított, kereteit az autonómiák és alkuk adott viszonyrendszere alakítja ki és át.

regionalizáció: gazdasági-társadalmi-politikai térkezelési eljárás, amely közigazgatási és intézményes direktívákon alapuló összekapcsolódásokat kezdeményez a helyi társadalmak kulturális-gazdasági-életszervezési szintjein; másképpen nézve: globális és lokális kölcsönhatások kumulálódásának szintjén a „járási”/megyei/térségi/területi intézményrendszerek felülről való irányítása, adott esetben átrendezése, ellenőrzése, felülbírálata érdekében. Lényegében horizontális térfelosztás, mely reálfolyamatokat és intézményesülési folyamatokat köt össze, jobbára ellentétpárokban (így pl. település/lokalitás; térség/régió; ország/nemzet; Föld/globalitás; folyamatábraként: lokalizálódás→lokalizmus, globalizálódás→globalizmus); lehet decentralizáló felfogás (pl. nyelvi, életmód, kulturális térség), de centralizáló is (pl. ipari parkok, határövezetek, mobilitás-irányok, piaci kapcsolatok, innovációs struktúrák formáiban).

A/ Történeti háttér, térségi örökség Franciaországban

1- forradalmi reformok2- közigazgatási racionalitás3- intézményi komplexitás

A történeti-földrajzi értelmű regionalizmus-tudomány kezdetei a jezsuita oktatásig, a szakrális topográfiáig megy vissza, a lokalitás mint fogalom a 17-18. századi fizikai geográfiában gyökerezik, standardizált módszerek csak az egyetemeken kívüli kísérleti tudományosságban (migráció-földrajz, hadászati tudományok, gyarmati földrajz, energetikai földrajz) keletkeztek, geográfia tudományterületként elismerése csak az 1930-as években történt meg. A földrajzi képzelet tudományos tartalmai a) történetiek, b) gyarmatiak, c) szociálisak = a francia tér megkontruálása leltárak, statisztikák, térképek révén zajlott le a 19-20. században.

A konstruktum részei:

1) térségek pl. Ile-de France, Gallia, Gascogne, Voges, Baszkföld, Bretagnefelfogások pl. „belső” és „külső” ország különbsége, Észak/Dél osztottság

2) gyarmati területek

Nézzük ezt kibontva:1a) Főhatalmi centralizáció, protekcionista feudális gazdaság, rendek és rendetlenségek nemzeti históriája – szemben a „tartományok” önállóságával. Kiegyezési felszín: a regionális méretű egységek megteremtése (lásd később az igazgatástörténeti részben!)

1793 június, föderalista felkelés, parasztlázadások, vörös városok – tájak átnevezése ill. nevesítése, 89 département iskolai bebifláztatása /még 1950-ben is ugyanez van!/ – egyes térségek „nemzetkarakterisztikája” (pl. gascon „harcos”, breton „elmaradott”, korzikai „nacionalista”, baszk „szeparatista”)

18. század liberális kapitalizmusa (Benjamin Constant, Alexis de Tocqueville, Comte, Lammenais) és szociális érzékenysége (Lacordaire, Montalembert) a gyarmatfelfogásban és térségi szemléletmódban is érvényre jut

19. század konzervatív nacionalizmusa (Maurras, Barrès eszméiben), ciklikus recentralizáció (Ratzel térföldrajza és emberföldrajza révén), morphológiai felfogás (helyzetelemzés helyett minőségi mérés, kísérleti helyett leíró-megfigyelő szempont, pl. Vidal de la Blache, Henri Poincarré műveiben)

20. század térvesztései (első világháború után gyarmatok, központi szerepkör vész el, növekszik a kistérségek összefogásának programos szándéka), – közigazgatási ésszerűség, többrétegű szervezettség (Émile Durkheim, Marc Bloch, Lucien Febvre munkáiban is, de a területi közigazgatás elveiben is történeti erejű trendek megnevezése) → hely és miliő viszonya új felfogásmódokban, helyi emlékezet értékessé válása helytörténetben, társadalmi kölcsönhatások kutatása mozgalom-szociológiában és mikrotörténetírásban, később a politikatudományban is (Voutat 1992, Revel 1996, Augé 1984)

21. század: új frankofón centrum (Unió) – átmenet az intézményes irányítási komplexitás felé, autonomizmus (lásd bővebben Foucher művében, az „európai köztársaság” eszméjében és térfelfogásában, melyben az egység nem önmagáért, hanem valami vagy valaki(k) ellen érvényesül)

1b) Ázsiai, afrikai, atlanti, közép-amerikai birodalmak kutatása és uralni próbálása

- a térföldrajz „csinálja” (szolgálja) a gyarmatosítást (mondják a helyi társadalmak és a földrajztudósok is)

- zsákmányföldrajz és kalózföldrajz térképre vetül és térképészetet alakít ki.

1c) Dekolonizáció – kooperációs szerepkört és programideológiát szolgáltat a baloldal részére, az unité/ensemble hangsúlyozása a holisztikus megközelítés eluralkodása révén, egységben látás szükséglete és igéretei; identifikációs politikák gyakorlata…

Irodalom ehhez a témakörhöz: Revel; Claval; Durrieu; Foucher.

B/ Nagytérségi gazdaság

1- gyarmati korszak / európai szerepkör2- modernitás és tradicionalitás

1a - árutermelés és piaci felhozatal (regionális piacokról, gyarmatokról)1b - felvevőpiac és transzfer-funkció (anyaország hatása a gyarmatokra)1c - nemzeti gazdaság (autarchia szemben a szomszédsággal)1d - térségiség az unió felé (nyitás a kooperáció felé és egységteremtési igény a partnerek felé)2a - gazdaság szektorai 73% szolgáltatás / 23 % ipar / 7 % mezőgazdaság 2b - rural exodus = vidékiek és agrárfoglalkoztatottak tömeges városba és iparba áramlása, a regionális horizontok kitágulása2c - szociális és jóléti-gondoskodó centrum lehet a régió, vele szemben viszont az autonomizálódás és a lokalitás önmegfogalmazási igénye merül fel2d - zártság/nyitás arányváltozás (pl. migrációk, oktatás, tudományfejlesztés)2e - defenzív rurália, offenzív centralitás fordulata (a vidék hárítja a központ beleavatkozó politikáját, a központ viszont rákapcsol és alárendel annál inkább…2f - unionizálódás és szektoriális érdektagolódás (miközben egységesítenek, különérdekek érvényesülnek a piacpolitikában, határmenti övezetekben, tengeri kereskedelemben, alpesi turizmusban, győgyfürdő-kultúrában, eurokratizálódási lobbizásban – vagyis „szétszedik” a túlsúlyos, vízfejű központi érdeket helyi politikákká…

C/ Nyelvi-kulturális tagoltság

1- változás és állandóság2- „magunknak” vagy „velük”

3- funciók és struktúrák

1- lingua franca nyelvi uralma a késő középkortól fogva jelen volt és még ma sem mondtak le róla, holott az ország nyelvileg két elkülönült területre oszlik; a lokális érdekek fölértékelik a helyi hagyományoka, refolklorizálódás kezdődik, visszaparasztosodik a vidék; a térségi felfogásokban szerepet nyer az újhistorizmus szemlélete, újraértékelődnek térségek és szerepkörök, új funkciókat kap egy-egy régió (pl. mezőgazdasági vagy erdészeti helyett turisztikai, védelmi helyett határokon átnyúló kereskedelmi zóna lesz); állandósulni látszik a változás, ugyanakkor a hagyomány értékei felé fordulás ellene hat a változásnak; a térfelfogások kihatnak a szerepkörök keresésére, ez a kooperációkra, ez a földrajzi vagy megyei határokon átívelő egyéb partnerviszonyokra, ez pedig az önállóság fokozottabb igényére.

2- tájegységi nyelvi uralom történetileg is érvényes volt, a Forradalom óta tiltott helyi nyelvek és kultúrák időről időre új életre ébrednek; intenzíven folyik a szimbolikus politizálás, ennek része a Központtal való szembehelyezkedés, a lokalitás védelme, a helyi kooperációk szorgalmazása, vagyis annak eldöntése, hogy a gazdasági és politikai hatalmi szerkezet mivégre áll fenn, kit szolgál, „velünk van vagy ellenünk”, magunknak kell vele szemben kiharcolnunk az autonómiát, vagy adják azt és csak megőrizni kell…; fennáll a gazdasági, politikai, természeti tagoltság mellett egy nyelvi-kulturális is, sőt (történeti időkbe visszanyúlóan a vallási tagoltság is fennáll; mindezek a mentális átstrukturálódást, gondolkodásmódok és értékrendek revízióját segítik elő; mindemellett egy szociális

érzületpolitika is kifejez hovátartozásokat, pl. a kisebbségi identitást, a szociopolitikai tagoltság intézményeit, az érdekképviseleteket, stb.; régtől fogva jellemző a konfliktualitás vállalása, a helyi társadalmak konfliktusképessége a központ ellen hangolt, kooperációikat térségi kiterjedésben, horizontálisan képzelik el, nem vertikális és hatalmi szempontból osztott mezőkben;

3- határolt funkciók és határátjárások: miközben a jogi szabályozás, kutatás, térségfejlesztés FÖLÜLRŐL irányított módja szabja meg a működési gyakorlat és keret egy részét, megindul egy ALULRÓL jövő kezdeményezési hullám is; ez a kettős nyomás a megyékre és megerősödött hatalmukra is érvényesül, továbbá összetalálkozik egy új földrajzi-politikai térben, amely a régió (köztes, rugalmas és kellőképpen definiálatlan) terepe. A csere- és alkufolyamatok az új társadalmi mozgalmakban, regionalista törekvésekben jelennek meg az 1960-as évektől (pl. antimodernista, antinukleáris, etnoregionális, szeparatista, gyarmatfelszabadító, interregionális stb. törekvésekben).

D/ Etnikai osztottság

1- etnoszok a centrum ellen2- etnikumok egymás között

3- etnikai kultúra reneszánsza4- szeparatizmus vagy univerzalizmus

1 – Mind a régiópolitikában, mind a hatalmi vagy állampolitikai rendezőelvek között a középkorig visszanyúlóan jelen van az etnikai tagoltság problematikája. Ismeretes megannyi népcsoport, amelyek együtt inkább ma, külön-külön viszont évszázadok óta fejtörést okoznak a központosított állam kirányi vagy alkotmányos főhatalmának. Emellett nemcsak a gyarmati terület nagysága okán, hanem az autonómia-igényekre hivatkozva mindvégig fennállt, vagy ha olykor elhalni is látszott, többször újraéledt az etnikai csoporttudatok összefogása a központi hatalom ellen. Mind az etnikai és regionális, mind az önkormányzati és autonómia-problematikában jelen van ez a kihívás, a 20. század közepe óta kiegészülve a volt-gyarmati területekről az anyaországba érkező migráció révén. A lokalitás versus centralitás alapkonfliktusa a francia politikai rendszernek, s ez leplezetlenül jelen van az etnopolitikában is.

2 – A látszólag kétpólusú rendszer azonban jelentős belső tagoltságot mutat, ha közelebbről vizsgáljuk. Maguk az etnikai csoportok térbeli elhelyezkedése (szinte mindannyian a perifériákon, illetve részben a fővárosban és környékén), a nyelvi osztottság és a mentalitáskülönbségek jelentősége kiegészül azzal is, ahogyan az etnokultúra megpróbálja őrizni tradícióit, ahogyan kívülről jövő modernizációs késztetéseknek ellenáll, illetőleg ahogy az etnikumközi kapcsolatait egy-egy térségben alakítja. Baszkföld, Korzika, Elzász, Normandia (vagy a történeti Gascogne) nemcsak egykor volt idegen kultúrák térsége, hanem a kultúrakeveredések terepe is. A belső osztottság részint konfliktusos, részint kiegyezéses (utóbbi főként akkor, ha a lokalitás védekező erői a központ elleni küzdelemre vannak tartogatva). Az etnorégiók kulcskérdése tehát az interkulturális dimenzió, a kiegyezések, kollíziók és kooperációk összehangolhatósága – valamint ennek történeti trendjei, hullámzásai, változásai formájában.

3 – E történeti dimenzió az újkori francia államfejlődésben főként a gyarmati terjeszkedéskor kerül előtérbe, de az ország területén is jelen volt a 19. század végi okszitán mozgalom időszakában is, továbbá az 1960-as évek „etnikai reneszánsza” alkalmával ugyancsak. Az etnopolitika mint térségi társadalmi mozgalom – igen izgalmas kérdésköröket tartalmaz a politikatudományi és igazgatási szakterületek aktorai számára.

4 – Az izgalmak egy része azzal a tanulsággal bír, amely a francia állam funkciótudatában, európai szerepkörében és diplomáciai rangjának historikumában úgy jelent meg, mint az emberi jogok, az emberi (jellegzetesen persze: keresztény európai!) kultúra megtestesülésének, védelmének, képviseletének intézményes garanciája. Ez az egyetemessé növelt, egyoldalúan interpretált „univerzalizmus” került érdekellentétbe, konfliktusba, továbbá jogi és igazgatási szabályozás menti lehetetlen állapotba a legkülönfélébb szeparatizmusokkal vállalt konfliktusai esetében (közép-amerikai vallási szinkretizmustól, párizsi breton autonómia-mozgalomtól fekete-afrikai művészeti hatásokon át a baszk szeparatista robbantásokig megannyi formában). Ezek (nem teljes körű, de érintőlegesen

mégis figyelembe vett) összhatása napjainkban már azzá a konfliktussá merevedett, amely a szociális állam társadalom- és kultúrpolitikai szerepkörét tépázza meg éppen az államfenntartó logika mentén érvelő szabadságtörekvések érveivel. Univerzalizmus vagy szeparatizmus mint program, globalitás vagy minoritás mint életfeltétel, politikai-gazdasági érdek vagy kulturális túlélés mint esély lett az alapkérdés, amely éppúgy kihasználja, miként generálja, éleszti is a térségi törekvések politikai szintű jelentkezését.

E/ Politikai regionalizmus

1- politikai érdek-regionalitás2- pártokrácia és jurisztokrácia

3- helyi-ség és/vagy civil öntevékenység

1 - A jelenkori folyamatokat (durván) három egységbe tagolva és a régiók szempontjából áttekintve elsőként a politikai regionalizálás mutatkozik meghatározónak. Elzász németes vonzalma, Korzika elszakadási programja, Bretagne autonomizálódási reménye, a baszkok hangos mozgalma egyaránt a térségi érdektagolódás politikai töltetére utal. Ezt a jobb- és a baloldali pártok rendre ki is használják, meghirdetvén, „ami a népnek s szem-szájnak ingere”. Egészében mindez a térségi érdekhorizont kitartó erősödését, vastagodását, ill. a térbeli osztottság növekedését hozza magával. Nem beszélve itt most a gyarmatokról, amelyeken éppúgy érdek az autonómia, mint az európai szintű intézményrendszer és a távoli „anyaállamban” kijáró szavazópolgári jogosultság, elegendő talán annak megállapítása, hogy a régiós játszmák meghatározzák részben a politikum vertikális tagoltságát, részben a térségi kooperációkat (ezek olykor virtuálisak, hiszen csak az érdekegység köti össze őket).

2 – A folyamatban (akár a régiók mentén, akár tőlük függetlenül) épp az érdektagoltság régtől meglévő dinamikája, s emellett a jogi szabályozás feladatának az államot is szorongató feladata ad módot olyan elkülönülő csoportérdekek érvényesítésére, amelyek jogi vagy politikai szabályozási mezben, de voltaképpen egy-egy lokális-regionális vagy centrális érdekcsoport sikerképességének jegyében fogannak. Két dinamikus csoportból szövődik össze egy harmadik: a pártok erős társadalmi bázisa és e bázison nyugvó pártokrata intézményrendszer eltérő érdekhálót tart fenn, mint az igazgatási adminisztráció (melyet akár a pártok, akár a társadalom, akár a regionális policy-k felől nézve kötelező jelleggel illedelmesen utálni – ámde egyben respektálni is – illik); a harmadik szereplő a pártokon és bürokrácián kívül a mindkettőt kiszolgáló, mindenkit túlélő és minden folyamatot agyonszabályozó „jurisztokrácia”, a törvénykezés, társadalomvédelem, hatalmi érdekképviselet ügyvédi, bírósági, ügyészségi lobbija. E három szereplőcsoport tagolja belülről is a régiókat, ugyanakkor ugyanezen szereplők töltenek be mérvadó funkciókat a helyi, a megyei, a fővárosi és az európai adminisztrációban is. Ennyiben tehát a regionalizációs játszmák köztes térben folynak, de önállósulnak azok is, akik kihasználni képesek (például a frissen feltörekvő EU-adminisztráció).

3 – Mindez úgy van forrongásban, hogy közben elementáris erővel buzognak a helyi társadalmak, sosem látott tömegű a helyi kezdeményezések aránya, tömegesen vonulnak utcára és politikába a nem-kormányzati politikák képviselői, beláthatatlan tömegű a kulturális, kisebbségi, nyelvi, jogi, kommunikációs és más autonómiák követelésének

jelentkezése is. A helyi jellegű programok a régiókba kapaszkodnak, a civil társadalom az állam ellen dolgozik, a régiók köztes szerepébe pedig mindkettő egyidejű támogatása is belefér. A háttérben nemcsak a francia típusú politikai kultúra, ellenzéki és konzervatív mentalitások sokasága áll, hanem az erópai integrációs politikák pragmatikus hatása és ellenhatása, elfogadása és elutasítása is. A térségiség a hetvenes évektől kulcsfogalommá lett a francia közpolitikában, emiatt azután a politikai tudományokban is.

F/ Makrofolyamatok:

1- globalizáció2- ökopolitikai folyamatok

3- eurokratizálódás

1 – A regionális szintű folyamatok természetesen nincsenek a lokálisak nélkül, s mindez nemigen létezhet a globálisak nélkül. A franciák számára a gyarmatok elveszítése máig ható komoly érvágás, ennél fontosabbnak (és a regionalizációs játszmákra késztető hatásúnak) már csak azt tartják, hogy a világfolyamatok ellenében minden erővel védekezni kell. Ezen elsősorban az amerikaiak hatását értik, s ha van regionális eszme, amely az USA-ból jön, az reménytelenül nem képes gyökeret ereszteni Frankhonban. Ami azonban büszkeségük, s a globalizációs trendnek ellenhatásaként jelentkezik, az Kanada regionalizációs fogadókészsége, Amerika-ellenes védekező képessége, félig-meddig francia identitása – erre úgy tekintenek, mind a francia típusú térségi szemlélet és területi politika exportjára, amelyre (lám-lám!) még az amerikai féltekén is vevőnek mutatkozik a világ…

2 – Mindehhez (és a régiós képzetekhez, érdekekhez, játszmákhoz) tartozik az ökológiai védekezés makropolitikai programossága. Részint védtelenül (hisz pl. a japán – s mögötte, ki tudja, sokszor talán amerikai vagy más – ipartelepítés, a francia „Szilikon-völgy” kialakítása a déli országrészben nemcsak arra példa, hogy a tengermelléki szerepkörök is képesek a modernizációs útra tévedni, hanem az is, hogy az északi övezet szénbázisú, németes nehézipartól túlzsúfolt, idejétmúlt szerepkörét át kívánja venni a Dél, a mediterrán szellemiségű érdekszféra. Az ennek megfelelő környezet-, térség- és ökopolitika persze kiegészül mindezek mögött álló foglalkoztatottsági, szociális, civiltársadalmi és ökologista mozgalmak energiáival…

3 – S ha a nemzetek válsága, elérvénytelenedése zordan érinti is a francia Gloire, az „örök dicsfény” kisugárzását, épp a regionális lépték az, amely átveheti, kezelhető méretűvé formálhatja az igazgatás, a nyilvánosság, a gazdaság, az érdektagoltság és a helyi civil kultúra maradékait. Átvehetné, de ennek egyik akadálya éppen a regionalizációs játszmákból felserkenő Európai Unió, amely „lefelé” a régiókra hivatkozik-hagyatkozik, az államok felé pedig a nemzeti érdekszféra érinthetetlenségét látszik sugalmazni. Ebben a köztes – vagyis sem horizontálisan, sem vertikálisan nem definiálható – elkülönült érdektérben az eurokrata szakértelmiség építi ki játékterét, politikáit és győzelmének eredményeit learatva önálló állampótlékká növeszti az uniót. Ismét az egység-képzet, ismét a térbeli (virtuális) egyetemesség, ismét a definiált közszabadság az, amely a kortárs „fraternitásokat” létrehozza az egyenlőség jogosságára hivatkozva. A kiváltságok egyenlősége azonban átláthatóan az egyenlőtlenség lépcsőfokait rakja egymásra, s ha a globalizálás-ellenesség ehhez felhajtóerőt is ád, akkor a makroszféra újrafelosztásában érdekelt franciák nem véletlen brit- és német-

ellenességük térpolitikai helyfoglalásában mutatkoznak fővállalkozónak. Ez azonban már egy másik kurzus anyaga…

Javasolt (és részben hivatkozott) szakirodalom:

Bassand, M. 1983. Maldéveloppement régional et luttes identitaires. Espaces et Sociétés, No. 42., 13-26. p.Berthoud, G. 1978. Etat-nation et ethno-résistance. Pluriel, No. 15.Biró A. Zoltán 1992. A regionális identitás kialakításának néhány vonásáról. Regio, 3. sz., 61-71. p.Bourdieu, Pierre 1985. Az identitás és a reprezentáció. A régió fogalmának értelmezéséhez. Szociológiai Figyelő, 1., 7-22. p.Braudel, Fernand 1996. A Földközi-tenger II. Fülöp korában. I-III. kötet. Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, I. kötet. 7-112. p.Claval, P. 1987. The region as a geographical, economic and cultural concept. International Social Science Journal, No. 112. Regional Science. Oxford, Blackwell, 159-172. p.Galissot, R. 1979. Le stalinisme et la nation en Europe de l’Est. Politique aujourd’hui, No 5-6.A.Gergely András 1997. Kisebbség, etnikum, regionalizmus. MTA PTI Budapest.Grémion, Pierre 2002 Le système de régulation centre/périphérie de l’administration républicaine; valamint Conflits et dérégulations sous la Vieme République. Előadások, ELTE, Atelier, febr. 4.Guindani, S. – Bassand, M. 1982. Maldéveloppement régional et identité. Lausannes, Presses politechniques romandes.Hechter, M. 1975. Internal colonialisme. London, Routledge et Kegan.Hérault, Guy 1963. L’Europe des ethnies. Paris, Presses d’Europe.Lafont, Robert 1973. La revendication occitane. Paris, Flammarion.Ledru, Robert 1980. Espace et sociétés. Espaces et Sociétés, No. 34-35., 3-12. p.Loughlin, J. 1984. Regionalism and ethnic nationalism in France. In: Y.Mény - V.Wright eds. Centre-Periphery relations in Western-Europe. London, Allen & Unwin, 207-235. p.Nemes Nagy József 1996. Társadalmi térkategóriák a regionális tudományban. MTA PTI Etnoregionális Munkafüzetek, No. 17.Pellegrino, P. et al. 1983. Identité régionale et représentations collectives de l’espace. Berne, FNS.Person, Y. 1978. Contre l’Etat-nation. Pluriel, No. 6.Petrella, R. 1978. La renaissance des cultures régionales en Europe. Paris, Ed. Entente.Revel, Jacques 1996. Historiens et géographes au tournant du sičcle anthropologique. Előadás az Atelier Franco-Hongrois hallgatói előtt 1996. november 18-án. Ismertetését lásd az MTA PTI Etnoregioális Hírlevél 2. számában.Revel, Jacques 2002 A département-ok kialakulása. In Benda Gyula – Szekeres András szerk. Tér és történelem. L’Harmattan, Atelier füzetek, Budapest.Ronen, D. 1977. Du conflit de classe au séparatisme ethnique. Pluriel, No. 10.Tollis, G. de 1978. Identité culturelle et régionalisme dans le Val d’Aoste. Critčre, tematikus szám: La région, Le régionalisme. No. 23., 93-97. p.Touraine, Alain 1978. La voix et le regard. Seuil, Paris, 9-41. p.Voutat, Bernard 1992. Espace national et identité collective. Université de Lausanne, ISP No. 19.

Rövid francia régiótörténet

*1789. dec. 22. A Megyei Szerveződések TörvényeA megyehatárok kijelölésében az egykori provinciák határait figyelembe vették, de a nagy történelmi tartományokat (Provance, Normandia, Elzász) több részre szabdalták

*1800. febr. 17.-i trv. Centralizál, megyei szerveket központi hatalmi funkcióra állítja át (egészen a III. Köztársaság időszakának végéig).

A regionalizmus a közigazgatásban az I. világháború végéig elmaradott volt, kiemelt terület lett viszont ezután a belbiztonság (polgári védelem, közbiztonság) és a kereskedelmi-ipari fejlesztés programja.

*1919. áprilisi átalakítás a megyei közigazgatási kamarák eszközével befolyásolja a regionális rendszert: 17 kereskedelmi-ipari régiót alakítanak ki, később (1938) ezek átcsoportosításával 20 gazdasági régiót formálnak ki.

1941. ápr. 19-i trv. alapján a Vichy-kormány régióprefektusokat nevez ki a 19. századi provincializmus mintájára formált gazdasági és rendészeti elven. A háborút követően szalonképtelenné lett egy ideig a Pétain-rendszert támogató közigazgatás, de 1950-től mint tervgazdasági egységek éledtek újjá, 1955-től a megyéket programrégiókba csoportosították.

*az V.Köztársaság éveiben (1959. jan. 7. rendelet) megyeközi prefektusi konferenciákat hoztak létre tanácskozó testületként.

*1964-es közigazgatási reform régiónként két új intézményt alakítottak: regionális igazgatási konferenciát közigazgatási szakemberekből, valamint regionális gazdasági fejlesztési bizottságot (CODER) helyi érdekek képviseletére, gazdasági tervezés eszközeként.

*1972. júl. 5. trv. szerint a régió jogi személy lett, az 1971-es decentralizálási jelszavak alapján belső reform indult, de az állam és a lokalitás között elhelyezkedő régió inkább megyei szintű szövetségként viselkedett, semmint helyiként.

*1982-86 Deferre-reformok (bel- és decentralizálásügyi miniszter) a régiók közintézményekből regionális kormányokká alakultak át, végrehajtó hatalmat a prefektus helyett régiónként szervezett köztársasági megbízott gyakorolta, dekoncentrált szervek koordinációjával, választásokkal, országos politikára kihatóan.

A régió tehát Franciaországban ma igazgatási középszint, a megye egykori szerepkörével.

*1982-ben Korzika speciális különállást nyert el, állami támogatással, oktatási-kulturális-szociálpolitikai autonómiával. Korzika különjoga már jelzi az etnikai alapú regionalizálódás igényét, a baszk, breton és elzászi mozgalmak fölerősítik az etnorégió problematikáját. Már 1971-ben az 51,4 millió franciából

9 millió okszitán1,6 millió elzászi német600 ezer breton800 ezer korzikai150 ezer katalán90 ezer baszk nevezi meg magát etnikai szereplőként.

Közös etnoszociális jellemzőjük nemcsak az etnikai alapú politizálás, autonómia-követelés, hanem az is, hogy mindannyian periférián vannak. Ez egyszerre mutat szociális és regionális jellegű identifikációt!

A marginalitás és perifériális szerepkör jól tükrözi a „belső gyarmatosítás” folyamatát is: Robert Lafont elmélete szerint a Párizs és a központi régió szerepköre megfelel a 19. századi gyarmatosítások logikájának, csak éppen országon belül történik, a periféria kizsákmányolása és az etnikai régiók gyarmatosítása (történeti szerepük, letelepedési és migrációs zóna funkciójuk, sajátos multikulturális helytörténetük igazolja ezt) következtében függő helyzetbe, gyarmati sorba kerülnek.

Az 1980-as évek politikai és alternatív mozgalmai már kihasználják, monopolizálják az etnikai kérdést, a mandátumgyűjtő politikai jelöltállítási rendszer pedig kedvez a lokális politikai erőknek, hátországuk sokszor az etnoszféra lesz. Az etnikai ébredés, a nyelvi és kulturális mozgalmak nagy társadalmi energiákra támaszkodnak, a politikai képviseleti rendszer pedig ezek felhajtóerejét is kihasználja: 1988-ban a Nemzetgyűlés 577 képviselőjéből 130 regionális szintű képviseletet lát el, közülük 57 polgármesteri, 39 helyi politikai, 31 megyei képviselői, 4 pedig regionális tanácselnöki státuszban is van… A Nemzetgyűlésben a régiós képviselet a személyes területi érdekkapcsolatok rendszerét formálja.

A régiótörténet fontos momentuma, hogy az 1962-78-as időszakban a régiók létét és megerősítését a Francia Szocialista Párt is szorgalmazza, kiegészítve ezzel a regionális mozgalmak sokszínűségét, de egységesítve és uniformizálva is céljaikat, közösséggé formálva őket: a közvetlen választásokat szorgalmazzák, a politikai pártok szerepének növekedését is segítik ezzel, ill. a helyi önkormányzati erőket magasabb politikai döntés(előkészítési) szférákba vonják be ily módon.

A francia regionalizmus tehát a II. világháború előtt inkább reflex-jellegűnek tűnik, a regionalisták tevékenységében a modernizáció-ellenes egyház és a vidéki elit támogatása volt jelen. A Francia Föderalisták Uniója 17 különböző föderatív szervezet mozgalma volt (1953-ban esett szét), az európai föderalista eszméket hangoztatta, vagyis a nemzetállamok kikapcsolásával képzelte el az európai integrációt. A regionalizmus e formájában jelen van az a megosztottság is, hogy a rurális társadalmak, a francia vidék régtől fogva szemben állt a Párizs-Lyon tengely fölötti országrész iparosodott erejével és városiasodottságával, vagyis inkább parasztias, nagycsaládos, szegényebb, városhiányosabb volt (legalábbis az 1960-as évekig), a vidékiség elkülönülése az urbanizálódott központoktól tovább erősítette a kisebbségek által lakott térségek hátrányait (pl. Korzikáét, Bretagne-ét, Baszkföldét). A IV.Köztársaság modernizációs programja fenyegette a még megmaradt kapcsolatrendszert azzal is, hogy erősítette a különbségeket a tradicionalizmus és a modernizált szférák között. Ebben a trendben az V.Köztársaság idején a regionális, s még inkább az etnoregionális mozgalmak kiegészültek a főként nyelvi-kulturális mozgalmakkal, az alternatív és életforma-mozgalmakkal, a direktpolitikai szerveződésekkel is.

Fontos még hangsúlyozni, hogy a két főbb törvény, az 1986. III. 16-i és az 1992.III.22-i a regionális választások kiírására adott módot, vagyis a regionalisták ekkor nemcsak új pályákon juthattak politikai sikerhez, hanem egyúttal mintegy „tesztelték” is társadalmi támogatottságukat. Az akkori választásokon induló 15 párt között 13%-kal nőtt az Egyesült Regionalisták támogatottsága, ugyanennyit esett a szocialistáké, 7%-kal nőtt a Zöldeké és 4%-kal nőtt a Nemzeti Fronté. Míg a regionalizmus provinciális alkufolyamatként indult, idővel a nemzeti politika fölébe kerekedett, hatásfoka, horizontja nagy mértékben megnőtt.

Bővebben lásd még:

Navracsics Tibor 1996 A regionalizmus Franciaországban. A regionalizmus történelmi gyökerei. Comitatus, 6:39-46.Sipos Katalin 1993 A regionalizmus történeti és jogi aspektusai. MTA Állam- és Jogtudományi Intézete, Budapest.Loughlin, J. 1986 Federalist and Regionalist Movements in France. In M. Burgess (ed.) Federalism and Federation in Western Europe. Croom Helm, London etc., 76-98.Mazey, S. 1993 Developments at the French Meso Level: Modernizing the French State. In J.L.Sharpe (ed.) The Rise of Meso Government in Europe. SAGE, London etc, 61-89.

Háttéranyagok

The Regionalist Movement in France 1890-1914: Jean Charles-Brun and French Political Thought (Oxford Historical Monographs)Julian WrightBook Review

French regionalism has often been associated with the political right. Julian Wright's fresh analysis of regionalist political thought overturns that assumption. Jean Charles-Brun, a teacher and journalist whose eclectic connections have often puzzled historians, takes centre-stage. Through this intellectual biography, Wright unpacks regionalism's broad appeal and helps to explain the important role it plays in modern French politics.

SynopsisThis is a full academic study of the political thought of the French regionalist movement in the Belle Epoque. Julian Wright examines the private papers of Jean Charles-Brun, founder of the Federation Regionaliste Francaise, in detail. He rethinks the conceptual basis of regionalism through Charles-Brun's intellectual biography, showing that it penetrated the political debates of the period in Republican arguments about state reform. Despite the often made association of regionalism with the right, Dr Wright reveals the diversity of political views expressed and demonstrates that the connection to left-wing federalism was emphatically present in the intellectual background. Interwoven with this discussion is an examination of the personal mission of Charles-Brun. He saw himself as a reconciler, using his regionalism within a mission to heal the divisions of French politics and society.

Források: Regions and State - Research on the Frecnh Regionalism (in Japanese) Nihon Keizai Hyoronsha,

1992 (with T. Endo)

Markets and Regions - from the Historical Point of View, (in Japanese) Nihon Keizai Hyoronsha, 1993 (with E. Akimoto and T. Fuji)

The Basque Bourgeoisie Chooses Spanish Over Basque

Research on the social strata of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries shows that the Basque influential and dominant classes (ancient nobility, the merchant and banking bourgeoisie, the clergy and the jurists) derived their living from services to the King of France and Navarre (Lower-Navarre), from whom they received military ranks and pensions, and from the usurpation of noble titles and posts. Sponde, Bela, Belsunce, Gramont, Echauz and Meharin were some of the holders of social and political power who found social promotion, honor and wealth by integrating themselves into French seigniorial and monarchy society, and who, as a result, united their fortunes to that of the King of France and the French monarchic administration, in whose hands they left the future of the Northern Basque Country. This integration can be appreciated in the period of the religious wars, in which Basque seigniors (Luxe, Espelette, Garro, Etchauz, Domezain) submitted themselves to the protection of the King of France with whom they established ties of vassalage, especially with Charles IX. These ties became closer under Henry IV (Henry III of Navarre), who introduced numerous seigniors from the Basque Country into his court, among them, Armendaritz, Laxague, and Haramboure.

The process of integrating Northen Basque Country to France was accelerated with the consolidation and triumph of the Counter-Reformation, which ran parallel to French monarchic centralization.

"For the maintenance of liberties, exemptions and privileges" is a saying that was constantly repeated, from Palais to Ustaritz, by the Basque influential classes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and which has been interpreted by some historians as a demand for freedom and sovereignty for Basque institutions. However, such an interpretation is a historical contradiction since such alleged claims were made by the same individuals who were benefitting from careers in the French royal administration. The question of "freedom" in this period could be interpreted as a nostalgia for ancient liberties that had been lost in the face of the advance of monarchic centralization, but it could also express the rise of a class of merchants, landowners and bankers, in the name of "laissez faire, laissez passer," who opposed any kind of rules and duties. Two examples may help to illustrate this argument:

In 1784, the Bearnais lawyer Polverel drafted a memorandum at the request of the Estates of Navarre in which he justified all of the "liberties and exemptions" of the Kingdom of Navarre. In reward for this, he was admitted to the Estates of Navarre with noble rank. However, if we analyse the content of his proposal, we find that even while he revives the claim for local autonomy, which virtually everyone had allowed to fall into neglect, the author musters every type of argument against the "Administrator of Domains" who was attacking the privileges of noble houses belonging to ennobled bourgeois merchants and financiers. This is a far cry from the defense of the historic rights of Basques. The proof of this is that a few years later Polverel was to make a career for himself in the French Revolution.

The Garat of Ustaritz brothers, considered as defensors of the "Basque institutions," played an important role in the constitutional work of the French Revolution and in the introduction of the new judicial and administrative system. On the night of August 4th 1789, when all of the feudal privileges were abolished --happily for everyone including the Basque people-- but in which the Basque institutions were abolished at the same time, the Garat brothers took refuge in silence, which is not surprising if one considers the meaning and significance of liberalism.

The French Revolution finally gave the French language priority and it became the sole language of the republican state apparatus, including the administration and schools. The expression of Basque national identity in Northern Basque Country, as expressed in the work of Antoine d'Abaddie in Eskualtzaleen Biltzarra, was reduced to an oscillation between

Carlism and French regionalism. There were, however, some exceptions, such as writers Chaho and Broussain. Navarre's Truncated Territories within FranceIn the eighteenth century, Spanish liberalism was an ideology adopted mainly by the upper ranks of Basque rural landowners and the urban bourgeoisie who also owned or desired to own land. Basque elite, both rural and urban, were along with the Catalans, the most culturally advanced social sector in Spain. They quickly adopted the technical advances emanating from other European countries. Many sent their children to French and English universities, and to the University of Bergara. This social sector also gave the entrepreneurial inspiration to the Caracas Company, a Basque controlled trading concern largely responsible for developing Venezuela. Anthropologist Marianne Heiberg writes:

«In terms of identity this sector often described itself as the most `Spanish' in Spain. Its members regarded themselves as the direct descendants of those, `uncontaminated by either Jewish or Moorish blood,' who had reconquered Spain from the infidels and restored civilization and Christianity to the country. Although many were familiar with Euskera, Spanish was their preferred language both domiestically and publically.»

And,

«As importantly, Euskera was stigmatized as the language of the stables, the language of unsophisticated rustics in contrast to Spanish, the language of refinement, culture, education and urban success. And the stigma on Euskera deepened as the cities gained in prestige.»

From 1876 onwards, the composition of the dominant classes changed: the new institutional framework imposed on the Basque Country, that is to say, its integration into the Spanish market and legislative apparatus, made possible the emergence of the industrial and financial oligarchy which was to integrate itself into the Spanish dominant classes. In exchange, this bourgeoisie received an instrument for increasing its economic power with the system of `Conciertos Economicos' (Economic Concerts), which allowed them to control the provincial councils (Diputaciones) and reduce fiscal pressure on industrial production; this latter measure was to have repercussions on the working class and the popular strata. The Basque oligarchy became an Spanish national bourgeoisie; following the abandonment of its (theoretical) role in the construction of a modern Basque capitalist state, it opted for the construction of a modern Spanish capitalist state. The University of Bergara The `Real Sociedad Bascongada de Amigos del Pais' (Royal Basque Society of Friends of Bascongadas) was the main agency for the diffusion of the ideas of the Enlightenment and Spanish liberalism into the Basque Country, founded by the Basque aristocracy in Azkoitia (Gentry of Azkoitia) in 1764. This society provided the reformist Carlos III (1759-88), with the model for the subsequent establishment of similar societies throughout Spain. The new emerging European bourgeoisie looked for a new "humanist" ideology for its colonial relations. Colonial exploitation began to carry a "civilized" message.

The first article of the society statutes states: "the goal of this society is to cultivate the learning and the taste of the Basque nation for the sciences, the fine arts and the arts; to correct and refine its customs, banish idleness, ignorance and their fatal consequences and further tighten the union of the Three Basque Provinces of Alava, Vizcaya, and Guipuzcoa." The greatest cultural contribution of the Gentry of Azkoitia in the eighteenth century was the creation in 1767 of the "University of Bergara" with its famous laboratory for scientific research. The university or seminary of Bergara was the first secular university established in Spain. Notwithstanding their contribution to culture and science, the Basque aristocracy denied the Basque language the role of being the vehicle for teaching in higher education and research. The following subjects were taught at the university of Bergara: experimental physics, chemistry, mineralogy, humanities, mathematics, philosophy, ethics, fundamentals of religion, poetry, design, statistics, national history and `fueros' (special laws) of the Basque Country, euskara, latin, spanish, french, english, italian, vocal and instrumental music, gymnastics, fencing, and dance.

The seminary established contacts with the most important research centers in Europe. The Elhuyar brothers, northern Basques well-known for their success in the field of research, joined the seminary in 1778. In 1783 they isolated the element "Wolfram" (also called tungsten) from wolfram acid, the news made public by the Basque Royal Society in its magazine "Extractos." The Bergara university made a good contribution to culture and science, but excluded the Basque language from teaching and research. Inside the university, Euskara was given the rank of a museum or laboratory language, a treatment with repercussions to this day because it is the permanent attitude of the dominant Basque bourgeoisie. Scorned by the bourgeoisie, the Basque language and culture was kept alive in the popular traditions.

Sources: Jokin Apaletegi, Euskadi en guerre (Ekin, 1987); Luis Nuñez Astrain, Opresión y defensa del euskera, (Txertoa, 1977); Manex Goyhenetche, L'opression culturelle française en Pays Basque Nord (Elkar, 1974); Marianne Heiberg, The Making of the Basque Nation (Cambridge University Press, 1989). Forrás: www.ehj-navarre.org/navarre/na_culture_elites.html

The Regionalist Movement in France 1890-1914Jean Charles-Brun and French Political ThoughtJULIAN WRIGHT, Christ Church, Oxford

French regionalism has often been associated with the political right. Julian Wright's fresh analysis of regionalist political thought overturns that assumption. Jean Charles-Brun, a teacher and journalist whose eclectic connections have often puzzled historians, takes center stage. Through this intellectual biography, Wright unpacks regionalism's broad appeal and helps to explain the important role it plays in modern French politics.

Forrás: https://www.oup-usa.org/isbn/0199264880.html

Memorandum submitted by Professor Iain McLean and Alistair McMillan, Nuffield College, Oxford

 

REGIONAL FINANCE AND GDP IN EUROPE

  The different methods of allocating finance between central and regional government depend on a variety of factors, including the taxation systems of central and regional governments, the number of government functions carried out at the different levels of administration, and the historical and political development of the regional governments. As noted in Iain McLean's evidence to the Treasury Select Committee (q 31), the issues surrounding redistribution of government resources in different countries are complex, and a much more in-depth study would be required to address these fully. This note presents some basic findings about the distribution of spending and the regional GDP of a number of European States.

  One question from the Treasury Select Committee evidence that can be answered, is Mr Beard's enquiry about the differences in regional GDP across the regions of major European Countries (q 28). Eurostat have provided information on regional GDP across Europe, as well as in the European Candidate Countries (Eurostat news release no 13/2002, 29 January 2002). They note that Inner London has the highest regional per capita GDP (with results adjusted to control for exchange rate differences[5]), and that regional inequality appeared to be highest within the UK:

In seven of the 13 countries with at least two NUTS-22[6] regions, the highest regional per capita GDP was more than double the lowest. The highest figure was 3.7 times more than the lowest figure in the United Kingdom, the ratio was 3.1 in Belgium, 3.0 in France, 2.9 in Germany, 2.2 in Italy and Spain, and 2.1 in Austria (Eurostat 2002).

  The NUTS-2 categorisation used in the Eurostat analysis are based on the administrative divisions that exist in EU member states. In this note we look at regions of the major countries, in line with the approach used in the Fiscal Crisis of the United Kingdom paper.

  Table 1 presents an analysis of the range of GDP across the regions of some European Countries. This suggests that the broader pattern of regional inequality is not outstanding in the UK. France appears to have the most even distribution of GDP across regions (despite the inclusion of the exceptional De«partements d'Outre-Mer). The highest variation is in Belgium, caused by the small number of regions and the extremely high GDP of the Brussels-Capital Region. The case of Belgium shows that the choice of level of aggregation can influence any such analysis—in the UK the inner London effect noted above is diluted by its inclusion in the Greater London region. In Germany, the presence of rich city-States such as Hamburg, skew the distribution.

 

Table 1 Distribution of regional GDP in some European CountriesNumber of regions

Overall GDP per capita (PPS)

Standard deviation of per capita GDP for each region

Standard deviation as a percentage of average GDP

UK 12 21,395   3,864.4 18.1

Spain 18 17,480   3,620.6 20.7

Germany 16 22,579   6,509.2 28.8

Belgium   3 22,645 12,836.4 56.7

Italy 20 21,970   5,336.8 24.3

France 23 21,173   1,955.1   9.2

 

  The following sections present the country specific data used to construct Table 1, and provide a brief outline of issues relating to revenue allocation to regional governments in the countries.

BELGIUM

GDP per capita 1999 (Euro)

GDP per capita 1999 (PPS)

Brussels-Capital Region 46,989 46,179

Flanders 22,686 22,295

Wallonia 16,817 16,527

Overall 23,042 22,645

 

  Under the Saint Michaels Agreement (September 1992) Belgium adopted a federal constitution, as a means of resolving the tensions between the Flemish and French population (Delmartino 1996). This saw the construction of a complicated regional and cultural administration, recognizing three regions (Flemish, Wallonian, and Brussels-Capital Regions) and three cultures (Flemish, French, and German speaking). Since the 1970s there has been a move towards regional fiscal autonomy, although the regions have had limited tax raising powers and the complexities of the over-lapping regional and cultural bases of administration limited the scope of implementation. Under the Saint Michaels Agreement greater tax raising gathering rights were given to the regions, along with the introduction of a mechanism linking revenue to actual GNP growth.

  Delmartino, Frank (1996) "Belgium after the Fourth State Reform: Completed Federalism of Confederalism in the making?" in Gisela Farber and Murray Forsyth The Regions—Factors of Integration or Disintegration in Europe? Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft: 117-144.

FRANCE

GDP per capita 1999 (Euro) GDP per capita 1999 (PPS)

Ile de France 20,058 18,922

Champagne-Ardenne 21,247 20,044

Picardie 18,588 17,535

Haute-Normandie 20,880 19,697

Centre 20,328 19,176

Basse-Normandie 18,926 17,854

Bourgogne 20,439 19,281

Nord-Pas-de-Calais 17,937 16,921

Lorraine 18,745 17,683

Alsace 23,212 21,897

Franche-Comte« 19,479 18,376

Pays de La Loire 19,661 18,547

Bretagne 18,869 17,801

Poitou-Charentes 18,042 17,020

Aquitaine 20,580 19,415

Midi-Pyrenees 19,645 18,532

Limousin 18,216 17,184

Rho®ne-Alpes 23,096 21,788

Auvergne 18,946 17,873

Languedoc-Roussillon 17,576 16,580

Provence-Alpes-Co®te D'Azur 20,304 19,154

Corse 18,162 17,133

De«partements d'Outre-Mer 12,453 11,748

Overall 22,444 21,173

 

  Whilst French regionalism has been seen as institutionally and nationalistically weak (Corsica and the overseas de«partement excepted), there is a functional regionalism associated with the implementation of public-policy since the Etablissements Publics Re«gionaux in 1972. These reforms gave powers over regional and economic development, education, culture, and vocational training to the regions; although they have been described by Richard Balme as remaining "quasi-specialised attribution competencies, which means that regional initiatives are in principle limited to fields of intervention defined by law" (Balme 1998: 183). However, the relative strengths of de«partement, city, and national governments have restricted the scope for the political development of the regions, which has been reflected in a limited budget and weak social identification. Despite this weakness, the regions have been the conduit through which capital financing for infrastructure and education have been channelled (Balme 1998: 187-8).

  Balme, Richard (1998) "The French region as a space for public policy" in Patrick Le Gale«s and Christian Lequesne Regions in Europe. London: Routledge: 181-198.Forrás: http://216.239.39.104/search?q=cache:LlhK9VjdRa8J:www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200102/cmselect/cmtreasy/1047/2070305.htm++%22french+regionalism%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

Piac, beruházás és gazdaság francia és angol nyelven:

http://www.webimm.com/documents/pdf/investissementFrance_1er_sem_2002.pdf

On Observing the QuicksandMICHAEL O'BRIEN

Forty or so years ago, "the regional historian [was] likely to be oppressed by a sense of his unimportance" and to believe his moment was passing before the pressure of sweeping nationalisms.1 Feeling unimportant is something of a character trait for Southerners in American culture, but this pessimism proved not to be prescient, although the vitality of the regionalist idea has remained conflicted and uneven. Of late, historians of the American West have grown more interested in the idea, and the Midwesterners show signs of life, but the New Englanders are mostly indifferent, and those in the "Middle States" long since gave up the ghost. As usual, the Southerners have been most eager, most endowed with regional organizations, study centers, periodicals, publishers, tourist pilgrimages, and bric-à-brac. Indeed, the South seems often to be looked to by other regions as a model of how to invent and sustain an identity, when the Western by comparison seems diffuse and the Midwestern etiolated.2 So a historian of the American South comes to these articles on European and Asian regionalism with mixed feelings, greatly pleased to see such intelligent synthesis, but mildly puzzled at the notion that all this is news. In Mississippi, regionalism is not "a less-than-familiar perspective."

1

     Professor Applegate skillfully rehearses the multifarious ways in which regionalism can be understood. Many echo how Southern history has been configured. Seeing locality as a safely subsidiary form of nationalism was the meaning of Henry Grady's "New South" and the "local-color" school of the late nineteenth century, while Howard Odum and his disciples around the 1930s published big, fat books on American and Southern regionalisms. Earlier, there had been Southerners, such as John C. Calhoun, who spoke of "Southern rights" but were Unionist, and who thought localism to be an underpinning of a federal nationality. There had been others, secessionists such as Jefferson Davis, who concluded that American nationalism had failed and who grounded a new state on a different landscape of localities. Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address described the South as the site of the reactionary and counter-revolutionary, and many Southerners have thought him right and watched their neighbors for the un-American thing. That national politics is an aggregation of particularist politics was something James Madison knew and V. O. Key's Southern Politics in State and Nation argued in 1949. C. Vann Woodward's Origins of the New South, 1877–1913 (1951) contended that the South became a colonial economy of the North. William Faulkner grasped the problem of "multiplicity and fragmentation," and there is a whole literature on "the idea of the South," which might be described as "constructivist." Placing the South in the story of modernization has been going on for thirty years or more, as have books on the invention of nationality, tradition, and region, mostly before Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger. Southerners have even had the concept of the "post-Southern" for about twenty years, and they begin to have an intimation of a connection between regionalism and multiculturalism. Black Southerners and white Southerners, in their differing but interconnected ways, know a little of regionality as victimhood, the latter having buried their dead at Shiloh, the former having cut down their strange fruit. As to the tension between professionalized scholars and local erudites, most Southernists have a file of letters from vigilant women in Vicksburg and annoyed men in Alabama, who are not slow to correct one's misunderstandings of General Sherman or Great-great-uncle Beauregard.3

Forrás: www.historycooperative.org/journals/ ahr/104.4/ah001202.html

French Alterity Articulating Intra-National Difference in the New Europe Paul A.  Silverstein (University of Chicago) 

Questioning Europe in our fin-de-siècle moment requires the recognition of a distinct paradox:  that while dreams of the creation of a unified bloc are being realized, the continent finds itself increasingly divided by ethnic and regional nationalist movements.1  Even more surprisingly, such ‘minority’ groups have further legitimized themselves in and through the very institutions created by the

European Community, while simultaneously organizing their demands on the basis of events occurring outside of Europe’s territorial borders.  Not to slip into Spenglerian angst, this situation need not necessarily imply the decline or aufhebung of the ‘West’, but rather its further entrenchment in a globalizing world traversed by flows of information, commodities, and people.  In the case of the post-colonial Algerian community in France, it is clear that the 160 leagues of sea between Marseilles and Algiers have grown less insurmountable over recent years than the mere thirty kilometer distance separating suburban Sarcelles from center-city Paris.  The permeability of external borders (in spite of increased security measures) has in many ways been largely balanced by the growth of internal ethnic and religious frontiers.   At the root of the reformulation of center-periphery relations within Europe lies a history of labor migration both from former colonies and spheres of influence into the metropoles, as well as within the metropole itself, from France’s rural peripheries into its central urban areas.  In the case of Algeria, while economic immigration was put to an official end in 1973, by 1996 an estimated 1.5 million Algerian immigrants and their children had become permanent residents if not active citizens of the Hexagone.  Likewise, in spite of the influx of migrant labor and repatriated colonists from the other side of the Mediterranean, many regions in southern, Occitan-speaking France have actually experienced a migratory deficit since the end of the Algerian War in 1962 (Alcouffe et al. 1979: 43–48).2   Such migration, while largely circular, self-reproducing, and of short duration, has recently taken on a more permanent character, with families of several generations installed in the major French cities of Paris, Marseille, and Lyon and their surrounding housing projects.  The result has been the growth of identifiable ethnic and linguistic communities, occupying particular socio-economic and professional categories, and maintaining internal social cohesion through networks of cultural associations, self-help groups, and service industries (cafés, groceries, bookshops, etc.).   At the same time, these urban groups have effectuated close social and economic ties with their regions of origin through income remittance, family visits, and cultural-political activist groups with branches both throughout the region in question and in the diasporic communities.  In this way, the constitution of French sub-national alterity operates ironically through the medium of trans-regional – if not trans-national – connections. My ethnographic research in France conducted from March 1995 to November 1996 focused on the constitution and maintenance of one such diasporic community, that of Algerian-Berbers (or Imazighen) and their French-born children.  Expecting to focus on internal community dynamics and the relations between immigrant cultural associations and the state immigration apparatus, I proceeded to interview Berber militants and scholars, detailing their genealogies and histories of political activity.  However, in the process of establishing this particular cultural and political history, several significant events forced me to re-evaluate the exclusive focus of the research.  The first concerned the summer 1995 terrorist bombings of subway stations and public squares, attacks which were eventually attributed to the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA) who were currently fighting a civil war in Algeria.  This startling event elicited from observers three sorts of historical memories and references:  first, the obvious case of the Algerian War of 1954–62, during which the revolutionary National Liberation Front (FLN) wrote the book on guerilla warfare; second, the more recent 1986 set of terrorist attacks in Paris by a Lebanese militant group;  and finally, surprisingly, a non-Arab case – the 1968 bombing campaign by Breton nationalists against government targets.   This last historical connection found re-iteration in a second event which I witnessed:  the winter 1995–96 general strikes by French public workers.  While the strikers were responding primarily to the ‘austerity’ economic measures proposed by prime minister Alain Juppé, a seemingly unrelated group, the Breton nationalist movement, joined the marching unions, using this widescale anti-government protest as a forum to denounce recent government decisions of political and linguistic centralization.  Finally, the spectre of French regionalism haunted my research again in reference to a third event:  the celebrations and debates surrounding the anniversary of the 1980 ‘Berber Spring’ which launched the modern Berber Cultural Movement.  While these annual worldwide events generally focus on internal Algerian affairs, perhaps with some reference to larger Berber struggles throughout North Africa, 1996’s version took a very different tenor, as Occitan militants were invited to offer their own insights to the Berber cause.   In each of the three cases, then, events ostensibly about state security, the economy, and foreign policy respectively took on a cultural mien, being transformed by their participants and observers into an internal French debate concerning the legitimacy of ethnic differences in the French imaginary.  What became clear during the course of my research is that the French nation-state is today more than ever experiencing a Kulturkampf in which a majoritarian Francophone population, regional ethnic and linguistic minorities, and post-colonial immigrant communities each have a major stake.  Recognizing

this overarching context, I found myself asking a series of questions:  Why this recurrent association of immigrant and regional concerns?   What do the events detailed above indicate about the nature of cultural political struggle in France in this late-modern historical moment?  How have various categories of sub-national difference articulated themselves with a more-than-ever centralized French state on the one hand, and a globalizing European political space on the other?   In this article, I directly address these queries, questioning particularly how the growth of the Algerian Berberist movement within France relates both to internal transformations in the character of French national identity (from ‘Empire’ to ‘Europe’) and to the simultaneous development of regionalist challenges to the nation-state in both Algeria and France.  In particular, I discuss how state discourses and practices of centralization, integration and control have produced rather than erased particular categories of non-national difference which immigrant and ethnic minority groups have appropriated and mobilized for the construction of alternative narratives of sub- and trans-national identity.   Focusing on the burgeoning interaction of the trans-national Algerian-Berber cultural movement and the localized Breton and Occitan militant organizations, the paper explores how these groups have allied their demands for equal cultural and linguistic expression (intimated as a ‘universal right’) and unitedly petitioned European administrative bodies.  As such, the paper addresses how challenges to the integrity of the French nation-state itself, to its capacity of managing immigrant ethno-racial and religious difference, have been intimately tied to a transnational sphere of activity linking France to Algeria, and from Algeria back to the European Union.  As this situation closely echoes other contexts of post-colonial migration which tie northern European metropoles to currently unstable, southern peripheries (cf. Gilroy 1991 for the British case; Fijulkowski 1993 for the German one), the observations and conclusion may prove generally relevant for contemporary Europe as a whole.  

ETHNICITY AND THE NATION-STATE An important starting point for a discussion of the Kulturkampf  that tacitly allies immigrant and regionalist cultural movements in contemporary France concerns the colonial production of particular ethnic categories, categories today mobilized in both support of and opposition to the French nation-state.  Theories of nationalism within the fields of history and political science have consistently focused on the modern nation-state as the final product of a powerful set of discourses and practices which, emerging on the eve of the 1789 French Revolution, quickly spread in a variety of forms across the world – becoming the singular, hegemonic form of sovereignty in geopolitics it is today.  Using a ‘constructivist’ approach, such theories have driven home the notion that the nation is an invented entity, a recently-formulated ‘imagined community’ of compatriots separated by great distances, unaware of each others’ physical existence, united through the common practice of modern, daily rituals (cf. Anderson 1983).  Moreover, such national construction is effectuated in contrast to ethnic groups (or ethnies in Anthony D.  Smith’s terminology [1986]) which are imputed with a primordial authenticity.  For theorists like Ernest Gellner and Eric Hobsbawm, ethnies constitute the building blocks for building national formations.  However, as one of the major components of nationalization is a common linguistic policy, the “homogenization and standardization of its inhabitants, essentially by means of a written ‘national language’” (Hobsbawm 1990: 93), such prior attachments often needed to be eliminated.  “Nations as a natural, God-given way of classifying man, as an inherent political destiny, are a myth;  nationalism, which sometimes takes pre-existing cultures and turns them into nations, sometimes invents them, and often obliterates pre-existing cultures:  that is reality” (Gellner 1983: 48–49).  Primordial ties (of ethnicity, religion, territory, dialect, etc.) if anything stand in the way of nationalist movements, and thus ‘tribalism’ becomes the anathema of modernity.   Interestingly, cultural activists often use these same assumptions of primordiality to justify their own claims of originality and signal the oppression which they have experienced at the hands of nation-states.  Within the Berber movement in Algeria, various engaged intellectuals have made a concerted effort to portray Berberity as the true, originary identity of Algeria, the Maghreb, and the southern Mediterranean as a whole.  They have sought historical evidence in the writings of early Roman geographers (Sallust, Procop) and proposed linguistic theories to demonstrate that Berber language and culture antedated the arrival of Arabs in North Africa in the seventh (Islamic armies) and eleventh (Benu Hillal) centuries.  The efforts of the Algerian revolutionary parties from the 1920s to 1960s to unify the colony’s indigenous populace under the then powerful anti-colonial motifs of Arab nationalism and Islam, in the eyes of stalwart Berber activists, amounted to the denial of the Algerian people of their essential Berber identity – the true identity of all Algerians, whether or not a given Algerian speaks a Berber dialect or recognizes him or herself as having Berber roots.  The current disunity of Algeria, embodied most poignantly in the current civil war which has claimed upwards of 70,000 lives over the last five years, in this regard can be seen as resulting largely from an ‘identity

crisis’. This crisis of identity has left the Algerian people utterly disoriented in an increasingly globalizing world and willing to grasp at the first strong organizing principle to arise – in this case Islamic fundamentalism.  A return to Algeria’s fundamental identity – Berberity – is thus proposed as the needed solution.   While no civil war as such has occurred in Brittany or Occitania, cultural activists have nonetheless mobilized similar claims to primordiality and levied criticisms against the French nation-state for surpressing their regional heritage (patrimoine).  Viewing the French language as a post-Revolutionary, Parisian formulation imposed on the French countryside by the state’s centralization policies and national education practices, they have legitimized their contemporary demands for multi-cultural education through the stipulated pre-French Celtic and Latinate character of the Breton and Occitan languages respectively.  The recent economic exploitation and ecological decimations of their regions they see as consonant with two hundred years of cultural and linguistic homogenization.  As in the case of the Berber cultural movement in Algeria, the revitalization of primordial ethnic and linguistic identities in France would serve, according to Occitan or Breton militants, as a means to counter global challenges to the integrity of national models;  in their view, if the French state only embraced its regional cultures, it could maintain its cultural individuality in the face of German and American imperialisms.  

Colonialism and National Integration

However, the assumption of primordiality shared by theorists and critics of nationalism glosses over the historicity of ethnic categories and the role of nationalist discourses in their constitution.  In the first place, one must re-focus on the colonial period as a determining moment in the production of both national and ethnic social formations.  Beyond Benedict Anderson’s emphasis on creole pioneers on nationalism (Anderson 1983), one must follow Ashis Nandy in linking the development of European nationalist sentiment to the colonial process itself.  Through various colonial discourses which associated the Indian populace with children (among which Marx’s “On Imperialism in India” [Marx 1978] must be numbered), Britain was able to impute to itself “magical feelings” of being “an advanced culture where human reason and civilized norms had the greatest influence, and a polity farthest on the road to revolutionary self-actualization” (Nandy 1983: 35).  In the case of France, this was exactly the mission civilisatrice, a self-aggrandizing ideological form which simultaneously justified colonial expansion and a pro-assimilationist national self-understanding.  Such sentiments of superiority fed into a nationalism already underwritten by a “false sense of homogeneity” instilled in part through the mechanics of colonization.  “Colonialism blurred the lines of social divisions by opening up alternate channels of social mobility in the colonies and by underwriting nationalist sentiments through colonial wars of expansion or through wars with other ambitious European powers seeking a share of colonial glory” (Nandy 1983: 33).   This interplay between metropole and colony in the entrenchment of state national regime of sovereignty and the putative elimination of social tensions arising from extant heterogeneous class and cultural loyalties is greatly illustrated in the events following the 1870 fall of Louis Napoleon’s Empire at the hands of the invading Prussian army.  Following this defeat, the European powers allowed France’s colonial expansion to continue apace in order to divert French attention from the lost territories of Alsace and Lorraine (Cobban 1955: 91).  Indeed, such expansion greatly served the interests of the nascent Third Republic to defuse the urban social tensions which would poignantly surface in the 1871 Paris Commune.  An October 1870 decree by interim minister Isaac Crémieux effectively replaced the loss of the two eastern provinces through the administrative incorporation of the military colony of Algeria into France in the form of three départements, and the granting of full citizenship rights to all European settlers as well as to indigenous Jews (but not Muslims).  Reacting largely to these new measures (which included a special ‘Arab tax’ on Muslim non-citizens), a number of tribes in Kabylia (amounting to an estimated 200,000 armed fighters) rose up in January 1871 against the colonial government in a bitter insurrection which would last for fourteen months.  Finally, by February 1872, the French colonial army crushed the uprising with absolute vehemence, confiscating 574,000 hectares of land in Greater Kabylia alone.  In particular, the military government redistributed over 100,000 acres of this expropriated land as an emigration incentive to 1,183 Alsatian families who had fled to Paris before the invading Prussian armies and had joined the burgeoning, unemployed urban swell which had contributed to the Paris Commune revolts several months earlier (Julien 1963: 65; Talha 1989: 31).  Meanwhile, the Kabyle leaders and their families joined the Communards in exile to New Caledonia, one of France’s newly-acquired Pacific colonies, while thousands of others were forced into a situation of migrant labor, bringing them to Tunisia, Algiers,

and eventually France in search of work. Having now consolidated its rule in both Paris and Kabylia, the Third Republic began to utilize the colony as a proving ground for national integration policies and, in doing so, further assimilate it into the metropole.  Over the years 1881–82, the French prime minister Jules Ferry drafted a series of laws which put all Algerian public services under the control of the respective French ministries and organized the internal administration along French civil rather than wartime military rule (Collot 1987: 10–11).  These measures actually antedated the 1884 legislation on municipalities – allowing for the free election of local mayors as representatives of the State – which would have the same practical effects for peripheral regions within the metropole.  Kabylia was particularly targeted in this incorporation.  In 1874, autonomous legal jurisdiction in Kabylian villages (regulated by local, oral laws or qanoun) was abolished and regional courts were established.  Further, in 1881, Ferry created eight schools in Kabylia according to secular, national education standards he proposed two years earlier as Minister of Education and applied more generally two years later throughout Algeria and France (Lorcin 1995: 190).  In this way, the colonies, rather than peripheral regions to which national standards were exported, functioned as an integral element in the consolidation of a republican national regime.  The central importance of this integrity definitively manifested itself eighty years later, in the national upheavals accompanying the wars of decolonization.  As I will discuss below, such a loss provoked not only the fall of one constitutional government in France, but also a fundamental transformation of French national identity from an Imperial to a European power.  

The Production of Ethnic Particularity:  The Kabyle Myth

The constitution of the French nation-state in the late-nineteenth century did not, however, merely involve the integration of peripheral populations through the simple erasure of autonomous regions constituted by postulated ethnic or linguistic differences (the Kabyles, Occitans, Bretons, etc.).   Rather, these measures often involved the contradictory reification of these categories of difference.   Techniques of enumeration and categorization (mapping, cadastral surveys, etc.) employed to consolidate rule and centralize authority throughout the Empire actually produced hierarchical schemas along which various populations were slotted.  Building on the philosophical models posed by mid-century social evolutionists like Herbert Spencer and racial theorists like Arthur de Gobineau, which had gained a central place in important Parisian research institutions (the Ecole Polytechnique, in particular), military geographers, linguists, and ethnologists catalogued the racial traits, language forms, socio-political traditions, and religious rites they observed among the conquered peoples along a continuum of progress from savagery to civilization (Lorcin 1995).  While the colonial mission civilisatrice sought to transform such ‘natural’, incompatible differences into the mere folkloric appendages of a modern society, the continual use of such hierarchical schemas for governing purposes (for alliances, divide-and-conquer tactics, etc.) resulted in the unforeseen generalization and reification of such sub-national categories as essential means of group identification. A clear example of this contradiction can be seen in the case of the ‘Kabyle Myth’ in Algeria.   Throughout the colonial period in Algeria (1830–1962), ethnological and military reports from Algeria paid particular attention to the Berber-speaking populations of Kabylia, contrasting them to their Arab neighbors.3  A network of research centers, archives, and journals in both the Maghreb and France devoted to the scientific study of Berber language and culture was created in order to fix the ethnic boundary between the two groups and to use such a division to justify economic and social policy.4  On the one hand, these studies characterized the Berbers as uncivilized warriors, fiercely defending their mountain refuges against all invaders (Phoenicians, Romans, Arabs, French).5  Whereas the Arab accepted the tutelage of Islamic caliphs, the ‘fiercely independent’ Berber, according to the reports, abhorred the very idea of central authority and was prepared to defend his absolute liberty to the death (Guernier 1950: 171–172).  On the other hand, these barbarians were actually seen as relatively close to European civilization, naturally endowed with values consonant with ‘Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité’.   Religiously speaking, they were viewed as less fanatically attached to Islam, for, according to General Daumas, head of Algerian affairs for the French government, “they have accepted the Koran but they have not embraced it” (1855).  As such, according to the myth, the Kabyles held their women in high respect; unlike in the Arab cities, Kabyle women were masters of the household and were known to work in the fields veilless.6  Economically, the Berbers were described as frugal by nature, endowed with a “commercial instinct” which clearly demarcated them from the frivolous Arabs (Démontes 1922: 9).  For these “puritan businessmen” (Chevrillon 1927: 84), as Daumas remarked, “laziness is shameful” (Daumas 1855: 178).  Finally, on the political level, the Berbers natural “anarchy” was seen to represent an underlying democracy, symbolized by the village council or tajmaât.  “In this republic,

the dominating spirit is that of republican equality” (Guernier 1950: 172). As such, the Kabyles were stereotyped by French colonial observers as the exact opposite of the lazy tyrannical Arab peoples, and almost European in their nature.  It was further claimed that these original inhabitants had been in constant conflict and opposition with the Arabs.  “Our man is uncontestedly a Mediterranean of the West; or better yet, he is Western.  The Berbers are part of the rational West in formal opposition to the Arabs, who are above all of the imaginative Orient” (Guernier 1950: 173).  Drawing on linguistic, archaeological, and physiological comparisons, a series of hypotheses were developed and argued concerning the ancient origin of Berber tribes.  While some researchers, following the fourteenth-century observations of Ibn Khaldun, attributed a Semitic origin to Berber tribes as descendants of the Canaanites chased out of the Holy Land by the early Israelites (Mercier 1871; Odinot 1924; Tauxier 1862–63), others insisted that the Berbers of North Africa belonged to one or more European race (Brémond 1942; Guernier 1950; Rinn 1889).  In a work subtitled “Barbary is a European Country,” General Edouard Brémond concluded definitively:  “There is absolutely no doubt that the [Berber] populations of North Africa were originally Mediterranean or Nordic European and have not since been modified” (Brémond 1942: 114).  Indeed, the attribution of kinship with indigenous European peoples, whether Basques and Catalans or Gaels and Celts, was more generally accompanied by heuristic attempts to understand the Arab/Berber divide via comparisons with other ethnic and linguistic divisions extant in Europe.  Ernest Carette, in his early ethnological study of Kabylia, compared nineteenth-century Algeria to France of the Middle Ages and, in particular, to the regional/linguistic division between the northern langue d’oil and the southern langue d’oc (Carette 1848: 60–70; cf. Lorcin 1995: 43–45).7   While Carette associated Kabyle culture with the spirit of the northern langue d’oil, subsequent ethnological studies took exception, concluding the contrary (cf. Busset et al. 1929).   Such conflicting comparisons mark the structural ambivalence of a colonial project with both scientific and military goals, operating under a joint imperative to map out and classify ethnological differences and simultaneously assimilate such difference into the knowable and practicable.  In their association with Europe’s past, the Berbers were singled out as the preferred agents of the colonial project in Algeria, as the privileged targets of the mission civilisatrice:  “He will easily assimilate to our ideas, to our labor methods” (Démontes 1930: 360).  While Algeria never had a specific ‘Berber policy’ as in Morocco,8 Kabylia, as we have seen in terms of education policy, received disproportionate attention in terms of the execution of national legislation.  While certainly not creating the anti-Arab évolués that French officials may have hoped for, this ethnic preference had a dual effect.  First, it opened up wide avenues for emigration to France.  Often expropriated from their family land holdings by colonial land laws and exposed to French language and culture in school, Kabyle males became prime targets for government and private recruiters to man the French war machine (as soldiers or factory workers) during the two world wars.9  Although this migratory flux was to spread gradually to Arab Algeria as well, on the eve of the Algerian war, over sixty percent of Algerian immigrants in France still came from the Kabylian provinces, and nearly one quarter of all Kabyle families had at least one member working in France (Khellil 1994: 14).  Second, such colonial attention underwrote the later development of a Berber cultural movement in the days following independence.  Often adopting the rhetoric of the ‘Kabyle Myth’, Berber cultural and political associations, as we shall see, continued to use anti-assimilationist claims of being simultaneously primordial (ante-Arab) and European (or at least as a synthesis of East and West, a bridge across the Mediterranean) in their appeals to European governments for economic and political support.   Likewise, their stipulated ancestral association with indigenous French minorities (Auvergnats, Basques, Celts) has provided groundwork for their current association with regional cultural movements from these regions.  

Regionalism and French Centralization

Additionally, the recurrent colonial reference to ethnic divisions in France belies late-nineteenth century concerns with integrating peripheral populations into the national project of the Third Republic.  While French history textbooks written during this period (and often still in use today in one form or another) attributed French ethnic origins to ‘our ancestors the Gauls’ and treated the French nation as a fait accompli with the 1789 Revolution, scholarly debates over these origins and unity continued apace during the interim.10   As Eugen Weber has poignantly argued, the process of nationalization of France actually continued well into the twentieth century, with the cultural and political power only gradually being taken away from local clergy and notables by state-appointed and elected school teachers and prefects (Weber 1976).  Of particular importance in this gradual

transformation was the place of local languages in the national education system.  In many cases, especially in Brittany, this question of linguistic homogenization was tied directly to that of secularization.  There, the four administrative districts (départements) established after the 1789 Revolution were mapped directly onto the former province’s four historical Catholic dioceses or bishoprics, which themselves corresponded to four linguistic areas where different dialects of Breton were spoken.  After Napoleon’s 1801 concordat with the Catholic Church, as reiterated as late as 1850 in the Loi Falloux, clergy members gained a greater say in school administration and everyday teaching.  Schools became primarily establishments for children to learn religious catechism, and given the ambiguity of the legislation, this teaching was administered in the respective Breton dialect (McDonald 1989: 37).  In this way, the reproduction of Breton cultural belonging was largely mediated by the Church through the school system. It was exactly these mechanisms of ethno-linguistic identity production which the Ferry laws of the early-1880s sought to eliminate.  The law of 28 March 1882 made all elementary schooling compulsory and secular, removing all influence of the clergy from the school system.  Further, an 1887 regulation unequivocally established French as the only acceptable language within the schools, putting into law an earlier 6 June 1880 decree to that effect signed by then Minister of Education Jules Ferry (McDonald 1989: 39–40).  As such, these centralization measures sought to further entrench the national presence in the peripheral French regions.  By regaining control of the national education system, the Third Republic hoped to re-instill a threatened sense of national unity and allegiance and, in doing so, forestall social movements in the name of sub-national identity.  Besides the Paris Commune and the Great Kabylian revolt, the years 1870–71 had seen the growth of separatist movements in the southeastern Occitan-speaking region.  In September 1870, a group of associations representing rural and factory workers from thirteen départements formed the Ligue du Midi which publicly presented a series of demands ranging from job security to autonomous governance, but were crushed in the aftermath of the Paris Commune.  In the waning days of the Third Republic, the French government actually passed legislation formally outlawing such separatism.11   However, as in the case of Algeria, such practical measures did not erase cultural differences within France, but rather accompanied the elaboration of various ethnic and linguistic categories.   Like in Kabylia, nineteenth-century ethnologists and linguists were attracted to rural, peripheral areas like Finistère (Brittany) and Auvergne (Occitania) where supposedly pristine cultures, unsullied by modernity and industrialization, could be observed.  These Third Republic scholars published ethnographies (Chevallier 1934, Le Goffic 1902), collected traditional songs and dances (Quellien 1889), and compiled dictionaries (Vallée 1980).  These endeavors contributed largely to the outlining of essential cultural characteristics shared by the inhabitants of a given region and the attribution of such differences to natural racial categories or ‘geniuses’ (génie d’oc vs.  génie d’oil for instance).  Moreover, such folkloristic accounts were readily consumed by a late nineteenth century Parisian elite in the midst of a romantic artistic revolution in which an Occitan/Provençal literary renaissance, and particularly the poems of Frédéric Mistral, flourished.  This romantic celebration of cultural difference should not be seen as contrary to French modernization, but rather as assimilation’s determined opposite, part of the “ambivalence of modernity” (cf. Bauman 1991).  Moreover, as in the Kabyle case, the perpetuation of a discourse of ethnic difference would later be mobilized within the regionalist movements themselves. In this way, there exists a clear correlation between the ambivalent assimilation efforts within the metropole and those employed within the colonies (particularly Algeria), a continuity which has not been lost on contemporary ethnic activists who decry the Third Republic’s policies of “internal colonialism” (cf. Sibé 1988).12  In the rest of this article, I will discuss three particular moments in the realization of this similar position vis-à-vis the French nation-state and the formulation of a common political programme.  Focusing on the period of decolonization, the early-1980s multicultural experiments, and the 1990s ascendancy of the extreme Right on fears over globalization, I will pinpoint the terms of convergence between immigrant and regionalist movements and their particular relationship with a unifying Europe.    

EUROPE AND ITS MINORITIES

In the previous section, I returned to the late-nineteenth century to demonstrate how national integration paralleled rather than succeeded the elaboration of sub-national categories of identity.   In this section, I will show how these processes have remained unfinished and have over the last forty years transformed themselves in relation to a third, supra-national entity – Europe.  A post-World War

II phenomenon based largely on the elimination of colonial empires, European integration has altered the ways in which both national and regional, ethnic, or linguistic models of social organization could be practiced.  The impact of this integration on the local level, like the effects of European and anti-colonial nationalisms, has a particular history which has only begun to be written (cf. Darian-Smith 1994).  In highlighting the moments in which various types of minority difference within France have been publicly demonstrated in relation to other political categories of belonging, this section will demonstrate the multiple ways which a supra-national Europe has been incorporated into local cultural political debates (Kulturkämpfe).

Decolonization and National Identity:  The Algerian War

The Algerian War constituted a significant transformation in the internal organization of both the French and Algerian nation-states.  Commencing before the dust had settled from Den Bien Phu, the 1954–62 war was not just about the national liberation of Algeria, but it was truly played out and understood as a civil war within France.13   In a few short years, nearly four-fifths of France’s territory was torn away, and the entire state apparatus of the Fourth Republic had been toppled, replaced (by a returned Charles De Gaulle), and then almost toppled again in an aborted coup d’état by an ultra-conservative faction of France’s own military, the OAS (Organization of the Secret Army). On the level of national identity, this extraction of the colonial South had two profound effects.  Firstly, French government and populace alike actively participated in an official amnesia of the war and the colonial period in general.14  Until recently, the war was not officially commemorated and its veterans were refused the status of anciens combattants with all the concomitant privileges.  A recent survey of French youth born after the war indicates the extent of this ‘non-memory’:  three-quarters could not indicate the duration of the war or the name of a single Algerian resistance leader (Manceron and Remaoun 1993: 82).  Employing a series of amnesties of war criminals from both the revolutionary FLN and the reactionary OAS, the Fifth Republic thus made a concerted effort to turn the page on its imperial history.  Secondly, this Renan-type historical forgetting was accompanied by an active forging of a new national project.  Under the direction of De Gaulle, France turned its political orientation 180 degrees to the North, to the construction of an integrated and unified Europe (whose groundwork had been recently laid in the 1958 Treaty of Rome) (Fabre 1992).  Pulling out of NATO and supporting Francophone secessionist movements in Quebec, France embarked on a new, post-colonial national trajectory as an independent player in the bipolar geopolitical system.  In this regard, it would be fair to say that decolonization did not just create one new nation, but two.   However, the question remains:  What kind of national entity could be constituted in the wake of this upheaval?  What type of unifying myth could the nation-state imagine for itself and project to its citizens and the regional world?  In Algeria, the National Liberation Front established the new state on the ideological basis that Algeria was historically Arab and naturally Islamic, thus portraying the revolution as a unified armed struggle of Muslims against Christians.15  Armed with the now-famous rally-call, ‘One hero, the people’, the Algerian state has employed anodyne images of the war to forge national consensus around itself as the natural inheritor of revolutionary leadership.  In doing so, the state sought to erase the memory of opposing forces from within the revolutionary front, from exterminated or exiled leaders like Abane Ramdane,  Krim Belkacem, Mohammed Boudiaf, or Hocine Ait-Ahmed, to the role of expatriate and emigrant Algerians in the conflict (notably Messali Hadj, regarded by scholars as the true ‘father’ of Algerian nationalism), to the ‘internal war’ fought between the FLN and its rival, the Messalist National Algerian Movement (MNA) (Stora 1995, 1991).   Furthermore, this process of forgetting has related to the particular accommodation of internal ethnic and regional differences.  During the 1940s, nationalist debates among the Algerian immigrant community in Paris centered around two opposing formulations for the future country:  Algérie arabe (Arab Algeria) and Algérie algérienne (Algerian Algeria).  The first saw in the nascent Muslim Arab nationalist movement of Egypt and Lebanon the true competitor to European colonialism, and sought to ally the revolutionary uprising to its ideological formulations and economic support.  The second focused more particularly on the specificities of the Algerian populace, as pluri-religious (with indigenous Christians and Jews, as well as both Shi’a and Sunni Muslims) and pluri-ethnic (with a variety of Berber-speaking populations:  Kabyles, Chaouis, Mzabs, and Touaregs).  As this last group was composed primarily of immigrant Kabyles autoworkers, it became referred to as the ‘Berber crisis’, and in 1949 its members were expelled from Messali’s pre-FLN party, the Movement for the Triumph of Democratic Freedoms (MTLD).  In subsequent years, other Kabyle revolutionary leaders,

like Hocine Aït-Ahmed and Abane Ramdane would be systematically marginalized or assassinated for too openly demonstrating regional attachments.  These tensions surfaced most directly in the immediate aftermath of independence, when Ait-Ahmed founded a rival party, the Socialist Forces Front (FFS) and led a two-year open revolt in Kabylia against the ethnic ‘fascism’ of the FLN of President Ahmed Ben Bella.  While the revolt failed to have the widespread support of the 1871 insurrection, the FFS remained a strong oppositional (though unarmed) force to the Algerian regime in both Kabylia and in France even after Ait-Ahmed’s arrest and flight to Europe in 1965.   The Algerian conflict had simultaneous and similar repercussions for regionalist movements in France.  Already in 1920, as the Algerian nationalist movement was getting off the ground in the Renault and Citroèn factories of Paris, the early Breton separatist movement, Breiz Atao (Britanny Forever), expressed overt support for liberation movements of indigenous peoples within the French colonies – with particular emphasis on Algeria – viewing their struggles as one and the same.  However, by the 1930s, its leaders began to embrace the rising National Socialist party in Germany, and their visions of autonomy became increasingly racialist, imagining an exclusive Celtic state free from Arab “contamination” (McDonald 1989: 122–123).  During the Nazi occupation of France, the movement enjoyed overt support from both the German and Vichy leadership, garnering a degree of autonomy in the form of a Breton National Council in exchange for several regiments of troops wearing German uniforms.  After the war, the movement was disbanded and over eight hundred of its members were executed for collaboration (Beer 1980: 14).   However, racial essentialism has been the exception rather than the norm in regionalist movements in France.  More typically, regional movements have adopted overtly Marxist rhetoric in their discursive critiques of the French nation-state’s internal colonialism (colonialisme intérieur) (cf. Sibé 1988).  The Algerian War in particular served as a crystallizing moment for many Occitan and Breton militants in the radicalization of their political beliefs, taking on for themselves the image of the Algerian fellagha (peasant) (cf. Marti 1975: 70).  On the eve of the Algerian victory and the fall of the Fourth Republic, a large number of regional nationalist organizations were founded throughout France, from the Mouvement pour l’Organisation de la Bretagne to the Comité Occitan d’Études et d’Action to the Comité Corse pour l’Indépendance, all following the example of the FLN and anticipating a possible power vacuum in Paris.  Not to attribute full responsibility to the war, the Fourth Republic had already made certain concessions to the official recognition of minorities in France, with the 1951 Loi Deixonne allowing both the teaching of regional dialects as part of a university degree curriculum and the use of these languages in French language instruction.  Hence, an institutional forum did already exist for potential student-activists to gather, debate issues, and mobilize support.   Moreover, organic intellectuals within the ethnic movements, like the Occitan scholar Robert Lafont, did recognize that significant differences separated the plight of a colonized Muslim Algerian and a Breton Frenchman, namely that the latter enjoyed full political and civil rights (Lafont 1967: 141).  Finally, the true radicalization of the ethnic movements  in terms of its use of public strikes, demonstrations, and bombings (particularly in the Breton and Corsican case) occurred after the May 1968 student-led ‘events’.  Nonetheless, due largely to the Algerian War, decolonization became the general lens through which ethnic movements in France interpreted their struggle.   In this way, the war provoked debates over the place of ethno-linguistic heterogeneity within the nation-state on both sides of the Mediterranean.  Like in Algeria, the French Fifth Republic searched for motifs through which to present its post-imperial identity.  De Gaulle’s overt turn to Europe, his support for the European Coal and Steel Community and later the Common Market, and his renewed alliance with Germany constituted one set of re-centerings, though his support of the Quebec liberation movement countered it.  Such ambivalence between regional integration and national determination can likewise be seen in his wavering support for the Loi Deixonne and the teaching of regional dialects in the national education system.  In any event, it is consistently these early years after decolonization that scholars have isolated as witnessing the ‘rebirth’ of ethnic activism (cf. Beer 1980: 40).  

Multicultural Experiments of the Early-1980s

The ambivalence of the French nation-state between the practice of unity and diversity, of universalism and particularism, altered with the rise of the socialist government in the early-1980s and its experiments with multicultural models.  In the first few years of its tenure, the French socialist party devised a series of decentralization policies which would encourage and support minority and regionalist cultures in France.  Speaking in Lorient just prior to his 1981 presidential election, François Mitterrand defended the ‘right to difference’ as a universal human right (Giordan 1982: 7).  This

amounted to a redefinition of French national unity through the lens of multicultural and multilinguistic diversity.  In his preface to a programmatic report entitled La France au pluriel (“A Plural France”), Mitterrand commented that, “we profoundly believe that if France must be united, she must also be rich in her differences.  Her unity has enabled our country; respecting her diversity will prevent her undoing.  One and diverse, that is France” (Parti Socialiste 1981: 10).16  While continuing to invest in a unitary national education system, the government expanded the Loi Deixonne and offered increased financial support to independent cultural associations of both immigrant and regional origin.  This transformation can be seen most directly in reference to the ‘Beur Movement’.   In 1981, Mitterrand lifted a ban on immigrant associations which dated back to the anti-fascist and anti-separatist laws of the late-1930s.  In the wake of this reform, a number of second-generation North African immigrants initiated a series of stylized cultural practices and associations ranging from radio stations, musical groups, newspapers, and auto-biographical novels, to grass-roots development organizations.  While a number of these projects were designed to combat practical problems involved with life in suburban ghettos – repairing dilapidated housing projects or providing after-school tutoring for local youth – others focused more directly on the re-appropriation of immigrant cultural histories marginalized in official versions of French unity.  These activities not only received overt government support in terms of flexible funding, but they also were prominently displayed in photographic and live performance forms at the Georges Pompidou cultural center in Paris in 1983 (CCI 1984).   However, the Beur Movement did not limit itself to artistic and developmental forms easily assimilated into liberal theories of multiculturalism, but also involved a detailed critique of the French ‘motor of integration’.  During the 1983–86 period, a number of ‘Beurs’17 organized and participated in a series of anti-racist political marches and demonstrations for racial equality and civic rights, rights which they felt de facto denied under French meritocratic principles.  Moreover, in a series of autobiographical novels, many Beur authors expressed a profound awareness and resentment of the structural contradiction in which their experiences in a school system where they were taught to be unambiguously ‘French’ ran headlong against everyday racist attitudes in which they were informed they were necessarily foreign (étranger) or ‘Arab’. The authors consistently (though differently) expressed that in fact they were somehow both and neither, somewhere “between two cultures, two histories, two skin colors, neither black nor white, inventing [their] own roots…” (Charef 1983: 17).18  Expressing this hybridity, Nacer Kettane, organizer of the 1985 demonstration for civic rights and president of Radio Beur, declared:  “Mutants torn from the ‘McDonalds couscous-steak-fries society’, we are here whether you want us or not!” (Kettane 1986: 19).   While these demonstrations and declarations amounted primarily to an avowal of hybridity, of a self-distancing from both North African and French cultures, as the prime element of Beur identity, the Beur movement remained nonetheless closely associated with the Berber cultural movement as it was unfolding in both Algeria and France during this same period.  In the Spring of 1980, a lecture on early Berber poetry to be given at the University of Tizi-Ouzou (Kabylia) was canceled by the Algerian authorities, leading to a month-long set of student riots and general strikes which spread throughout Algeria to Paris.  The demonstrators, like in the Beur case, demanded the official recognition of Berber linguistic and cultural differences within the new government’s modernization programs.  This social movement had great influence among the majority Kabyle population within the larger Algerian immigrant community in France, and a number of cultural associations were founded in its wake.  Through the establishment of Berber dance repertoires, theater troupes, and language classes, these associations reached out to the immigrant second-generation physically separated from Kabylia and its particular cultural-political situation.  This transnational movement built on a longer history of political activism among expatriate Kabyle intellectuals who since the late 1960s had used Paris as a pole of cultural and literary production from which to exert pressure on the Algerian government.  However, in its conjoining with the wider Beur Movement of the early-1980s, this activism reached a larger, younger population to which it connected through a commonality of cause.  Like the Beurs, Berber activists promoted a hybrid, medial cultural identity, as being consummately Mediterranean, somewhere between Arab and French along the racial schema of the Kabyle Myth.  Indeed, many informants have commented in this regards that even the appellation, ‘Beur’, probably derives in part from a conjunction of the term ‘Berbères d’Europe’ (Silverstein 1996).  In such a way, the opening of avenues for the public expression of ethnic and linguistic difference in France by the Socialist legislation did not necessarily result in the better integration of immigrant populations into the French nation-state, but rather in many cases to their closer attachment to communities existing outside of the state’s territorial and imaginative borders. Likewise, while Breton and Occitan activists also benefited from the tentative government support for

multiculturalism, they remained sharply critical of the French nation-state and instead sought direct ties with other ethnic and linguistic minority populations via burgeoning European supranational bodies.  The approach of regionalist groups to these European institutions has been historically ambiguous.  On the one hand, these bodies represented for the groups in question the quintessence of capitalist development, in that they generally served to protect state economic interests against internal and external competitors.  The insertion of the French economy into the Common Market has often, in the eyes of many militants, destroyed small businesses and farms, as technocratic decisions made in Brussels were unadapted to local economies, such as the wine industry in Occitania (Touraine et al. 1981: 103).  However, at the same time, by countering French nationalism and neo-colonialism, entrance into Europe remained a positive hope for regional development (Alcouffe et al. 1979: 7).   In 1974, the European Parliament established the European Fund for Regional Development (FEDER) in order to finance industrial projects within underdeveloped regions.  While originally the funds were distributed through a quota system to member states who then could allocate the monies as they saw fit, a series of reforms in 1984–85 allowed for a greater ability of local collectivities to have their dossiers directly examined by the funding bodies.  In Brittany alone, over 1.7 billion francs were received for 500 different projects between 1974 and 1984 (Quéméré 1986: 63).   The early-1980s French socialist legislation was actually antedated by a number of European resolutions in support of linguistic and cultural rights of numerical minorities within member states.  As early as 1961, the Council of Europe recommended the adoption of a supplementary article to the European Convention on Human Rights stipulating that “Persons belonging to a minority…  cannot be prohibited their right…  to have their own cultural life, to use their own language, to open their own schools, and to be educated in the language of their choice” (cited in Giordan 1982: 14).  These intentions were reiterated in subsequent years in the Helsinki Accords (1975) and in the initial conference of European cultural ministers in Oslo (1976).  Finally, in October 1981, as the socialist reforms were getting off the ground in France, the European Parliament similarly passed a resolution to establish a EC charter on regional languages and cultures and minority ethnic rights (Giordan 1982: 24).  As such, Mitterrand’s declarations appear very much as a response to reform movements already initiated at a larger, supranational level, rather than an innovation appealing particularly to the specificity of the French case.   Regional groups in France responded to these declarations by organizing large conferences throughout France throughout the 1980–81 period, bringing together a plurality of association within each of the six major indigenous cultural regions of France:  Brittany, Occitania, Catalonia, Alsace, Flanders, and Basque country.  In addition, these meetings were supplemented by a series of inter-regional congresses held throughout France and Europe, uniting various ethnic activists from different ‘minorities’ in an attempt to present their demands in a united fashion.  These congresses drew inspiration from a series of earlier such joint meetings particularly held between Basque and Breton cultural associations during the early-1970s (Sibé 1988: 148).  Often, such demonstrations of inter-regional support have followed lines of imagined kinship, as in the case of the pan-Celtic conferences held regularly between groups from Brittany, Cornwall, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, or in terms of ethnic movements which cross state borders, such as the case of the Catalans and the Basques.  However, the more general tendency to unify demands internationally and present individual demands to European bodies (as in the case of Occitan groups directly petitioning the European Parliament in 1982 for official linguistic recognition in France) has been enabled largely by the elaboration of European institutions and their declarations in favor of cultural rights.   This development, abetted by the active role of French statesman in architecting inter-state economic and political unions, thus effectively downgraded the role of the French nation-state in regulating its own internal diversity and allowed for sub-national groups to form lasting trans-national connections.   As Robert Lafont concluded in 1978, “It has now become clear that [Occitania’s future] is no longer only a regional affair, or even a French one, but rather one of Europe” (Alcouffe et al. 1979: 199).19  

Globalization and Terrorism

As I discussed in the last section, the socialist government’s attempts to reconstruct the French national imaginary along multicultural lines contributed to the opening up of new avenues of trans-regional and trans-national unity which defied the limits of state national territory.  These connections only increased apace over the next fifteen years, due to cultural political events occurring both internally and externally to France.  While in the 1980s, immigrant and regional groups in France were beginning to forge connections with spatially-distant others defined generally in terms of (real or fictive) kinship (Beurs and Berbers, Bretons and Welsh), by the mid-1990s, the connections

transcended such considerations, with highly disparate immigrant and regional groups conjoining their efforts against extreme nationalist incursions.  As I will indicate in this section, this unity has been directly related to a discursive shift from the language of universal rights to an explicit critique of the French nation-state as the hegemonical sovereign form. In the first place, this transformation is witnessed by the breakdown in the socialist poster-boy Beur Movement.  Over the last ten years, this multiform social movement has taken on a greater ethnic and religious character, corresponding more and more closely to partisan lines drawn on the other side of the Mediterranean.  Two significant events underlie this change.  The first concerns the appropriation of the anti-racist, ‘right to difference’ discourse by extreme-right, xenophobic groups.  In what has been termed ‘differentialist racism’ or ‘neo-racism’ (Balibar 1991; Gilroy 1990), groups like the Front National adopted a version of apartheid which relativized cultural differences while submitting that any violation of the boundaries separating them would give rise to inimical ethnic conflict.   Employing the pseudo-scientific concept of seuil de tolérance (‘tolerance threshold’),20 Jean-Marie Le Pen publicly commented on a 1992 anti-racist poster declaring, “Integration is like a motorcycle, a mélange [of fuels] is required,” by adding, “Yes, but above four-percent it blows the motor” (Le Monde, January 22, 1992: 6).  The final step in the differentialist logic amounted to the proposed repatriation of each immigrant group to their ‘natural milieu’, for this, according to the argument, would be far more fair and equitable than having them remain in a foreign environment, subject to ‘natural’, unavoidable racist violence.  Or, if such a repatriation is not possible, as in the case of the Beurs, the discourse prescribes their radical separation from the French nation.   This appropriation of the ‘right to difference’ thus called into question one of the main discursive tenets behind the Beur Movement.  Beur leaders reacted to this problem in several different ways.  On the one hand, those especially close to the Socialist party, like Harlem Désir, leader of SOS-Racisme, began to call for a ‘right to resemblance’ (droit à la ressemblance) and adopt largely assimilationist models of identification (Désir 1987).  Associations like SOS-Racisme, France-Plus, Movement Against Racism and for Friendship between Peoples (MRAP), Culture et Liberté Ile-de-France, Association of the New Immigrant Generation (ANGI) and others which emerged unscathed from the Beur Movement  continue to operate today on a practical ‘here-and-now’ ideology.  While multi-ethnic in membership and highly critical of the xenophobic extreme right, these groups remain non-political in character, preferring to work directly with state and municipal agencies (like the Inter-Ministerial Urban Delegation) to promote an equality of opportunity in the housing and employment sectors for youth of immigrant origin.  In discussions with leaders of these groups, I was informed that they eschewed any cultural politics which could imply a detachment of immigrant populations from the French nation-state, and that their support of ‘culture’ tended to be on the level of folklore and art.   On the other hand, a large number of other former ‘Beurs’ took the opposite tact, embracing essentialist forms of identity and engaging in projects more linked to political situations abroad.  Many with whom I spoke expressed a feeling of betrayal by Beur leaders who had used their anti-racist activities to underwrite their political or commercial affairs.  For them, the multiculturalism of the Beur Movement proved to be a ruse which, in the face of extant institutionalized racism, left Franco-Algerians only more culturally schizophrenic and socio-economically excluded.  Largely in response to this sense of failure, a large number of Islamic and Berber associations have been founded in urban France over the last five years, and these groups have had success recruiting among younger second- and third-generation Franco-Algerians (Pujadas and Salam 1995; Silverstein 1996).  One figure, that of Toumi Djaidja, the Lyonnais community organizer and symbolic leader of the 1983 Marche des Beurs, became a national symbol and often referenced example of this trajectory when he formally adopted ultra-conservative Islamic practices after a brief prison term in 1993.   Moreover, this turn away from the multicultural declarations of the Beur Movement towards essentialized ethno-religious categories largely corresponds to the radicalization of the Algerian situation and the increasing politicization of Islamic and Berber identities in Algeria.   Since the declaration of martial law in 1992, Algeria has suffered a devastating civil war in which at least 70,000 people have been killed in fighting between Islamist armed groups and government military forces.  In addition, Berber groups have positioned themselves as a third interest, profiting from the relative political vacuum to establish a virtual autonomy in Kabylia (replete with village auto-defense forces) and to increase their demands for the officialization of the standardized Berber language (Tamazight) as a national language on par with Arabic.  Appealing to Western powers, they have employed favorable stereotypes from the Kabyle Myth to posit themselves not only as primordial and ante-Islamic, but also as democratic and hence anti-Islamist (as political Islam has been generally associated in Europe with fascism and terrorism).  In France, Berber associations have argued their

legitimacy to governmental funding agencies on exactly the premise that, by emphasizing cultural over religious identities, they can draw disenfranchized youth from a trajectory which, as in the case of Toumi Djaidja, has led many to fundamentalism.  One of the founding members of a Berber cultural group in Mantes-la-Jolie explained to me that the decision to found their organization derived from their sudden awareness that a large number of their younger North African friends and acquaintances were beginning to frequent Islamist associations which had taken up residence in basement prayer rooms of public housing buildings.   In particular, two events demonstrate the ways in which the Algerian struggle has definitively crossed the Mediterranean.  In the first place, demonstrations, electioneering, and political rallies for Algerian causes have come to mobilize more public support within the immigrant community than regional or national debates marked as distinctly ‘French’.  This can be seen most particularly in the voting participation differential between the April 1995 French presidential elections and the November 1995 Algerian ones.  The high immigrant voter turnout in the latter case was largely enabled by the existence of active branches of all the major Algerian political parties in France and their increasingly intimate relation with immigrant cultural associations.  In the Berber case, the two major Kabyle associations in Paris, the Association de Culture Berbère (ACB) and Tamazgha, are directly affiliated with the two rival political parties drawing their electoral base from Kabylia, the Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD) and the Socialist Forces Front (FFS), with whom they share similar political visions for France and Algeria (Silverstein 1996).  In my interviews with community organizers and party members on the eve of the election, I was informed just how crucial the immigrant vote was for the future of Algeria and Algerians in France.  For ACB/RCD leaders, it was a chance for Algerians of all sorts (Kabyle or Arab) to take a tough ‘eradicator’ stance against an Islamic fundamentalism that, if left unchecked, would eventually eliminate political and cultural freedom globally.  For Tamazgha/FFS supporters, the elections were a fraud that would only result in the legitimation of a military dictator who was avowedly against minority rights.21 On the other hand, the transnationalization of Algerian cultural politics to France has also taken on more violent forms, particularly in the bombings of train stations and schools in Paris and Lyon over the summer and autumn of 1995.  While these acts of violence were largely disavowed by the vast majority of French Algerians and Muslims, they did receive logistic support from small militant groups in France adhering to the radical Islamist tenets of the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA), including one ‘Beur’ from the Lyonnais suburb of Vaulx-en-Velin, Khaled Kelkal.  For the French media and government, this example proved the existence of an extensive international network of Islamic extremism supposedly stretching from Algiers to Cologne to Sarajevo to Kabul through France’s immigrant suburbs.  To counter this perceived threat to state security, the French government took emergency steps (the ‘Vigipirate’ plan) to reinforce its internal and external borders, thus delaying the institution of the Schengen accords and the creation of a transnational European political (or police) space.  Moreover, the plan reinforced an already expanded police force with military personnel who over the next three months perpetrated over three million identity checks, a number of police round-ups of suspected Islamist sympathizers, and a series of forced repatriations of illegal immigrants.  The result of these practices was the popular and institutional amalgamation of the categories of immigration, Islam, and terrorism.   The paradox of these measures is that they contradict and impede Republican ideologies and policies aimed at culturally reproducing the French nation-state, in that, as we have seen, they exacerbate the further retrenchment of second-generation groups into categories of belonging drawn directly from Algeria.  Instead of fostering communal integration cum assimilation or advancing a ‘new citizenship’ (nouvelle citoyennité) along multicultural lines (cf. Wihtol de Wenden 1988), recent anti-terrorism measures have led to new exclusions, mapping out internal boundaries of national belonging which have effectively opposed those of Muslim faith to a Catholic majority defending their own religious values under the umbrella of state secularism.  As we have seen in the history of Breton activism, the Republican state has only in recent memory disengaged itself definitively from the Catholic Church, after over a century of conflicts and compromises.22  In general, the principles of state secularism relegate religious expression to the private sphere, though in practice they have tolerated signs of individual faith in public establishments, like schools.  In attributing the 1995 bombings to a group defined by its religion, the French state has in effect condemned French Islam as a whole for violating this new, implicit Concordat and forcing its beliefs onto the public sphere.  As such, constructing a mosque or wearing a headscarf in school becomes suspect in ways that church-raising and crucifixes never have been.23  In making this distinction, the conservative government has effectively re-defined the French nation-state along neo-racist lines, treating non-Catholic, non-Gallic internal (religious or regional) difference as inherently threatening, as having the potential for subversion or terrorism.  

This retrenchment into univocal ethno-culturalist narratives of French national identity is further related to larger debates provoked by France’s economic and political integration into the European Community.  For, the rise of nationalist sentiment in France has as much to do with base economic, political, and cultural fears of the immigrant Other, as it does with a more general uncertainty over France’s role in a borderless Europe.  This is certainly true of small farmers and shopkeepers inhabiting regions not particularly affected by immigration patterns, but who would likely be forced to alter their practices with the withdrawal of French protectionism.  For these social actors, the threat derives primarily from East of the Rhine, and not South of the Mediterranean.  Nonetheless, their tacit if not electoral support for Euroskeptic parties like the Front National lends credence to the growth of anti-immigrant policies and serves indirectly to radicalize the identity politics which today constitute the major challenge to the sovereign integrity of the French nation-state.   However, the interaction between a unifying Europe and post-colonial immigration need not be solely inimical or oppositional in its implications.  For, while it is true that the weakening of inter-European borders has implied the strengthening of extra-European ones, the parallel growth of supranational European bodies, like the European Court or the European Parliament, has actually served in many cases to protect the rights of immigrant and refugee populations.  On the one hand, this has occurred through common agreements to smooth out national differences in citizenship and naturalization legislation, changes which have encouraged strict jus sanguinis nations like Germany to adopt more lenient jus solis policies (cf. Brubaker 1992).  On the other hand, these European institutions have provided forums for immigrant communities themselves to initiate change.  Already in 1994, under the guise of the ‘13th Nation’, non-European immigrant groups throughout Europe jointly appealed to the European parliament for independent representation (Kastoryano 1994).   More recently, Berber groups based in Europe, representing populations throughout North Africa and the diaspora, have likewise addressed letters, petitions, and speeches to the United Nations, UNESCO, and the European Parliament demanding the official recognition and teaching of Berber culture in individual countries like Algeria and France.  In one case, the Granada-based umbrella group, ‘Mediterranean’, succeeded in organizing a special session of the European Parliament on Berber (Amazigh) culture held on June 11, 1997.  In preparation for this session, the organizers solicited specific proposals using the various internet talk groups, Amazigh-Net and Soc.Cult.Berber which have for the last five years served as forums for political and cultural debate among Berber populations resident throughout the world.  Using similar means of publication, another Paris-based group succeeded in procuring European funds to help finance the first World Amazigh Conference held in August 1997 in the Canary Islands.  The conference expects to receive representatives from Berber associations located across the globe, from North Africa to France to Sweden to North America, many of whom have already been active in its planning and promoting.   If European immigrant groups appear to have followed the inspiration of the French regionalist movement in utilizing Europe as a court of appeals against individual nation-states, such a tactical overlap has been by no means incidental.  Over the last several years, immigrant issues in France have been directly united with larger European ones of minority populations.  Since their inception in the early-1980s, the yearly musical ‘Fête du Peuple Breton’ (‘Festival of Breton People’) organized by the Breton Democratic Union (UDB) has invited artists and artisans from other French regions, from across the Channel, as well as from former North African colonies.  Nevertheless, in spite of this opening, the organizers continued to place the emphasis on Breton culture (McDonald 1989: 151).  However, this emphasis has been altered in recent manifestations of the related Douarnez film festival, held annually in Brittany.  Focusing since 1978 on one or more regional European linguistic or ethnic groups (Bretons, Basques, Celts, etc.), the 1994 and 1996 versions were devoted to ‘Berbers’ and ‘Immigrant Communities’ respectively.  This last year’s event featured films produced by Algerians in France, Turks in Germany, and Pakistanis in Britain, as well as offering lectures and debates animated by prominent leaders within the respective immigrant communities and providing space for immigrant organizations to promote their causes and interact amongst themselves.  While Breton films were still shown in these festivals, they took a peripheral place to the focus group’s endeavors.   Likewise, as mentioned in the introduction to this paper, immigrant groups in France have similarly begun to open their conferences and festivals to regional minority groups in Europe.  During its 1996 commemoration of the Berber Spring, a Parisian suburbs based Berber group, the Berber Cultural Movement-France (MCB-France), composed primarily of second-generation Franco-Kabyles in their twenties, invited two Occitan scholars/activists to participate in a round-table discussion concerning the ‘Amazigh Question in 1996’.  While the room was decked with Kabyle flags and maps, and while the majority of interventions addressed aspects of Berber identity and the place of Tamazight (Berber language) in France and Algeria, the Occitanians attempted to relate these questions to the larger issue

of minoritized languages in the French metropole.  In particular, Jean-François Blanc, director of the one the oldest Occitan cultural organizations, the Institute of Occitan Studies (founded 1944), centered his discussion on a critique of the nation-state as an instrument of homogenization.  Warning the Berber activists about the initial support of the interim Algerian government for the teaching of Tamazight, Blanc concluded that “the [Occitan] experience with regards to the central State shows that we cannot count on it.”  Just as Occitan activists took heed of Algerian revolutionaries during the wars of decolonization, so now are they returning the favor of experience in the post-colonial period.   In this way, the joint action of non-commensurable ‘minority’ groups in France has largely predicated itself on a critique of the nation-state as an agent of homogenization and cultural destruction.   In a tract distributed five months after the conference, on the eve of the referendum of an Algerian constitution which, as Blanc had predicted, betrayed the Berber populations by once again reiterating the ‘Algeria, Arabic, Islam’ national triad, the MCB-France levied its definitive disavowal of traditional state structures:  “The rupture with the concept of the nation-state, ‘one language, one culture, one school,’ elsewhere paradoxically defended until now by a large number of militants, is today a necessity.”24  What remains is to work through larger, more decentralized bodies, like the imagined Tamazgha (Barbary),25 or the more concrete Europe.  But which Europe?  A ‘Europe of Regions’, answers the Occitan militan Robert Lafont, for a ‘Europe of States’ has only aided and abetted member states in the persecution of regionalist groups accused of state subversion – such as the support given by the EC to Spain in resolving the “Basque problem” (Alcouffe 1979: 102).  The former, popular definition of Europe remains a promise:  “The reality of today’s Europe has transformed our geopolitical situation.  We were on the periphery.  We can become, if we want, axes, pivotal regions” (Sibé 1988).26  

CONCLUSION

In this paper, I have sought to demonstrate the ambivalence of the French nation-state’s management of ethno-racial and linguistic difference and how in both colonial and post-colonial times it has simultaneously avowed and disavowed – produced and erased – sub-national categories of identity.   By focusing on the joint participation of state actors and subaltern leaders in the elaboration of ethnic stereotypes and myths, the paper has attempted to undermine assumptions of primordiality rampant within structural functionalist approaches to the nation-state and its discontents (cf. Beer 1980: 42).   Further, the paper has attempted to demonstrate a close relation between such cultural production and changing modes of political contestation.  Most significantly for the contemporary period, there has occurred a series of shifts in the imagination of internal and external boundaries, as the contours of the French political imaginary alternately expand and contract to encompass a colonial Empire or a unified Europe.  For both the Algerian immigrant community and regional groups alike, these changes have outlined new possibilities for the enactment of civil society.  From electioneering to jointly petitioning the Council of Europe, French citizens of ‘minority’ linguistic or ethnic origin have been able to articulate an identity politics which reaches beyond the confines of ‘assimilation’ to French Republican norms.  While this transnationalization has on occasion abetted the growth of religious or ethnic extremisms, it has more often encouraged the expansion of minority rights and tolerance.    

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1 This paper was enabled by research funded by the Jennings-Randolph Program of the United States Institute of Peace and the National Science Foundation.  I would like to thank Brian Axel, Lisa Hajjar, Seteney Shami, and Miklós Vörös who have provided comments and suggestions on various versions and drafts of the article. 2 Similar figures can be seen in Brittany.  These demographic changes are significant when population statistics are globally considered.  While the population in France increased by forty-four percent between 1851 and 1975, five départements in the southwest had barely maintained the same number of residents.  As a whole, the percentage of France’s population residing in the Occitan speaking region diminished by five-percent over this period.  On the basis of these statistics, a number of Occitan activists have denounced the situation as one of ‘internal colonialism’ (Alcouffe et al. 1979: 47–48;  cf. Sibé 1988: 11; Touraine et al. 1988: 81). 3 The most famous example of this division occurs in Hannoteau and Letourneux’s 1871 study, La Kabylie et les coutumes kabyles.   4 Often amounting to apologies or rationalizations for the colonial venture, these studies had as one of their primary goals to create a standard grammar and transliteration system for the various Berber dialects (cf. Carette 1848; Rinn 1889). 5 The word, ‘Berber,’ itself comes from the same Greek root as ‘barbarian’, though its Arabic usage is generally attributed to a derogatory miscomprehension of Berber dialects as sounding like ‘brbr’. 6 Ethnographic evidence was mobilized to claim that Berber culture was originally matriarchical, and that the

Islamic invasions only deposed a thin layer of patriarchalism on its surface.   7 ’Oil’ and ‘oc’ represent alternate words for ‘yes’ in the pre-French Latinate languages.  ‘Oil’ has become the ‘oui’ of Modern French, while the langue d’oc remains the close ancestor of contemporary Occitan dialects in the south of France.  8 In Morocco, the colonial government issued the infamous Berber ‘dahir’ of 1930, in which the Berber populations were administratively divided from Arab ones, and were allowed to be governed by their own customary tribunals and courts of appeal instead of the Islamic shari’a courts.  Kabylian Berbers were thus singled out in exactly the opposite manner, as potential French citizens.  9 See Bourdieu and Sayad 1964 for a discussion of colonial land expropriations; cf. Khellil 1979: 72–77 for the influence of the colonial school system and colonial recruiters on Kabylian emigration. 10 Early racial interpretations of the French Revolution by the Abbé de Sièyes,  for instance, linked the Third Estate with the Biblical Gauls overthrowing the Aryan Frankish aristocracy.  Whether France was intrinsically Gaulish or Frankish became a  subject of wide academic controversy for nearly a century.  Later, the romantic historian, Jules Michelet, situated the originality of France in the very melange of these races with others (cf. Citron 1994). 11 The law of 23 May 1938 forbade “whosoever undertakes, in whatever fashion, to undermine the integrity of the national territory or to subtract from the authority of France a part of territory where this authority is exercised.” 12 Alain Sibé, an Occitanian organizer and Marxist militant has emphasized that “it is necessary to underline the coincidence between [Ferry’s] vigorous tactics of de-nationalization and colonial policy” (Sibé 1988: 34). 13 François Mitterand, then Minister of the Interior, stated in a speech given on 5 November 1954 during an official visit to the Aurès (Algeria):  ‘Algeria is France.  And France will not recognize any other authority there but its own’ (cited in Manceron and Remaoun 1993: 24). 14 Benjamin Stora (1991) has explored this process of forgetting in great detail, along with its consequences for the younger generations in France. 15 The 1964 National Charter declared Islam to be the national religion and Arabic to be the national language.   This formulation has been reiterated in subsequent constitutions, in spite of some concessions made to teaching of minority languages (Tamazight).  The original formulation of this identity derives from the oft-quoted slogan of the 1930s proto-nationalist movement, the Jama’at al-’Ulama’:  “Islam is my religion, Algeria is my nation, and Arabic is my language.” 16 ”Nous croyons profondément que si la France doit être unie, elle est aussi riche de ses différences.  Son unité a fait notre pays, le respect de sa diversité empêchera qu’il se défasse.  Une et diverse, voici la France.” 17 A self-designation employed by second-generation North Africans during this period.  It likely derives from an idiomatic inversion of ‘Arab’. 18 ”Entre deux cultures, deux histoires, deux couleurs de peau, ni blanc ni noir, à s’inventer ses propres racines…” For similar formulations, see Begag 1986; Boukhedenna 1987. 19 ”Il devient maintenant clair qu’elle n’est plus une affaire de régions seulement, ni même de France, mais d’Europe.” 20 This was originally formulated as an abstract generalization by University of Chicago sociologists in the 1960s.  Observing the interactions of various racially and socio-economically diverse groups within inner-city work and living environments, they set a ‘tipping point’ of ten-percent above which they claimed the relative minority population seemed to provoke a negative psychological reaction from the majority, ending often in open conflict. 21 The FFS had previously signed a treaty at Saint-Egidio (Italy) with the FLN and the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) to boycott the elections.  In the end, the Army general Liamine Zeroual was elected with 65% of the popular vote (over 70% voter turnout).  While he originally made overtures to the support of Berber rights and the teaching of Tamazight, he later reneged on these promises and reiterated Arabic’s position as the sole official and national language of Algeria. 22 The law of 9 December 1905 officially ended Napoleon’s famous Concordat with the clergy, withdrawing all public funding from religious institutions. 23 The legitimacy of mosques and headscarves in France have each been the subject of heady political debate over the last ten years.  For further details on the ‘Headscarf Affair,’ see Auslander 1997; Beriss 1990. 24 ”La rupture avec le concept de l’Etat-Nation:  ‘une langue, une culture, une école…’ par ailleurs paradoxalement défendu jusqu’… préesent par un grand nombre de militants, est aujourd’hui une nécessité.” 25 This refers to a maximal conception of the historical Berber-speaking world, ranging from Libya to the Canary Islands, and including all significant pockets of contemporary Berber-speaking populations (Paris,

Quebec, etc.). 26 ”à  la réalité de l’Europe d’aujourd’hui a transformé notre situation géopolitique.  Nous étions la périphérie, nous pouvons être, si nou le voulons, des axes, des régions charnières.”

Forrás: http://www.replika.c3.hu/english/02/02silver.htm

Editorial ReviewsFrom Publishers WeeklyAssembled by the editorial director of France's ditions Gallimard, these 11 essays focus on the central role of the state in French history. The essayists, some of France's leading contemporary intellectuals, use the concept of lieux de m‚moire (places of memory) to explore a wide array of topics, such as the symbolism of Versailles, the changing legacy of Charlemagne, the importance of memoirs in the construction of French history, and the omnipresence of French regionalism. Alain Gu‚ry's brilliant essay describes the philosophical underpinnings of French statism: "The originality of the French is to have made the common good into an attribute of the state." Thus, whenever the French have confronted a crisis, they've sought statist solutions. H‚lŠne Himelfarb's fine contribution argues that in 1871, after France's crushing defeat by the Prussians, the victors used the Chƒteau of Versailles which had symbolized French power since the time of Louis XIV as the spot where humiliating peace terms were signed. In 1918, France returned the favor, also at Versailles. These essays, it must be said, reflect the French love of abstraction. This can be a delight, as in Himelfarb's essay, or a reason for hair-pulling frustration, as with Alain Boureau ("The King"), whose prose gets lost in a theoretical thicket: "the kings of the Old Regime served as a concrete and empirical representation of the social bond, prior to any political theorizing, in exactly the same way as the mnemonic trace or representation of an archaic event serves to structure the contradictory affects that make up the personality in the Freudian system." Nevertheless, the majority of these essays are worthwhile for those with an interest in France's proud national identity. Illus.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Rethinking France: The Stateby Pierre Nora (Editor), David P. Jordan (Translator)

Forrás: www.bizave.com/.../itemid

További forrás:www.psa.ac.uk/cps/2002/cole.pdf

Building Regional Political Capacity: interim findings fromBrittany1Alistair ColeCardiff UniversitySchool of European StudiesPaper presented to the 52nd Annual Conference of the Political StudiesAssociation, ‘Making Politics Count’, University of Aberdeen, 5-7th April.

Regionalisation in France dates back to the late 1950s but reached its high point in theperiod 1982-1986 with the setting up of elected regional councils as part of a widerprogramme of decentralisation 2 These reforms have considerably modified theFrench politico-administrative landscape and its system of central-local relationsalthough not particularly in making them more transparent and coherent. 3 On thecontrary, decentralisation and regionalisation have produced a rather chaotic andunclear situation in which different levels of government and different actors,including the field services of the central state, compete for scarce resources. One ofthe principal outcomes of these processes has been the transition from a uniformisedstate tradition to one which is basically asymmetrical with different regions and levelsof subnational government displaying varying institutional and political capacity4.There is also at times a gap between the perceptions of the political andadministrative elites and those of the general population. The attitude surveys of theObservatoire Interrégional Politique (OIP) have been tracking these differences inmost of the French regions since the first regional elections in 1986.The research project on which this article is based is concerned with the wider issueof the effects of French decentralisation and UK devolution on policy capacity andpublic opinion in Brittany and Wales.5 This article presents some preliminaryfindings of the project by concentrating on the results of the attitude survey carriedout in Brittany. These findings illustrate what people living in Brittany think of theirregion6 and how they envisage its future development. The article is structured aroundthree groups of questions asked in the survey. Where should decisions be made?What are the priorities for regional public expenditure? How does public opinionenvisage the future institutional development of the highly distinctive region ofBrittany? In the conclusion, we address the possible implications of our findings forthe future development of the French polity. We begin with a brief presentation ofpolitics in post-war Brittany.Brittany: a French Region with a DifferenceOne of the most distinctive regions of France, Brittany has a strong sense of itsspecific position within French society. Formerly an independent Duchy (from 818 to1532), then a French province with special prerogatives (1532-1789), reduced forlong to being a collection of disparate départements before becoming anadministrative then political region, modern Brittany is a French region with adifference. Unlike many other French regions, Brittany can look to its past existenceas an independent political entity, with its own founding myths and politicalinstitutions. Though the symbols of statehood have long been repressed, the regionretains many distinctive characteristics. The Breton language is the Europeancontinent’s only Celtic language. The enduring symbolic importance of the Catholicreligion is ever present physically in the architecture of Breton villages, as well inhigher than average rates of religious practice. The spectacular growth of Bretoncultural movements (dance, theatre, costume, and music) is testament to a revival ofBreton values and self-consciousness. At a more abstract level, observers have notedthe capacity of Breton actors to join forces to promote their common interests and todefend Brittany against attacks from the outside world.7 Breton solidarity can also begauged more intuitively by the effectiveness of Breton elite-level networks in Parisand Brussels, and by the importance of the Breton Diaspora in retaining a sense ofdistinctiveness.If all main political tendencies have been well represented in post-war Brittany(except the Front national) the prevalent post-war political tradition is best describedas one of political centrism. In the immediate post-war period, Brittany was thebirthplace and one of the bastions of French Christian democracy and, though indecline, powerful vestiges remain. With the creation of the Fifth Republic, Brittany

could not resist the national pull of Gaullism, though Gaullism only slowly created aspace for itself in local government. Brittany also contributed markedly to the rise ofthe new Socialist Party (PS) from the 1970s onwards, with the Socialist Party inBrittany subtly imbued with values representative of the underlying Breton politicalculture (left Catholicism, social partnership, links with voluntary associations).8 TheFrench Communist Party (PCF) also established its own strongholds in the ‘redtriangle’ of north-west and central Brittany and was supportive from an early date ofmany of the Breton movement’s ‘anti-colonial’ demands. 9 Long resistant to nationaltrends, the recent decline of the PCF in Brittany represents the beginning of the end ofan original model of rural communism, largely to the benefit of the PS. Only the farrightFront national has failed to establish solid bases in Brittany, notwithstandingJean-Marie Le Pen’s Breton origins. The case of the FN illustrates well the innatecohesion of Breton political culture. Having been spared the ravages of excessiveurbanisation, industrial decline and unemployment, Brittany’s social networks haveremained largely intact, providing a barrier to the breakthrough of the far-rightmovement. The persistence of Catholicism and weak immigration are also powerfulexplanatory factors, as the Catholic clergy at all levels explicitly opposed racist andxenophobic attitudes among their followers.The dominant political culture is one of political accommodation. Breton politiciansof all parties, however divided they are internally, will tend to close ranks againstthreats from the outside. Despite a strong regional identity, however, Brittany has notproduced significant regionalist parties, or at least parties that have been capable ofwinning seats in departmental, regional or national elections. Only one left-wingregionalist party, the Union Démocratique Bretonne (UDB) has managed somevictories at the municipal level and then usually in collaboration with the PS. Thisapparent paradox might be explained by the predominance of the consensual politicaltraditions mentioned above. Le Coadic (1998) interprets this phenomenon as aconsequence of the deeply rooted legitimist strand within Breton public opinion10.Imbued by a Catholic, conformist ethic, the Breton public is not prepared to supportpro-independence or pro-autonomist parties. This conformist sentiment is reflected inthe modest scores obtained in elections by the Breton Democratic Union (UDB) andthe smaller Breton regional or autonomist parties. We should note that the mainstreampolitical parties in Brittany, especially the PS but also the UDF, have adoptedregionalist themes and are more “regionalist” than their national counterparts. This istrue even of the RPR President of the Brittany Region, Josselin De Rohan, who has amuch more “regionalist” discourse than his RPR colleagues in most of the rest ofFrance, though he is opposed to experiments such as the current proposed reforms ofthe Corsican assembly. Although Breton regionalism has, at times, been violent, thisnever reached the levels experienced in Corsica, the Spanish Basque country orNorthern Ireland.We now look at where decisions should be made in more detail.Where should decisions be made? Public Opinion and Political Institutions inBrittanyWe will now examine the attitudes of the general population towards the regionalinstitution as it functions at present and how it ought to develop. But first it is usefulto say a few words on the nature of the institution itself. The regional institution inFrance is the result of a long process of what might be called “creepinginstitutionalisation” as it was gradually (and grudgingly) granted a position in thepolitico-administrative system alongside the départements and the communes. InBrittany, however, there was a strong political consensus among the regional elites infavour of regionalisation. Brittany became an administrative region in the late 1950s,acquiring its own indirectly elected regional authority in 1972. The 1982 Defferredecentralisation reforms introduced direct elections11 for the regional councils in 1982(operational since 1986) and reinforced their policy responsibilities. Beforeconsidering our poll findings in some detail, it is important to stress the limitedcharacter of French decentralisation and regionalisation.12 First, the regionalinstitution was established while retaining the longer established and, in many ways,more powerful départements. Large cities and towns had also become powerful levelsof subnational government.13 The regions might, therefore, be considered the ‘poorcousins” of French subnational government. The regional councils possess far fewer

powers than either the Scottish Parliament or the Welsh National Assembly. There isno equivalent legislative or regulatory competency14. Their main (limited)responsibilities are in economic development, transportation, education, training andculture. Decentralisation was intended to promote local democracy and administrativeefficiency, not to challenge the underlying principles of the French unitary state,although some of the older regionalist demands (e.g. a Corsican Statut Particulier)were taken on board while others (e.g. a unified Basque département) were quietlydropped15. We should note that administrative ‘deconcentration’ (the creation of theregional prefectures in 1964) preceded political decentralisation by two decades. Thisis important, as the tentacular French State has never abandoned its territorialambitions.We also observe that the decentralisation reforms of the early 1980s did little toimprove political transparency. 16 Decentralisation added more layers to an alreadymulti-layered institutional cake. The Socialist decentralisation laws of 1982-3 greatlyincreased institutional fragmentation and complexity. While decentralising majorareas of responsibility, the laws did not specify clearly which body was responsiblefor what activity. The various sub-national authorities in mainland France - the 22regions, 96 départements and 36,500 communes - have overlapping territorialjurisdictions and loosely defined spheres of competence. There is no formal hierarchybetween them. No single authority can impose its will on any other, or prevent a rivalauthority from adopting policies in competition with its own. Even whenresponsibilities are clear, they are not always respected. Unlike in Wales or Scotland,the 22 Regional Councils have few means of controlling the behaviour of the localauthorities. Communes, départements and regions compete openly with each otherand adopt policies designed to appeal to their electorates. Decentralisation was notintended to give political recognition to specific ‘ethnic’ groups within France. Theonly partial exception to this rule is Corsica, which has had a specific statute since1982.It is against this backdrop of twenty years of partial and untidy decentralisation in atraditionally unitary state that we undertook our fieldwork in Brittany. As apreliminary to answering our question ‘where should decisions be made’, we soughtfirst to establish the degree of trust that existed in the Brittany Regional Council as itscurrently functions. The results are presented in Table One.

Table OneTrust in the Brittany Regional CouncilStrongly‘Do you trust theRegional councilto undertake thedevelopment ofBrittany?’29 53 8.5 2 7.5Table One reveals a high measure of trust in the Brittany regional council as apolitical institution, despite its limited powers. Trust evokes sentiments of honesty, aculture of co-operation and a high level of social capital. One would expect Brittanyto score highly on such a measure, given the importance of co-operative movements(in mutual banks and agricultural co-operatives) and consensual Breton politicaltraditions. There is also overwhelming support for the principle of decentralisation17,a theme we develop in more detail below. These findings suggest a strong politicalcapital for the Brittany Region, evidence consistent with the conclusions of the annualregional surveys conducted by the Paris-based Observatoire Interrégional duPolitique. From 1995 to 1999, Bretons were consistently amongst the mostenthusiastic ‘regionalists’ in France and were the most likely to identify the Brittanyregion as an historic entity. Our findings are consistent with those of the OIP. There isa strong groundswell of general support for regional political institutions in Brittany.Bretons do not simply identify their region with the geographical boundaries of thecurrent regional institution (B4) but see it as also including the fifth “lost”département of Loire-Atlantique. This is shown by the responses to our question onthe reunification of the five départements. Our poll suggests powerful public support

for the reunification of historic Brittany (over 62 per cent strongly in favour or infavour) , a sentiment shared across the political and geographical spectrum, with onlyminor variations according to département, partisan allegiance or other variables.There was heightened awareness of this issue during fieldwork in Brittany. On 30June 2001 – forty years after the division of historic Brittany – a mass demonstrationtook place in Nantes in favour of reunification. The Loire Atlantique departmentalcouncil then unanimously voted a motion in favour of being incorporated intoBrittany18.

Table TwoDecision-making arenas for training and language‘Which of the following institutions

Brittany Regional council 53 43,5French Government 21 20,5Local government 10 24,5European Union 6 3Others 1 2Don’t Know 9 6.5This general support for the regional level is confirmed in the specific areas of policydecisions regarding the Breton language and training policy. Table Two shows thatthe region comes out ahead of other levels – national, local or European. In the case ofthe Breton language, the Regional council is identified as the appropriate level by amajority of respondents (53 per cent). This is all the more remarkable in that theregion has no formal responsibility for taking decisions concerning language and doesnot have a particularly active record in this area. Unlike in Wales, for example, therehas been no effort, even symbolic, to use Breton in Regional Council proceedings.Until 1998, the Region provided grants to the Breton-medium DIWAN schools and toa host of Breton cultural movements, but successive regional majorities fought shy oftaking a firm position on promoting the Breton language. Following the exceptionalcircumstances of the 1998 regional election in Brittany19, there has been a markedchange. The creation of the Breton Language Office (Ofis ar Brezhoneg) in 1999heralded the new priority adopted by (or imposed upon) the Brittany Region in favourof the Breton language. Increased budgets for Breton language and culture followed.Despite the paradox of a hesitant region adopting stronger policies in favour of thelanguage, the importance of this finding in favour of the region should be emphasised.The French government is seen not only as too distant, but also too ambivalenttowards the Breton language which our findings indicate is viewed with a capital ofcultural sympathy, even though its use is marginal. These findings are a clearchallenge to the traditional viewpoint of the French government in favour of a systemof national linguistic uniformity20. Other political institutions – local government andthe European Union – are not considered as serious contenders for the exercise ofinfluence in this area.The findings for training policy provide further support for the regional level.Training is the interdependent policy domain par excellence; there are many policystakeholders involved. The region is in charge of youth training – of 16 to 22 yearolds – and has an influence in continuing and adult education. The French state retainscontrol over many training programmes and specific populations. The EuropeanUnion is determined to push its own influence over regional training policies. ManyFrench local authorities themselves (communes, EPCI21 and départements) havelaunched their own training programmes. Social partners (trade unions andemployers) are also far more active in training than in the language domain. Giventhis complexity, the high proportion of those considering training to be a regionalpolicy domain adds to the legitimacy of regional intervention in this sphere.Bretons are distinctive not only because of the strength of their regional sense ofbelonging but also by their European attachment. Pro-European sentiment is strongerin Brittany than in most French regions. This European identity has been identified innumerous monographs and was graphically illustrated by the results of the 1992referendum on the Maastricht treaty. Along with Alsace and Lorraine, Brittany wasthe strongest pro-Maastricht region in France, with the three peripheral regions

securing the victory of the Yes vote. This public opinion evidence is supported byelite-level surveys in which the peripheral status of Brittany is identified as a majorobstacle for future prosperity and closer European integration as a majoropportunity.22 Brittany was for long the main French beneficiary of Europeanstructural fund grants (in the 1960s and 1970s) and has always benefited from theCommon Agricultural Policy. 23 On the other hand, the reform of the CAP in the1990s, and the introduction of milk quotas and set aside in particular have hardenedthe opinion of some Breton farming organisations against ‘Brussels’. In Table Three,we extrapolate a measure of Europeanisation from three questions asked in ouropinion survey. This table confirms the existence of a strong symbolic Europeancommitment, alongside a more affirmed attachment to regional identity in our areas ofinvestigation. At the same time, this pro-Europeanism needs to be nuanced byreference to the low rating given to “Europe” in Table Three when it comes toresponsibility for making decisions with regard to language (only 6 per cent wishedthis) and training policy (only 3 per cent).Table ThreeSymbolic Europeanisation, concrete regionalismBrittany %‘The Regional council should develop relations with similar bodieselsewhere in Europe’ (Strongly agree and agree)The EU ‘should take the main decisions’ in training policy 3.The EU ‘should take the main decisions’ in language policy 6Our first series of questions allow us to deduce a strong underpinning of support forregional political institutions in Brittany, as well as a desire to enhance the regionallevel in some specific areas over the local, national and European levels. But we mustbe careful not to draw too many conclusions from these findings; this becomesapparent when we consider preferences for regional expenditure.What priorities for regional action? Public Opinion and spending priorities inBrittany

Regional public spending priorities are indicative not only of actual policy choices,but also of the appropriateness of public intervention at different levels in specificpolicy fields. Even in the most federally inclined system, for example, it would bedifficult to imagine defence expenditure being a major priority for a sub-nationalauthority. The findings presented below demonstrate a realistic appraisal of thelimited powers of the French regions. They suggest that Breton public opinion hasfully integrated the constraints of French decentralisation into its preferences.The survey proceeded to an ask an open-ended question (‘If your region had moremoney to spend, where should its first two priorities lie’) seeking to elicit the Bretonpublic’s preferences for regional public expenditure. Table Four presents a hierarchyof the expressed first and second preferences.Table FourPriorities for Regional Expenditure1st priority % offirstpreferences2nd Priority % of 2ndpreferencesEnvironmentalissues20,1 Economic Development 7,2EconomicDevelopment10 Environmental issues 8,7Improving theRoads8,7 Tourism 5,4Tourism 7,9 Improving the Roads 6,3Training 5,6 Rural Assistance 4

Culture 4,8 Culture 4,1Education 4,6 Sport 3,6UrbanDevelopment3,9 Training 2,9Public Transport 3,2 Education 5,1Rural Assistance 3,1 Urban Development 2,7Sport 2,7 Public Transport 4Supporting Regionallanguages0,8Other 15,0 Other 20.2Don’tKnow/nothing10,4 Don’t know/nothing 25The Breton public’s regional expenditure preferences pinpoint issues of specificregional importance: the environment, economic development, transport, tourism andculture. The first priority was the environment. Environmental issues are high on thepolitical agenda in Brittany, which has to face specific challenges unknown to mostother French regions. In part this is a consequence of its geographical position as apeninsula at the western-most point of the European continent. Brittany has sufferedfrom a string of ecological disasters, the most recent being the running aground of theErika oil tanker in December 1999. 24 Identifying the environment as the mostimportant priority for regional expenditure is in part testament to the active record ofthe Brittany region in this domain and to the perceived proximity of the regional level.It also represents a reaction against the failings of the French state. Breton publicopinion was harsh in its criticism of the regional prefecture and of the FrenchEnvironment minister over the Erika affair. Paradoxically, the awareness ofenvironmental issues has also been heightened by a reaction against the intensivefarming methods of the type that for long underpinned the Breton agricultural model.25 Awareness of the environmental damage caused by intensive farming (pollution,water contamination, soil erosion) has been a painful discovery for one of France’smain agricultural regions. This finding backs up evidence from publishedmonographs, which credit Bretons with a strong attachment to their naturalenvironment. 26 We can also deduce an economic motive, as important sectors of theregional economy – farming, fishing and the agro-alimentary industry – depend on aclean environmental image and practice.The second priority for regional expenditure identified in the survey is economicdevelopment. There is an established post-war tradition of public intervention insupporting the Breton economy, whether through direct investment or throughproviding transport infrastructure. Brittany’s post-war economic take-off was drivenfrom the mid-1950s by central state directed investments and priorities. In the 1960sand 1970s, Brittany obtained more EEC funding than any other French region. Fromthe early 1970s also, the Brittany regional council took part in the combined effort topull Brittany into the post-war industrial era. 27 Under the leadership of nationallyrenowned political figures – René Pleven, Raymond Marcellin, Yvon Bourges - theBrittany region established a reputation for efficient intervention in promotingeconomic development. Brittany’s post-war economic performance has been assistedby public intervention, but the region has also developed its own endogenous modelsof agricultural and industrial development, based on an ethic of social co-operation,political consensus and rural-urban equilibrium and exchange. 28 The strong economicdevelopment of Brittany in the 1980s was consistent with the model whereby thecreation of new industrial wealth is the most effective in traditionally non-industrialregions, where labour organisations are weaker and labour flexibility greater. Thetailing off of growth in the 1990s highlighted the fairly narrow basis of Bretonindustry (agro-alimentary, telecommunications, defence) and its dependency upon acocktail of public contracts and external investment, as well as endogenousinnovation. The importance of agriculture for the Breton economy, likewise, is asource of some anxiety given reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy and thecrisis affecting intensive farming in the past decade. By distinguishing economic

development as the second priority for regional expenditure, the Breton public againidentified an area where regional action could (or should) make a difference. The twospending priorities of environmental policy and economic development illustrate acertain dilemma and uncertainty that Bretons face. On the one hand, they wish tocontinue their story of the Breton “economic miracle”. 29On the other hand, this verysuccess, based as it was on intensive agricultural methods, has endangered one ofBrittany’s greatest assets, its reputation for unspoiled natural products.Transport-related issues (‘Improving the roads, public transport’) were the third mostpopular priority. Ever since the early 1950s the opening-up (‘désenclavement’) ofBrittany has been a major demand of Breton political and business actors. TheBrittany rail and roads plans of the early 1960s laid the bases for the development of amodern transport infrastructure. 30 Improving the transport infrastructure has been atraditional demand of the Breton business community. This has been supported by theregion’s principal decision-makers. In our qualitative interviews, we identified theexistence of rival advocacy coalitions over this issue. Most business and politicalactors favoured developing the region’s transport infrastructure, arguing for theextension of the fast speed train (TGV) to Brest as an absolute priority to alleviate thegeographical isolation of Brittany. A minority of interviewees feared that an improvedtransport infrastructure would threaten Breton identity by bringing the region closer tothe rest of France. Our poll suggests the former priority figures more prominentlywithin public opinion at large. Not content to prioritise areas where the region canmake a difference, Breton public opinion also appears to be anticipating change. Theidentification of transport-related issues as the policy province of the RegionalAssembly augurs well for central government efforts to strengthen the responsibilitiesof the Regions in this area.Amongst the other priorities for regional expenditure we can identify two furtherareas closely linked to the specific attributes of Brittany: tourism and culture. Brittanyis one of France’s major tourist regions. That Bretons look to the regional authority topromote tourism supports the proximity argument; regional investment is appropriatebecause the Region has detailed knowledge of local conditions. We might make asimilar observation with respect to culture. It is entirely appropriate for the regionalauthority to promote culture, not only because culture is worth promoting, but alsobecause it has a strong regional dimension.We subjected two policy areas to more intense scrutiny: training and regionallanguages. In Brittany, support for expenditure on regional languages was very lowdown the list of popular priorities. Fewer than 1 per cent (4 of 1007) spontaneouslyidentified support for Breton as the principal preference for future Regional Councilexpenditure. We should exercise some caution when interpreting this figure. Prioritiesfor public expenditure do not automatically equate with issue saliency. In an areasuch as support for regional languages, policy objectives might be achieved withminimal additional public expenditure. And, as we demonstrated above, a majority ofrespondents identified the Region as the appropriate level for decision-making onlanguage-related issues. But there may also be an awareness that the Region can dolittle in this regard at present and the central state should be the target of pressure inthis field.The case of training is rather different. It is also widely considered that training oughtto be a regional level responsibility (Table Two). Unlike language policy, the FrenchRegions have precise responsibilities in the sphere of training policy. We can surmisethat regional preferences for increased spending on training (the public’s fifth firstpriority) are derived from a combination of Brittany’s specific training needs, anexpectation of public expenditure in this area and a cognisance of the actual policyresponsibilities undertaken by the regional council. Training is also closely linked toeconomic development, which, as we have seen, is one of the two top priorities forpublic opinion.The Breton public’s regional expenditure preferences pinpoint issues of specificregional importance, rather than generic spending areas such as health and education.Table Four indicates expenditure preferences; it also reveals what regional authoritiesare perceived not to do. We would certainly not expect health to top the list ofspending priorities for a French regional Assembly. The French system of health careis elaborately – and expensively – managed by a social partnership of employers and

trade unions, increasingly closely monitored by the central state. The regions do nothave any responsibilities therein (though the départements do). The low ranking ofeducation is rather more intriguing. Though France prides itself on its nationaleducation system, implying uniform standards and practices throughout the country,French regions also have important responsibilities in secondary and highereducation. 31 The regions build and maintain upper secondary schools (lycées) andsome universities, provide equipment, participate in educational planning and – ofgreat importance in Brittany – can make grants to private schools. Education is by farthe largest spending post of all French regions, around 50% in the case of Brittany.We surmise that, though there is intense interest in Brittany in education, this issuearea is perceived primarily either as a national or a more localised policyresponsibility. The Regional councils have not yet drawn much political capital fromtheir major budgetary investment in education over the past fifteen years. Education isone area where the central state has succeeded in shedding responsibilities to theperiphery (regional councils and state field services) while retaining strategic control.Our second series of questions lead us to refine our argument somewhat. A logic ofappropriateness appears to be at work. The Breton public favours a form of boundedregionality. It wants regional public expenditure to be concentrated in areas whereregional institutions might make a difference, or where the image of Brittany itself isinvolved. In the core public policy areas of health and education, there is apreference, even in regionally minded Brittany, for a system of national regulation,consistent with French public service doctrine, equality of standards and the legacy of150 years of ‘republican’ ideology.What Future for Brittany?The Breton public seems remarkably well informed of the practical politics of Frenchregionalism as it currently operates. But what are its preferences for the future? TableFive summarises responses to the key institutional question we posed in ourcomparative survey.Our findings confirm the existence of a Breton regional political consciousness. Weobserve overwhelming support for consolidating or strengthening existing regionalinstitutions. There is virtually no constituency for the status quo ante; regionalinstitutions are fully accepted as part of the normal democratic process. They leaveentirely open the question of whether the Breton public would support a morethoroughgoing regional, or federal evolution. 44 per cent were in favour of retainingthe current situation (a regional council with limited powers) and only 2 per centwished to abolish it. On the other hand, the answers to this question reveal a sizeableminority of 34 per cent, which is “regionalist” in the sense of seeking greater powersfor the regional council similar to those possessed by the Scottish Parliament (“anelected parliament with tax-raising and legislative powers”) and a further 12 per centwish to see “an autonomous Brittany”. 32 The autonomy solution is confined to themargins of the political spectrum, a discovery confirmed by the absence of support fora strong autonomist political movement.12Table FiveViews on the Future of BrittanyThere is a debate today in France on thefuture of decentralisation. Which one of thefollowing options do you prefer?SPercentage‘Abolish the Regional Council’2‘Retain a Regional council with limitedpowers’44‘Create an elected parliament with tax-raisingand legislative powers’34‘An autonomous Brittany’12

Don’t know 8To what extent are these contrasting viewpoints embedded in distinctive attitudes orparty preferences? We sought to investigate further by cross-tabulating identity,voting intentions and Breton language competence with institutional preference. Wealso tested for relationships between a range of structural attributes (age, gender,socio-economic group, education, locality) and institutional preferences. Full analysisof these variables lie outside of the scope of the present article. We will limit ouranalysis here to identity and voting preference – both of which involve agency as wellas structure - rather than structural attributes for the purposes of making distinctionswithin public opinion.

Identity, voting intention33 and institutional preferenceTotDoes identity matter? We asked respondents to state whether they consideredthemselves to be more Breton than French (15%), equally Breton and French (57%)or more French than Breton (22%). In the case of Brittany, the median position –equally Breton and French - overwhelmingly prevailed. This is consistent withreceived images of Breton political culture and society. The sense of regional identityis strong, but this is not considered as being in opposition to an overarching Frenchnationhood. Regional identity is not a surrogate nationality.Detailed analysis allowed us to explore certain relationships in more depth. Asexpected, clear relationships were established between identity and institutionalpreferences at the two extremes. Those considering themselves to be uniquely orpredominantly Breton were far more likely to advocate either a fully-fledged regionalAssembly or an ‘autonomous’ statute for Brittany, than were those consideringthemselves to be primarily or entirely French. There also appears to be a clearrelationship between the ability to speak Breton and an institutional preference infavour of greater regionalisation or autonomy. But the vast majority of respondentsare neither Breton speakers, nor do they consider their identity as being primarilyBreton.Do parties matter? We observed surprisingly few differences according to votingintention. PS voters were scarcely more favourable than RPR voters to enhancedregional autonomy. Though we must treat these figures with caution, they bear outthe belief expressed in many interviews that institutional preferences cut acrossexisting parties. Institutional choices can not be reduced to a simple left-rightcleavage. The RPR President of the Brittany Region, Josselin de Rohan, might have asceptical position on greater autonomy, but many RPR voters do not share this view.Likewise, while the PS leader Jean-Yves Le Drian has repositioned the Socialist Partyin favour of greater regional autonomy, most Socialist voters are happy with existingarrangements. These findings are consistent with existing representations of Bretonpolitical cleavages. There is a moderation of political conflict within the Brittanyarena. Moreover, national political parties are infused with Breton cultural values.There is also a distrust of political extremes, except in specific sub-culturalcircumstances. While not going as far as to suggest a cross-partisan consensus on thebroad issues facing Brittany, there is an underlying consensus to defend Bretoninterests to the outside world and limit political conflict.ConclusionThe findings presented in this article back up the analysis of regional governance inBrittany as a meso-level phenomenon. There is a marked sense of regionalconsciousness, based on a high measure of social consensus. Brittany is France’s mostdistinctive mainland region. There appears to be a logic of appropriateness at work.The Region is identified as the appropriate space for most matters directly affectingall Bretons: the regional economy, urban and rural development, environmentalissues, culture, training, language, transport. Bretons are proud of their region withinthe French nation. There is little appetite for an ‘autonomous’ Brittany. This can begauged by several criteria: the weak level of support for autonomist parties, the lackof consistent positions one way or the other from the main parties, the limitedconstituency declaring itself in favour of autonomy, the Brittany specific focus ofregional expenditure priorities. On the other hand, around one-third of Bretonssupport a quasi-federal evolution in France, with Brittany occupying a similar position

in France to that of Scotland in the UK. The importance of these findings must beemphasised. Over 40% advocate an enhanced form of regional governance.Whether France’s partial and untidy decentralisation will be allowed to developfurther will be one of the major questions for the next French administration,following the presidential elections of 2002. Though we have not engaged in explicitcomparison in this article, an explicitly comparative exercise would depict France asthe only one of the five major European nations not to be engaging in a form ofpolycentric state development on its mainland. Germany, Spain, the UK and Italyhave each undergone developments that can in some senses be labelled as federal, orquasi-federal. Not so in mainland France, where the territorial uniformityunderpinning the French State tradition outweighs in importance any cross-nationalmoves towards emulation. We touch here at the core of state sovereignty which, in theFrench case, is intimately tied in with perceptions of national prestige and territorialhierarchy.We should qualify our remarks. If the Matignon agreement runs its course, by 2004France itself will have agreed to some legislative powers in Corsica, a major breakwith the principle of territorial equality across the Republic. Though it is hazardous toextrapolate the future on the basis of the exceptional case of Corsica, developments inthe ‘île de beauté’ might presage a more audacious regional decentralisation after thenext presidential elections. Brittany is the most distinctive of France’s mainlandregions, but Bretons are attached to a legitimist form of regionalism. There is a strongsense of regional distinctiveness, but also a deeply embedded reluctance to transgressthe established order. It is unlikely that conformist Brittany will pose a direct threat tothe integrity of the French state, unless the French state itself decides to lead the way.While respectful of established norms and processes, our findings suggest on balancethat the Breton public would welcome a move towards greater regionalisation. Thecapacity to accommodate increased regional diversity will be a test for the long-termevolution of the French Republic itself.1 The research project from which this article is drawn investigates processes of regional governance intwo cognate yet distinctive regions: Wales and Brittany. We compare the politics, policies and politybuilding dynamics of devolution in Wales and decentralisation in the French region of Brittany. Inparticular, we compare three distinct dimensions of the policy system: policy communities (through indepthinterviews in the two regions), issue-networks (via a detailed questionnaire); and public opinion(through a mass opinion poll carried out in both regions in July-August 2001). This article presentspreliminary attitudinal data from the Brittany poll. The research is part of an ESRC-financed project on‘Devolution and Decentralisation in Wales and Brittany’ (Grant number L 219 25 2007). We thank thecouncil for its support.2 See J. Loughlin and S. Mazey (eds) The End of the French Unitary State: Ten Years ofRegionalization in France, 1982-1992 London, Frank Cass, 1995.3 The argument is well put by Albert Mabileau, ‘Les genies invisibles du local. Faux semblants etdynamiques de la décentralization’ Revue française de science politique, 47 (3–4) 1997, pp. 340-76.See also M. Verpeaux, ‘La Décentralisation depuis les lois en 1982’. In Les Collectivités Locales enMutation Paris: La Documentation Française, 1999, pp. 3-11.4 J. Loughlin Subnational Democracy in the European Union: Challenges and Opportunities Oxford:Oxford University Press, 2001.5 Market Research Wales and Efficience 3 simultaneously carried out the public opinion surveys inWales and Brittany in June and July 2001. A representative sample of 1007, selected by quotas of age,gender, socio-economic group and locality, was interviewed in each region. We also carried out 69interviews in Brittany from April-September 2001. These interviews were taped and transcribed. Theylasted an average of one hour. We thank all our interviewees for their co-operation, as well as thefollowing organisations: AGEFAFORIA, AGEFOS-PME, ANPE, AREF-BTP, ARIFOPE,Association of Breton-speaking firms, Association ‘Identité Bretonne’, Brittany Chamber ofAgriculture, Brittany Chamber of Commerce, Brittany Cultural Council, Brittany Cultural Institute,Brittany Economic and Social Chamber, Brittany Regional Council, Brittany Regional Prefecture(SGAR), CEREQ, CFDT, CIJB, Communes of Lorient, Nantes, Rennes, Carhaix and Chateaugiron,DASTUM, DIHUN, DIORENN, DIV’YEZH, DIWAN, Education ministry, European Bureau ofLesser Used languages, FR3, Helio Ouest SA, Kuzul ar Brezhoneg, Labour and training ministry,Local Mission Rennes, Ofis ar Brezhoneg, OPCA-REG, Pays de la Loire Regional Council, PLI,Projet NEC, PS, Quimper Chamber of Commerce, Rennes Chamber of Commerce, Rennes University

(1), Rennes University (2), Saveol, SA, Skol Ober, Skol an Emsav, STUMDI, TES, TIAVRO, TVBreizh, UPIB and the Youth and Sports ministry.6 The term “region”, as applied to Brittany is ambiguous as it can refer to both the institution embodiedin the current regional council with its four departments (Côtes-d’Armor, Finistère, Ille-et-Vilaine andMorbihan) and to the geographically wider historic “region”, the region of Loire Atlantique,corresponding more or less to the ancient Duchy de Bretagne. The survey on which this article is basedwas carried out in the area covered by the existing region, known sometimes as B4.7 From 1950 onwards, Breton actors of all political persuasions co-operated closely in the CELIB -Comité de d’étude et de liaison des intérêts bretons – the archetype of a post-war regional advocacycoalition. The CELIB could claim the credit for many of the improvements in transport infrastructureconsented to the Brittany region in the 1960s and 1970s.8 See D. Hanley, Keeping Left: CERES and the French Socialist Party, Manchester, ManchesterUniversity Press, 1984. See also F. Sawicki La structuration du Parti socialiste. Milieux partisans etproduction d’identités University of Paris 1: Phd thesis, 1993.9 See the classic book by Morvan Lebesque Comment peut-on être breton? Paris: Seuil, 1970.10 This is the thesis retained by Ronan Le Coadic in his stimulating book L’Identité bretonne Rennes:Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 1998.11 Direct election is a slight misnomer. Up to and including 1998, elections for the French regionalcouncils took place on the basis of departmental party lists. The proportional representation systemused – a 5% threshold and the ‘highest average’ methods of allocating votes to seats – marginallyfavoured the larger parties. The electoral constituency for the 2004 elections would probably be that ofthe region, rather than the départements.12 See Loughlin and Mazey, op. cit.13 See V. Hoffmann-Martinot, ‘Les grandes villes françaises: une démocratie en souffrance’. In O.Gabriel and V. Hoffmann-Martinot, eds., Démocraties urbaines: l’état de la démocratie dans lesgrandes villes de 12 démocraties urbanies. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1999. Also P. Le Galès ‘Dugouvernement local à la gouvernance urbaine’, Revue Française de Science Politique, 45 (1), 1995, pp.57-95.14 A government bill which may change this in the case of the Corsica is currently (November 2001)making its way through the French Parliament. However, the transfer of some legislative powers of theCorsican assembly has been opposed by the Conseil d’Etat as well as by the Senate (including Josselinde Rohan, leader of the Senate’s RPR group and president of the Breton regional council. It is stillunknown what the final outcome of this important bill will be.15 Some of these regionalist demands were contained in the 110 Propositions du Candidat Mitterrand,Mitterrand’s presidential election manifesto before he was elected president in 1981.16 See Cole and John, op. cit.17 Only two per cent of our poll rejected the regional institution and wanted to return to the status quoante.18 Unanimity was short-lived. In October 2001, the Rennes municipal council opposed unification: theleading role of the Breton capital would be challenged by a reunified Brittany.19 The Centre-Right (UDF-RPR- DL) list only held onto the majority as a result of a deal struck withfour autonomist-minded independents, led by Jean Yves Cozan, a UDF dissident from the Finistèredepartment. Cozan was offered a new portfolio – Breton Identity. Occupying a pivotal position withinthe Regional Council, Cozan has used his influence to increase the culture budget and to create a set ofinstitutions to promote the use of the Breton language.20 It is true that there has been an evolution of the French political class with regard to issues such asgreater regional powers and the acceptance of minority languages. In effect, most of the politicalparties are now divided with a pro-regionalist and pro-minority language wing (for example,represented by Lionel Jospin and Jack Lang in the PS) and a traditional “jacobin” wing (as representedby Jean-Pierre Chevènement in the PS). The real stumbling block preventing a more pluralist approachis the Conseil d’Etat, which interprets whether measures are in accordance or not with the FrenchConstitution.21 Établissements Publics de Coopération Intercommunal are inter-communal bodies with certain taxraisingpowers. The urban communities, urban districts and new city-wide authorities are the mostimportant.22 See Cole and John, op. cit.23 See M. Phlipponeau, Le Modèle industriel breton, Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 1993.24 See Sharif Gémie ‘The marée noire, vintage 1999: ecology, regional identity and politics incontemporary France’, Modern and Contemporary France 9 (1), 2001, pp. 71-86.25 See C. Canevet Le Modèle agricole breton Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 1992

26 Le Coadic, op. cit27 P. Bignon, Les Interventions économiques du Conseil Régional de Bretagne: une approche despolitiques économiques regionales Rennes: unpublished IEP thesis, 2000.28 Phlipponeau, op. cit29 Y. Le Bourdonnec, Le Miracle Breton Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1996.30 J. Martray, Vingt ans qui transformèrent la Bretagne. L’epopée du CELIB Paris: France Empire,1983.31 A. Cole, ‘The New Governance of French Education’ Public Administration 79 (3), 2001, pp. 707-724.32 These four alternatives were intended to capture a progressive scale of regionalisation. Thoughfunctional equivalence guided our survey design, the possibilities offered to public opinion differedslightly between Wales and Brittany, in order to take into consideration linguistic and cognitivedifferences. In the case of Wales, we offered independence as a solution, consistent with the wording ofthe Wales referendum survey of 1997. In the case of Brittany, upon the advice of our control group wepreferred ‘autonomy’, the term used by the UDB. ‘Autonomy’ signifies a large measure ofconstitutionally enshrined self-government within a quasi-federal system. It goes beyond the Scottishsolution of tax-raising and legislative powers which could, in theory, be reclaimed by the centre.33 We asked respondents to declare how they would vote if a general election, or a regional electionwere to be held tomorrow. The figures presented here are for regional voting intentions. Votingintention figures are given for illustrative purposes only. There were a large proportion of undecided,‘don’t knows’ and refusals, due undoubtedly to the time horizon of the 2004 regional election. The fourlargest parties were respectively the PS, the Greens, the RPR and the UDF. For the sake of clarity,figures are rounded up or down to the nearest percentage point. Figures do not add to 100; we haveexcluded don’t knows, and those favourable to the status quo ante.

Forrás: http://www.psa.ac.uk/cps/2002/cole.pdf

Lásd még:ERNECT NAGY: French regionalism as a result of country`s decentralising1998, Vol. XXXIII, No. 3 – 4

Forrás: www.ustarch.sav.sk/Dpt/Arch/Archjour/ Contents/contents.html

Keményfi Róbert

Rövid háttérrajz az európai kisebbségek területiségének elemzéséhez

A nemzetiségi problémák térszerkezeti irányú vizsgálata napjainkban – párhuzamosan Közép-Kelet- és Délkelet-Európa etnikai konfliktusainak újjáéledésével – a nemzetiségi térképek és nemzetiségi térfolyamatok bemutatásával ismételten magára talál. A kisebbségek térbeli vetületének „egyszerű” megjelenítése (etnikai térképek tömegével) és elemzése azonban nem maradt csupán a kartográfia és a földrajz kizárólagos felségterülete, hanem a legkülönbözőbb szakterületek kutatói – a nemzetközi jogtól a történelmen át a néprajzig – kapcsolódtak az európai kisebbségek komplex térségi kérdéseinek megválaszolásához. Az említett néprajztudomány a sajátos kérdésfeltevéséből adódóan, szinte tárgyának megfogalmazása óta (majd két évszázada) érdeklődik a nemzetiségek térületi elhelyezkedése („helyzete”), térbeli jellege iránt (gondoljunk csak például Csaplovics János és Hunfalvy Pál munkáira). Magyarországon a húszadik század első felében az etnikai területi kiterjedés vizsgálatát a magyarság kisebbségi sorba kerülésének veszélye, majd bekövetkezése tovább erősítette a néprajztudományban is. A részint földrajzi, részint néprajzi szemlélettel és módszertani készletű kutatásokat – többek között – Bátky Zsigmond, Ébner (Gönyey) Sándor, Erdei Ferenc, Cholnoky Jenő, Rónai András, Fodor Ferenc, Glaser Lajos, Gunda Béla, Györffy István, Hézser Aurél, Kádár László, Mendöl Tibor, Milleker Rezső, Prinz Gyula, Teleki Pál, Wallner Ernő neve fémjelzete. Ám a Közép-Európa geográfia kutatásait meghatározó német nyelvű etnikai és felekezeti tértudomány etnikai szála az 1930-as, `40-es években a szigorú tudományos vizsgálatok mellett területszerző politikai célokat, törekvéseket is kiszolgált. A tudomány e korszaka azzal a következménnyel járt, hogy a második világháború után teljesen eltűnt a tudományos palettáról az etnikai térszerkezetek kutatása.

A hazai néprajzi, szociográfiai szemlélettel is átitatott emberföldrajzi ágat, amelyből a második világháború után kinőhetett volna a néprajzon belül egy erős, a kisebbségi területiségre irányuló kutatási szál az „internacionalista szocializmus” ideológiája elfojtotta. Ennek következtében az etnikai feszültségek térszerkezeti elemzése, a kisebbségekkel foglalkozó tudományos intézmények szerves kiépülése megszakadt. Az 1980-as évek második felétől a szociálgeográfia (Berényi István, Cséfalvay Zoltán), az etnikai földrajz (Kocsis Károly, Sebők László), a történeti földrajz (Frisnyák Sándor, Somogyi Sándor, Ilyés Zoltán) a politikai földrajz (Hajdú Zoltán), a vallásföldrajz (Bartha Elek, Hunyadi László) támogatásával és hátterével indult meg ismételten a néprajon belül az etnodemográfiai, kultúrföldrajzi szempontokat is érvényesítő kutatási irány (Paládi-Kovács Attila, Keményfi Róbert). Ám a mai néprajzi kutatások szemléleti és módszertani megújulás igényével igyekeznek az etnikai térszerkezetekhez közelíteni. A területiségben a második világháború előtti szemlélettel ellentétben nem az egymástól való etnikai elszigetelődés jelenségét látják, hanem csupán olyan kvantitatív háttéranyagot,

amely a környezetükkel egymásra kölcsönösen ható kulturális, szociális kapcsolatot fenntartó nemzetiségek kvalitatív vizsgálatához szolgálat kiindulási kereteket. Ennek értelmében választ kapunk arra a kérdésre is, hogy mi indokolja térségünkben a néprajzon belül az etnikai térszerkezeti vizsgálatok megerősödését? És egyáltalán, miért nem hagyható figyelmen kívül napjaink etnikai konfliktusainak elemzésénél a térszemléleti megközelítés (az etnikai tér jelentése)?

Mert – sok egyéb szempont és folyamat mellett – a térbeliség keretei meghatározzák az interkulturális kommunikáció jellegét, és e kommunikáció Kelet és Nyugat közötti eltérő jelenségeit. A területiség vizsgálata egy módszertani eszköz tehát, amely háttéranyagot biztosíthat a finom társadalmi folyamatok elemzéséhez. Az etnikai térszerkezetek társadalmi jelentősége szempontjából az eltérő nemzettípusoknak megfelelően két fő irány figyelhető meg:

A kultúrnemzeti koncepcióban az láthatjuk, hogy a kelet-európai társadalmi rendszer összeomlása után a régi reflex, az etnikai konfliktusok területi megoldásába vetett hit éledt újjá egy olyan feléledő nacionalizmus keretében, amely az egyéni szabadságjogok helyett a nemzeti kollektívum az etnikailag–kulturálisan idegen politikai hatalomtól való függetlenedést (és egyben etnikai szeparációt) állítja előtérbe.1 A nemzeti kisebbség kifejezése tehát nem az egyéni kulturális különbségekre utaló és azokat hangsúlyozó fogalom, hanem statikus, „érinthetetlen”, a történelmi kontinuitás nyomatékával áthatott adott állapotot jelölő terminus.2 Éppen ezért a kultúrnemzeti jogalkotás szigorúan megkülönbözteti a régi és új nemzetiségeket. Az elsőt kollektív jogok, védelem, míg a másodikat (vendégmunkások, bevándorlók) csak egyéni jogok illetik meg.3 A „régi” (klasszikus) nemzeti kisebbség nemzetállamokban elfogadott meghatározása a következő: „A nemzeti kisebbségek heterogén szociális struktúrájú népcsoportok, de vagy a modern nemzetállamok kialakulásával párhuzamosan vagy országterület–módosulás (egyesítés, elszakadás) következtében egy idegen államban élnek vagy oda kerültek, valamint az őket körülvevő környezettől eltérő nyelvvel és (általában) vallással rendelkeznek.” 4

Ez a felfogás statikus. Minden más társadalmi rétegződésénél magasabb rendűként feltételezi az etnikai hovatartozást, illetve e megfogalmazás objektívnek vélt szempontok alapján (tehát a már említett nyelv, származás) homogenizálja a nemzetiségi közösséget, amely közösség a kultúrnemzeti

1 Altermatt, Urs: A szarajevói jelzőtűz. 2000. Bp. Osiris. 28–62.; Hroch, Miroslav: A nemzeti mozgalomtól a nemzet teljes kifejlődéséig: a nemzetépítés folyamata Európában. In: Regio 2000. 11. 3. 3–26.2 Suppan, Arnold – Heuberger, Valeria: Perspektiven des Nationalismus in Mittel-, Ost-, und Südosteuropa. Österreichische Osthefte. 1991. 33. 2. 208. 3 Amíg meg nem szerzik a legitimitásukhoz szükséges évtizedeket. 4 Ez a megfogalmazás igaz Németországra is. – Heckmann, Friedrich: Minderheiten. In: Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie. 1978. 30. 765.; Joó Rudolf: Etnikai folyamatok és politikai folyamatok néhány összefüggése. In: Társadalomkutatás. 1984. 2. 99.; uő.: Etnikum, kisebbség, szórvány. In: Confessio 1986. X. 3. 3-9.; Kraas-Schneider, Frauke: Bevölkerungsgruppen und Minoritäten. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden GmbH. 1989. 47.; Stark, Joachim: Völker, Ethnien, Minderheiten. Bemerkungen zu Erkentnistheorie und Terminologie der Minderheitenforschung. In: Jahrbuch für ostdeutsche Volkskunde. Marburg: Elwert 1988. 31. 41.

felfogásban tehát nem látszólagos, hanem valós. Sőt. Az államhatár-változások következtében önazonosságában az anyaállamától való kényszerű leválása miatt az adott nemzeti kisebbséget létezésében is veszélyeztetettnek tételezi5, és ezért nem az egyén, hanem a származás, kultúra, nyelv alapján a kisebbség kollektív jogait szorgalmazza. Sőt a mérhetőséget (a kisebbségi statisztikát) a kollektív kisebbségi jogok letéteményeseként, garanciájaként látja: „Mi demográfusok azt valljuk, hogy a nemzetiségi politika egyik kulcskérdését a nemzetiségekről készített statisztikák jelentik. Kisebbségvédelem nincs kisebbségi statisztika nélkül.”6

Meg kell azonban azt is jegeznünk, hogy a nemzetközi jogban a mai napig sincs egységesen definiálva a kisebbség fogalma. Vitatott az illető csoport szükséges nagysága és a szubjektív együvé tartozás érzésének meghatározhatósága. A nemzetközi kisebbségi joggal foglalkozó munkák így kénytelenek külön fejezeteket szentelni a kisebbségi jogok országonkénti bemutatásának, illetve megpróbálni saját általános meghatározást adni az etnikai és nemzeti kisebbség fogalmára. – Az etnikai, nemzeti kisebbség jogi meghatározásának hiánya nem feltétlenül a nyugati, államnemzeti gondolkodásban kell keresnünk (l. alább). A fogyatékosság inkább azt jelzi, hogy a nemzetközi szervezetek vonakodnak garanciát vállalni a sokszor csak erővel kikényszeríthető, illetve megvédhető kollektív kisebbségi jogokért.7

Ennek a kultúrnemzeti kisebbségi felfogásnak egyenes következménye az etnikai területiséghez való nemzeti viszony is. Nevezetesen, hogy a nemzetállamok Európa középső és délkeleti térségében az itt élő népeket elválasztó kulturális, nyelvi törésvonalak térbeli vetületére is törekszenek. Az etnikai tér gondolatának gyökereit a Közép-Kelet- és Délkelet-Európában feléledő nacionalizmus alapvető jellemvonásában kell keresnünk: abban a törekvésben, hogy az államhatároknak egybe kell esniük az etnikai határokkal.8

Hiszen a kultúrnemzeti eszmében a közös nyelv, kultúra, a közös származás mítosza játssza a döntő szerepet. A „közös származási mítoszba” azok is beleértendők, akik bár az adott állam keretein kívül élnek, de ugyanazon nyelvet beszélik, kultúrát birtokolják. Jóllehet e nemzettípus eredeti ismérvei között – az államnemzettel ellentétben – nem játszott döntő szerepet a területiség, a XIX.

5 Ilyen jellegű, a nemzetiség veszélyeztetettségi érzéssel telített meghatározásaiból pl: Nagy Ödön: Szórvány és beolvadás. In: Hitel. 1938. III. 4. 261-276.; Mikó Imre: Nemzet és nemzetiség. In: Korunk. 1977. XXX. 5. 681-691. – A nemzetiség kultúrnemzeti típusainak részletes bemutatását l. Kővágó László: Kisebbség – nemzetiség. Budapest: Kossuth Könyvkiadó. 1977. 60–91.6 Kovacsics József: A nemzetiségi statisztika problematikája. In: Klinger András (főszerk.): Magyarország nemzetiségeinek és a szomszédos államok magyarságának statisztikája. (1910–1990). Budapest: Központi Statisztikai Hivatal. 1994. 42.7 Brunner, Georg: Nemzetállamok és kisebbségek Európa keleti felében. In: Regio. 1992. 3. 3. 3–36.; uő.: Nemzetiségi kérdés és kisebbségi konfliktusok Kelet-Európában. Budapest: Teleki László Alapítvány. 1992. 11.; Takács Imre: Nemzetiségi statisztika, nemzetiségi jog. In: Klinger András (főszerk.): Magyarország nemzetiségeinek és a szomszédos államok magyarságának statisztikája. (1910–1990). Budapest: Központi Statisztikai Hivatal. 1996. 59.; Girasoli, Nicola: A nemzeti kisebbségek fogalmáról. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. 1995. 124–125.; Kovács Péter: Nemzetközi jog és kisebbségvédelem. Budapest: Osiris Kiadó. 1996. 36.8 „A ‘nacionalizmus’ terminust a Gellner által adott definíció értelmében használom, azaz e fogalom ‘elsődlegesen olyan princípium, mely a politikai és nemzeti egység kongruenciáját tartja szükségesnek ’ –Hobsbawm, Eric: A nacionalizmus kétszáz éve. Budapest: Maecenas Könyvkiadó, 1997. 17”

század közepe után, a kisebbségek nemzeti ébredése és a XX. századi határmódosítások által mégis komoly hangsúlyt kapott: a kisebbségeknek joga van önálló nemzetállamokban egyesülni, sőt ezt meg is kell tenniük. Napjainkban a hasonló célú törekvésekben ennek a célnak, azaz a terület/nemzet megfeleltetésének mindent – például gazdasági megfontolásokat is – alárendelnek. Olyan nyílt vagy rejtett törekvéseket figyelhetünk meg, melyek a szimbolikus etnikai határokat térbeli vetületként, vagy akár államhatárként igyekeznek értelmezni. Európa nyugati felével szemben Keleten tehát nem új, individuális identitás „teremtésével” találkozunk, hanem „régi”, államiak feléledésével szembesülünk. Ugyanebből a megközelítésből kiindulva azt is láthatjuk, hogy Európa keleti felén a gazdasági és az etnikai kérdéseket éles határok mentén igyekeznek szétválasztani. Míg gazdasági téren a nyugat-európai mintát szeretnék követni, a gyors gazdasági integrációt elérni, addig az etnikai együttélés uniós modelljei (például etnikai alapú autonómia) szóba sem kerülhetnek. Sőt a gazdasági és etnikai integráció mesterséges szétválasztása az etnikai konfliktusokat tovább erősíti, ugyanis a poszt–szocialista, kis nemzetállamokban a rossz gazdasági helyzetben az etnikai összeütközések valószínűsége növekszik. Ha azonban két népcsoport életterei ugyanazon lehetőségek kiaknázására fedik egymást, akkor bekövetkezik a verseny. Az egymás kiszorítására való törekvés elősegíti az etnikai konfliktusok kiéleződését.9 A „másik fél” részéről pedig már publicisztikai közhely: az átláthatatlan etnikai szeparációs mozgalmaktól való félelem visszatartja a Nyugatot éppen a Kelet által „áhított” gazdasági integrációtól. Az ördögi kör így bezárult.

Összegzésként azt mondhatjuk, hogy nemzetiség fentebb bemutatott kultúrnemzeti definíciója a nemzeti kisebbségnek nem csupán a viszonyrendszerére, társadalmi struktúrájára utal, hanem a közép- és kelet-európai nemzetállamok számára fontos térszerkezeti, geográfiai elemeket is magában foglal. Egyrészt a nemzetiség, etnikai csoport nagysága a kultúrnemzeti meghatározásaiból adódóan mérhető, tehát térben leképezhető , másrészt a meghatározás az etnikai határokat a történeti kontinuitás által legitimált térbeli rendként jeleníti meg és ennek következményeként az államhatárok mozgását és burkoltan e határok megváltozásának lehetőségét is tartalmazza.

A XVIII. század második, a XIX. század első felében a prenacionális előzményekből, feudális államalakulatokból kialakultak a modern nemzetállamok. A megindult nemzetté válási folyamat eredményeként Európában az államalkotó (többségi) népek nemzetekké váltak. E történeti folyamat lényegileg más jellegű nemzeti államalakulatot hozott létre. A fentebb bemutatott kultúrnemzeti fejlődési típus mellett körvonalazódott az államnemzeti koncepció is. Az államnemzet alapja az ugyanazon jogi-politikai kerethez való tartozás és közös terület, de a terület csupán mint egy adott államkeret. Az államnemzet dinamikus kisebbségi elképzelésben a 9 A versenyelmélet a közép-kelet- és délkelet európai nemzetállamokban is magában foglalja az új bevándorlókkal, gazdasági menekültekkel való hasonló bánásmódot, mint Európa nyugati felén (pl. toloncegyezmények). Ekkor a térbeli etnikai határok helyett a szimbolikus határok kerülnek előtérbe. – Olzak, Susan: Etnikai konfliktusok elemzési lehetőségei. In: Regio. 1993. 4. 1. 159–182.

nemzetiség, nemzeti kisebbség fogalmát vagy nem is említik(!), vagy – hasonlóan az etnikai csoporthoz – nem emelik ki a szociális kisebbségek típusainak sorából. A nemzetiséghez való tartozás is „plazmaszerű” állapot, azaz az államnemzeti álláspontban a nemzeti kisebbségnek nem biztos, hogy a legfontosabb, legerősebb összetartó ereje a nyelv. A nyelvi hovatartozást felülmúlhatja más szociális réteghez, vagy akár területhez való kötődés is. „Az egyén nem csak a nemzetiségéhez, hanem más etnikai, regionális, vallási, … képzettségi, foglalkozási… csoportokhoz, kommunikációs hálókhoz is tartozik.”10 Hiszen a nyugati típusú fejlődésnek éppen az volt az eredeti célja, hogy a feudális (születési, származási) tagoltságot megszüntesse, és hogy a nemzetnek mindenki, aki az adott állam területén él, egyenlő rangú szabad polgára legyen. Ebben a gondolkodásban az államalkotó nép mellett élő más etnikai közösségek tagjai(!) (tehát nem kollektívan, hanem egyénileg) „elvileg” nem kisebbségi státuszba kerületek (süllyedtek), hanem éppen az államalkotó nép részeivé emelkedtek.11 Ha ez így van, akkor nincs értelme kollektív közösségként elkülönülő nemzeti kisebbségekről beszélni. És bár Európában a nemzetállamok kialakulása mellett napjainkig jelen van a nemzeti kisebbséggé válás másik útja, a határmódosítás is, a nyugati értelmezésben ezeknek a határváltozásoknak sincs jelentősége, mert az államnemzethez esetleg e módon kerülő „nemzetiségek” az előző elvnek megfelelően az „új” nemzet (tehát a nyelvtől függetlenül) egyenlő polgárai lesznek: „A kisebbségek második fajtáját Nyugat–Európában a nemzeti kisebbségek alkotják. Ebben a csoportban, sokkal inkább, mint Kelet–Európában, alapvető ismérv: a nemzeti hovatartozás tudata. Tévedés lenne (kiemelés: K. R.) tehát a nyelvi–kulturális azonosság alapján nemzeti kisebbségnek, vagyis valamely államalkotó nemzet más országában élő részének minősíteni a vallonokat, flamandokat, a svájci németeket és franciákat, valamint a korzikaiakat, elzásziakat. Ezek olyan közösségek, amelyeknek többségükben saját államokhoz kötődő, politikai nemzeti tudatuk van.”12

A két alapvető nemzettípus a területiséghez való viszonya pontosan megmutatja az etnikai alapú regionalizmus eszmerendszere keleti és nyugati fajtája közötti felfogásbeli különbséget is. A húszadik század második felétől kezdve Európa legkülönbözőbb területein a hagyományokra, közös eredetre hivatkozva igyekeznek kisebbségi közösségek területi céljaikat legitimálni, ám

10 Lewin, Kurt: A kisebbségi csoport pszichológiai problémái. In: Csoportdinamika. Válogatás Kurt Lewin műveiből. Budapest: Közigazgatási és Jogi Könyvkiadó. 1975. 272.; Moosmüller, Alios: Kulturen in Interkation. Münster–New York–München–Berlin: Waxmann. 1997. 40. – Azaz nem biztos, hogy erősebb „sorközösségi” kapocs köt össze egy Erdélyben élő falusi magyar nyugdíjast pl. egy magyar anyanyelvű, városban élő, de nagyon jól kereső ügyvéddel, mint egy szintén a falujában élő, hasonló vagyoni és szociális helyzetű románnal. A nyelvi azonosságnál fontosabbak lehetnek a nyelven, kultúrán túlmutató regionális, táji identitási szálak is. A finomabb, mikroszintű kutatások is ezt hangsúlyozzák: Biró A. Zoltán: A regionális identitás kialakulásának néhány vonásáról. In: Regio. 3. 4. 61–71. 11 Hobsbawm, E. J. im. 23–61; A. Gergely András: Kisebbség, etnikum, regionalizmus. Budapest: MTA Politikai Tudományok Intézete. 1997. 42–49. – A francia forradalom egyik vívmánya pl. a zsidóság negatív megkülönböztetésének megszüntetése volt.12 Joó Rudolf: 1983. 66. A nyugat–európai kisebbségek sajátosságai és típusai. Nemzetiségi füzetek 5. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. 1983. 66.

Európa nyugati felében a területi autonómia elsősorban politikai eszköz, míg keleten elérendő cél.

Eszköz: a kivívott jogi kedvezményeket a gazdasági (hiszen nagytöbbségében elmaradott térségekről van szó: centrum–periféria ellentét), a politikai életben minél előnyösebben érvényesíteni és a kisebbségi jogosítványokat a legjobban kihasználni, de továbbra is integrált része marad az adott autonómia az egységes Európának.

Cél: Az autonómiát az önállóságot megadó országtól mindinkább függetlenedve megteremteni, a regionalizálódás hangsúlyos vonásával ellentétben nem magasabb, nemzetek feletti szervezetekbe integrálódni, hanem inkább „mini kultúrnemzetet” alkotva a nyelv, a közös származás alapján szegregálódni, és az anyaországéval egyező lokális entitást erősíteni.13

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A modern nemzetállamok kialakulásának folyamatában feléledő nacionalizmus fokozatosan „fedezi fel” tehát – a nemzeti intézmények kiépülésével párhuzamosan, a nyelv és a kultúra kérdése után – a „saját etnikai tér” kiterjedését és a nemzeti fejlődés típusának (kultúrnemzet, államnemzet) e tér határának fontosságát vagy elhanyagolhatóságát. Európa középső és keleti felén a nacionalizmus keretei között a múlt század első felében kezdetét vette e tér mitologizálása is. Napjainkban azonban ez a folyamat a nemzeti mozgalmak újjászületésével párhuzamosan megfordult: az „etnikai tér mítosza”14 a Közép-Kelet- és Délkelet-Európában feléledt nacionalizmus egyik fontos, magát a nacionalizmust gerjesztő, erősítő részévé vált. Az etnikai térhez kapcsolódik tehát – többek között – a nacionalizmus. Ennélfogva a közép-kelet- és délkelet-európai nemzetállamokban a feléledő nacionalizmus – akár az autonómia megvalósításával – ismét nem mást jelent, mint a szimbolikus etnikai határok térbeli realizálásáért folytatott küzdelmet.15

Ám a nemzetiségi kérdéssel foglalkozó tudományok – beleértve az írás elején említett néprajzot és társadalomföldrajzot is – a múlt kritikus számbavételével és a jelen politikai veszélyeivel azonban már arra törekszenek, hogy ne az etnikai térszerkezetek közép- és kelet-európai

13 Fejős Zoltán: Néprajz és regionalizmus: kutatási irányok és lehetőségek. In: Muratáj 1999. 1. 96–109.; A. Gergely András: Kisebbségi tér és lokális identitás II. Társadalmi tér-képzet és kisvárosi tradíció (Kiskunhalas). MTA Politikai Tudományok Intézete Etnoregionális Kutatóközpont Munkafüzetei. Budapest: MTA Politikai Tudományok Intézete. 1996. 62–75. – Plasztikus példa a nyugati típusú regionalizmus fent említett törekvéseire Észak-Írország: Joó Rudolf: im. 38–47. – A kérdést részletesen l. Joó Rudolf: Etnikumok és regionalizmus Nyugat-Európában. Budapest: Gondolat Kiadó 1988. különösen: 129–170.14 A saját etnikai tér is felsorakozik tehát az etnikum fennmaradását biztosító mítoszok közé: Smith, Anthony D.: A nacionalizmus. In: Bretter Zoltán – Deák Ágnes (szerk.): Eszmék a politikában: a nacionalizmus. Pécs: Tanulmány Kiadó 1995. 30. 15 Conversi, Daniele: A nacionalizmuselmélet három irányzata. In: Regio 1998. 9. 3. 37–55. – Ez a törekvés akkor erősödik fel igazán, ha olyan, idegen népcsoport által lakott területről van szó, amely egy nemzet mitologikus eredetéhez tartozik (pl. a szerb–koszovói válság kapcsán), vagy hosszú, évszázados „véres” védő harcok színtere volt (pl. Erdély: magyar–román burkolt/nyílt konfliktus). – Bartha Elek: Régió és religió. In: Dimenziók. Felső-magyarországi Szemle. 1993. 1-2. 46-57.

mozdulatlanságát (mozdíthatatlanságát), történeti kontinuitását hirdessék és a szeparációs politikai döntéseket szolgálják, hanem azok hatását elemezzék.16

16 A tanulmány az F 030365 számú OTKA pályázat támogatásával készült.

Más hálózati helyek is használhatók az érdeklődők kitartásától függően:

http://www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/CSGR/current.html#Resistance

http://www.regional-studies-assoc.ac.uk/

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/archive/c-archive/res-con.html

http://www.eurac.edu/summeracademy/progr/Gruber.pdf

http://www.eurac.edu/index

http://www.eipa.nl/home/eipa.htm

http://www.local.coe.int/publications/PDF/authorities_1998/64.pdf.

Recent and forthcoming publications

Memory and Desire: Rétif de la Bretonne, Autobiography and Utopia, Rodopi, Amsterdam, 1996, 177 pp.Regionalism in the European Union, Intellect, Exeter & Portland, Oregon, 1999, 204 pp. 'Nations, Regions and the Future of Europe', Journal of Area Studies, 9 (1996), pp. 126-141.‘Utopia and Autobiography: Georges Perec’s W ou le souvenir d’enfance’, Utopian Studies, 8, 2 (1997), pp. 87-103.‘French Regionalism’, entry in Encyclopedia of Contemporary French Culture (London & New York, Routledge, 1998), pp. 460-462.‘Utopian Space in the Work of Rétif de la Bretonne’, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 362 (Oxford, Voltaire Foundation, 1998) pp. 81-91.‘There and Back Again: The Country and the City in the Fiction of Rétif de la Bretonne’, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 10, 4 (July 1998), pp. 451-466.‘Stendhal’ entry in Encyclopedia of Life Writing, edited by Margaret Jolly (London & Chicago, Fitzroy Dearborn, 2001), II, 844-845. ‘France: 18th-century Auto/biography’ entry in Encyclopedia of Life Writing, edited by Margaret Jolly (London & Chicago, Fitzroy Dearborn, 2001), I, 335-337.‘The Dark Side of Utopia: Word, Image, and Memory in Georges Perec’s Récits d’Ellis Island: histoires d’errance et d’espoir’, in W. Everett (ed.), The Seeing Century: Film, Vision, and Identity (Amsterdam, Rodopi, 2000), pp. 36-48.

Redefining territories the functional regions Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development : la recomposition des territoires.Paris : OECD, 2002

COLE A. and LOUGHLIN J. (2003) Beyond the unitary state? Public opinion, political institutions and public policy in Brittany, Reg. Studies 37, 265-276. This paper investigates the new regionalism in Brittany, one of France's historic regions. It is based on findings from a mass opinion survey carried out in July 2001, as well as on insights drawn from over 70 semi-structured interviews. The quantitative and qualitative evidence is interpreted through reference to four hypotheses, concerning issues of Breton identity, autonomy, pragmatism and political opportunity structures. While our findings allow us to establish the pertinence of the new regionalist problematic in Brittany, we conclude that, in the French case, theories of "new regionalism' must be understood within the framework of an overarching state tradition that regulates and channels regional pressures and creates strong incentives for a system of national political regulation.School of European Studies, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF10 3YG, UK. Email: ColeA@Cardiff.ac.uk

More information on

www.dree.org/elargissement Enlargement does not have the same impact on all the French regions. If one focuses on trade only, the contrasts are amazing. However, viewed from France and en masse (graph. 1), the image is not very different from our trade with the world. The same five regions concentrate more than half of all French sales to Central and Eastern Europe*: Ile-de-France (20%), Rhône-Alpes (13%), North (8%), Alsace (8%) and Lorraine (7%). However, viewed from the regions themselves, the CEEC’s share appears somewhat heterogeneous, often occupying a surprising place in the ranking: Thus, on the export side, Brittany ranks first among the regions, with 5,4% of its foreign sales going to the East, as compared with the national average of 3,6%. This is due to its food processing pole, which accounts for a quarter of its total sales to the CEEC and CIS, just ahead of electronics. Burgundy comes second with 5,1%, and this time sales are of intermediate goods and equipment. At the end of the list, Midi-Pyrénées has the least exposure to the CEEC with only 1,9%. On the import side, Lorraine, Burgundy, Champagne-Ardennes, Franche-Comté and Picardy are at the top of the list with nearly 5% of their products coming from the CEEC. Conversely, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur (1,5%), Languedoc-Roussillon (1,8%) and Midi-Pyrénées (1,9%) are at the end of the list. From the dynamic point of view, over the last three years four regions have doubled their exports, whereas five have doubled their imports. Lower Normandy, Aquitaine and Brittany are developing their trade in both directions. Franche-Comté and Auvergne are among the most dynamic regions in terms of exports and Upper Normandy and Alsace of imports. Finally, in terms of exports to imports ratio, the CEEC contribute a positive share to the trade balance of most of the French regions. Franche-Comté (191%), Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, Burgundy and Upper Normandy (155%) appear the big winners compared to the average of 123%. To measure the true geography of French trade with the CEEC, it is necessary to use a more sophisticated statistical indicator: namely the relative intensity of trade, i.e. the trade of a region with the CEEC relative to its share of world trade. The higher this index, the more our regions are orientated towards the candidate countries and vice versa. From this point of view, graph 2 shows an obvious west-east divide which stresses the importance of distance within an enlarged Europe. The regions of Eastern France - Lorraine, Alsace, and also Burgundy and Rhône-Alpes – are thus much more orientated towards the candidate countries than the other French regions. Lorraine (2,2) is on a level approaching that of the whole of Germany (2,9), which is completely orientated towards the CEEC. Aquitaine and Languedoc-Roussillon quite naturally trade much more with the Iberian peninsula, with relative trade intensity values of 7,7 and 12,5 respectively with Spain. More surprisingly, the Ile -de-France also turns more towards Spain (4,7) than the East (IR). The Southern motorway, as well as the market share won by Spanish fruit and vegetables, have their part to play, whereas the Parisian industrial sector is resistant. However, the Centre region is a good example of how to compensate for distance by means of an excellent pan-European sectoral specialisation. The relative intensity of the Centre’s trade with the CEEC exceeds the national average by 20%, thanks to its pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries, which account for more than 20% of all French exports to these countries in this sector. As with the food processing industry in Brittany, increasing the importance of local specialist industries thus compensates for their distance, in particular with respect to the CEEC, which are far from providing the whole range of products, either in quality or in variety.

Trade of French regions with CEEC Forrás:

http://www.statistics.sk/webdata/slov/zahran/REA35e.pdf.