French Municipal Elections: High Abstention Rate and the Advance of the National Front

The first round of the French Municipal Elections in which citizens vote for this local representatives and mayors took place on Sunday.  The results showed a great deal of dissatisfaction among French citizens with the two leading parties.  The party that holds most power including the Presidency (François Hollande) is the Parti Socialiste (the Left) the other leading party is the UMP (the Right) - Union pour un Mouvement Populaire.  But, Sunday's elections showed that support for these two major parties is eroding with many people deciding not to vote- abstention rate was around 36% - or to vote for the National Front, which runs on an anti-immigrant platform, but which has also become something of an anti-establishment party as well.  Read and listen to these two informative reports from Radio France Internationale and France 24.

Marseille the Kaleidoscope

Marseille

Often when we study a time and place we seek out primary sources to provide us with a window into society.  A primary source is “a first-hand, direct source of information or research, such as the words of a person who is the subject, official government records, or the memoirs of others; document examined that had not been amended by a third party…”

http://www.gale.cengage.com/psm/WHYAREPRIMARYSOURCESIMPORTANT.doc.

Primary sources tend to be snippets of history and studying them encourages us to look for other evidence in order to complete our investigation.  On the other hand, when we look at secondary sources - such as newspaper, magazine, TV, or documentary representations of an event or question - we don’t always look around for more since the report tends to be a synthesis of several pieces of evidence that gives us a fuller view of the situation.  However, it can be equally as rewarding to compare several secondary sources about a particular situation.   Brining together reports from a variety of sources lets us build a more complex and complete view of a situation, event, or question and deepens our understanding.  A case in point would be these three reports about Marseille.  Marseilles is known as France’s second biggest city, the oldest city in France, and the busiest and largest port on the Mediterranean.  But is Marseille France’s real capital, France’s cultural capital, or France’s murder capital?  These three reports from three different English-language sources offer a multi-pronged answer to that question while raising other questions that we can look into.  As we read the reports, we will find some themes that

“Betting on Marseille”

© OTCM/ADD

This article appeared in the Real Estate section of France Today July 6, 2010.  British journalist Suzanna Chambers, who lives with her family in the south of France wrote the article.  She is a regular reporter for France Today and other British newspapers – including The Sunday Times.  She also edits the luxury real estate magazine Carpe Diem, and contributes to Angloinfo.com and various lifestyle magazines.

France Today is a magazine oriented towards an international Francophile audience interested in French travel, culture, gastronomy, society & politics, real estate for sale and vacation rentals.

“Marseille, the Secret Capital of  France”

This article appeared in print – 10/4/13 – in the Travel section of The New York Times, with the headline “The Real Capital Of France.”  Michael Kimmelman is the author.  He is a well-known and prize-winning architecture critic at The New York Times.

“Frontline Marseille - Violent Crime in France's Gangland Capital”

In this second link there is the same short documentary but this one is from the Journeyman web site and has the transcript in English of the documentary)

http://www.journeyman.tv/?lid=66121

Frontline: Marseille is presented and produced by Evan Williams.  For over 20 years he has been a TV news and current affairs reporter for SBS, an Australian national television network, as well as Channel 4 in the UK, and PBS Frontline World in the US.  The documentary appears on the Journeyman Pictures channel on youtube.  Journeyman Pictures gathers documentaries and reports from producers around the world that offer high-quality and thought-provoking journalism.

Paris a city for savoring life and where that comes from

This a.m. I was cutting grapefruit and listening to NPR's "Morning Edition." The show featured a lovely incisive and succinct report on when and why the city of Paris took on some of its characteristics as a city of light and romance.  

When War-Torn Rubble Met Royal Imagination, 'Paris Became Paris'

The prompt for the story is the publication of How Paris Became Paris Joan DeJean's latest book about French culture and history.  Joan DeJean is a Trustee Professor of Romance Languages at the U of Pennsylvania.  She writes fascinating, insightful historical studies that give an entertaining and very readable account of some of the major themes in French civilization and culture.  One of her previous works is The Essence of Style: How the French Invented High Fashion, Fine Food, Chic Cafes, Style, Sophistication, and Glamour.  This morning's piece of journalism reminds us of how the pursuit of leisure and pleasure - loisir and plaisir - have molded aspects of society that we often take for granted or dismiss because they are the fun-side of life.