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A Revival of Labor and Social Protest Research in France: Recent Scholarship on May 1968

Review products

ArtièresPhillipe and Zancarini-FournelMichelle, 68: Une Histoire Collective, 1962–1981. Paris: La Découverte, 2008, 847 pp.
Zancarini-FournelMichelle, Le Moment 68. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2008, 313 pp.
VignaXavier, L'insubordination ouvrière dans les années 68: Essai d'histoire politique des usines. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2007.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2011

Keith Mann
Keith Mann
Affiliation:
Cardinal Stritch University, Milwaukee
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Extract

May 1968 in France was one of those events that became instantly a distinct historical moment. Nearly contemporaneously with the events themselves, “May '68” became an object of conscious—and contentious—reflection, research, and analysis. By October 1968, the Bibliothèque nationale had already listed 124 books on the May–June events. The leading scholarly labor and social history journal in France, le mouvement social, immediately prepared a special issue on May 1968. Successive anniversaries have been marked with waves of scholarly and popular articles, books, films, interviews, colloquia, and other commemorative events and gatherings. The graphic depictions of May '68—photographic and other—have become enduring iconographic images that reappear with each anniversary.

Type
Review Essay
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 80 , Issue 1 , Fall 2011 , pp. 203 - 214
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 2011

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References

NOTES

1. Zancarini-Fournel, Michelle, Le Moment 68 (Paris, 2008), 19CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Subsequent citations will be made in parenthetical form in text.

2. A leading political science journal, the Revue française de science politique, published an article in 1969 on the number of workers on strike. The author, Gérard Adam, estimated the number of private and public sector workers to be seven million, lower than the ten million claimed by the unions and frequently cited in discussions of the strike wave. In any case, it was by far the largest number of strikers France had ever seen, vastly surpassing the 2.6 million workers who struck in June 1936.

3. See Longwy, Immigrés et prolétaires (1880–1980), Le Creuset français. Histoire de l'immigration (XIXe-XXe siècle) (Paris, 1988)Google Scholar and Immigrants in Two Democracies: French and American Experience (in collaboration with Donald L. Horowitz) (New York, 1992)Google Scholar.

4. See Beaud, Stépahane and Pialoux, Michel, Retour sur la condition ouvrière (Paris, 1999)Google Scholar and Violences urbaines, violence sociale (Paris, 2003)Google Scholar.

5. For the most recent articulation of this argument see Seidman, Stephen, The Imaginary Revolution: Parisian Students and Workers in 1968 (Berghahn, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6. See Hassenteufel, Patrick, “Citroën-Paris: Une Grève d'Emancipation,” in Exploration du Mai Français, volume 1: Terrains, eds. Mouriaux, René, Percheron, Annick, Prost, Antoine, and Tartakowsky, Danielle (Harmattan, 2002)Google Scholar and Hatzfeld, Nicolas, “Les Ouvriers de L'automobile: Des Vitrines Social à la Condition des OS, le Changement des Regards,” in Les Années 68: Le Temps de Contestation, eds. Dreyfus-Armand, G., Frank, R., Lévy, M.F. and Zancarini-Fournel, M. (Editions Complexe, 2000)Google Scholar.

7. Shorter, Edward and Tilly, Charles, Strikes in France, 1830–1968 (Cambridge, 1974)Google Scholar.