The Confédération paysanne can be described as a marginal farmers' union that represents the vested interests of a tiny minority and that seems to swim against a tide of socio-economic change. At a time when France is increasingly integrated into a global economy, it calls for greater protectionism, a massive increase in state subsidies, and a closure of borders to trade. Yet, far from being dismissed as marginal or anachronistic, the Confédération, at the height of its influence, was hailed as a symbol of the “general interest” and gained the enthusiastic support of a majority of French citizens. In this essay, the author suggests that the success of the Confédération had little to do with conventional political or institutional patterns but was derived instead from its “symbolic power” and its capacity to transform its own cause into a metaphor for opposition to globalization. At a time of profound crisis, the Confédération was able to capture one of the nation's most enduring myths, laying claim to a whole symbolic universe linked to peasant farming. Whilst such symbolism is hardly new in the French context, the Confédération's particular skill was to counterpose this against a dominant image of neo-liberal globalization. It posited peasant farming as an antidote to all the evils of a globalizing world, one in which identity is reaffirmed, tradition is preserved and social bonds are restored.
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Globalization, the Confédération Paysanne, and Symbolic Power
Sarah Waters
In French Politics, Culture & Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2010
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 96–117 (22 total)
Farming Visions
Susan Carol Rogers
“Peasant Fever That Goes Beyond Corporatism,” “Peasants: Old-Style and Modern.”1 Such headlines led stories in the French press about the August 1999 attack on a MacDonald’s deep in the French hinterlands by a group affiliated with the farmers union Confédération Paysanne. The incident, noted in the American press as a colorful example of Gallic excess, drew weeks of substantial and sympathetic attention from the French press and general public, inspired vocal support from politicians across the political spectrum, and catapulted the group’s leader, José Bové, to the status of national hero. Part of the significance attributed in France to the event, as suggested by the headlines above, lay in claims that this action represented a radical new departure for farm organizations: unlike previous farmer protests—habitually no less symbolically- charged, well-orchestrated, or widely supported—this one, it was frequently said, spoke to issues of concern to society as a whole, not simply to the corporate interests of farmers.
In French Politics, Culture & Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2000
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 50–70 (21 total)
Another (Food) World Is Possible
Post-industrial French Paysans Fight for a Solidaire Global Food Policy
Chaia Heller
If the post-war industrial model entails a mix of technological and chemical interventions that increase farm productivity, then post-industrial agriculture (emerging in the 1970s) constitutes agricultural surpluses, as well as an array of trade, aid and biotechnology practices that introduce novel foodstuffs (processed and genetically modified) on an unprecedented scale. While industrial agriculture reduces the farming population, the latter gives rise to new sets of actors who question the nature and validity of the industrial model. This essay explores the rise of one set of such actors. Paysans (peasants) from France's second largest union, the Confederation Paysanne, challenge the industrial model's instrumental rationality of agriculture. Reframing food questions in terms of food sovereignty, paysans propose a solidarity-based production rationality which gives hope to those who believe that another post-industrial food system is possible.
In Anthropological Journal of European Cultures
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2011
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 89–110 (21 total)
Making Sense of the Anti-Same-Sex-Marriage Movement in France
Scott Gunther
asserting French exceptionalism in a world that supposedly no longer shares France's concern with human dignity. Indeed, one of the interviewees, Philippe, invoked José Bové, a French sheep farmer and head of the Conféderation paysanne (a vocal farmers union
In French Politics, Culture & Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2019
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 131–158 (28 total)