Performing Racial Difference at the Colonial Exposition of 1931

2021 ◽  
pp. 104-135
Author(s):  
Rachel Anne Gillett
Keyword(s):  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
Women Of Color ◽  
Racial Difference ◽  
French Population ◽  
French Empire ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Lasting Effect ◽  
Music Making ◽  
French Colonial

This chapter analyzes the unabashed moment of imperial pride that was the Paris Colonial Exposition of 1931. It explains how music making at the Exposition performed ideas about race. The Exposition presented challenges and possibilities for colonial subjects trying to work out where they belonged, how they belonged, and whether they wanted to belong in the French Empire. The chapter examines both the official, state-sanctioned representation of race and ethnicity at the Exposition and some critiques of it generated by anti-colonial groups. The Exposition demonstrated hierarchies of race through displays of music and dance. It asserted the value of France’s “civilizing” influence based on those representations. French colonial subjects exposed some of those representations as false and promoted their own “authentic” music and dance performances both at the Exposition and at an anti-Exposition organized by surrealist, communist, and anti-colonial activists. The chapter argues that the Colonial Exposition had such a high profile that it galvanized French men and women of color to resist misrepresentations of their cultures. It may, therefore, have had a longer-lasting effect on them than on the white metropolitan French population targeted by the Exposition.

The Flip Side of Jazz

2021 ◽  
pp. 31-64
Author(s):  
Rachel Anne Gillett
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Women Of Color ◽  
Black Identity ◽  
Leisure Activities ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
Black Music ◽  
World War ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Racial Representation ◽  
Music Making

This chapter describes the entry of jazz into Europe in 1919 after World War I. It demonstrates how the jazz craze presented French men and women of color with opportunities for recognition but also threatened them with widespread misrepresentation. French Antilleans and Africans responded to the jazz craze by offering their own interpretations of Black music and Black identity in political meetings, journalism, and literary reactions. By 1924, police were monitoring these activities carefully. The chapter argues that musical developments contributed powerfully to an interwar context within which racial representation in France was both widespread and contested. It shows how the French state responded by surveilling Black francophone populations closely even in their “leisure” activities such as music making. The chapter emphasizes throughout how the tumulte noir catalyzed Black French to articulate their differences from Black Americans in print and in performance.

scholarly journals Evolution of the prevalence of obesity in the adult population in France, 2013–2016: the Constances study

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sébastien Czernichow ◽  
Adeline Renuy ◽  
Claire Rives-Lange ◽  
Claire Carette ◽  
Guillaume Airagnes ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Linear Trend ◽  
Adult Population ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
French Population ◽  
Obesity Prevalence ◽  
Point Change ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Class 1 ◽  
Prevalence Of Obesity ◽  
Age And Sex

AbstractThis study provides trends in obesity prevalence in adults from 2013 to 2016 in France. 63,582 men and women from independent samples upon inclusion from the Constances cohort were included. Anthropometrics were measured at Health Screening Centers and obesity defined as a Body mass index (BMI) ≥ 30 kg/m2; obesity classes according to BMI are as follows: class 1 [30–34.9]; class 2 [35–39.9]; class 3 [≥ 40 kg/m2]. Linear trends across obesity classes by sex and age groups were examined in regression models and percentage point change from 2013 to 2016 for each age category calculated. All analyses accounted for sample weights for non-response, age and sex-calibrated to the French population. Prevalence of obesity ranged from 14.2 to 15.2% and from 14 to 15.3% in women and men respectively from 2013 to 2016. Class 1 obesity category prevalence was the only one to increase significantly across survey years in both men and women (p for linear trend = 0.04 and 0.01 in women and men respectively). The only significant increase for obesity was observed in the age group 18–29 y in both women and men (+ 2.71% and + 3.26% point increase respectively, equivalent to an approximate rise of 50% in women and 93% in men, p = 0.03 and 0.02 respectively). After adjustment for survey non-response and for age and sex distribution, the results show that class 1 obesity prevalence has significantly increased in both women and men from 2013 to 2016, and only in young adults in a representative sample of the French population aged 18–69 years old.

Race and Ethnicity as Barriers to ART Access

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Daar
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
Women Of Color ◽  
The United States ◽  
Minority Populations ◽  
Lower Income ◽  
Patient Relationship ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Income Levels

This chapter analyzes the racialization of infertility care in the United States, and seeks to understand why ART stratifies along race and ethnic lines. Researchers and scholars have proposed several theories, including lower income levels and access to insurance in minority populations, social factors that make women of color less likely to seek treatment for infertility, historic factors that give rise to a continuing aura of mistrust in the doctor–patient relationship, and express and implied discrimination by doctors who view minority populations as less deserving of parenthood than white patients. The chapter shows how these new eugenics, like the old eugenics, can persist only so long as political power structures support and advance their agenda.

Gender

Sociology ◽  
2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janeen Baxter ◽  
Heidi Hoffmann
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
Social Institution ◽  
Social Characteristics ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The Social ◽  
Unequal Access ◽  
Biological Differences

The term gender refers to the cultural and social characteristics attributed to men and women on the basis of perceived biological differences. In the 1970s, feminists focused on sex roles, particularly the socialization of men and women into distinct masculine and feminine roles and the apparent universality of patriarchy. More recent work has critiqued the idea of two distinct genders, calling into question the notion of gender dichotomies and focusing attention on gender as a constitutive element of all social relationships. Gender has been described as a social institution that structures the organization of other institutions, such as the labor market, families, and the state, as well as the social relations of everyday life. In addition, scholars have pointed to the ways in which gender is constructed by organizations and individual interactions. Gender not only differentiates men and women into unequal groups, it also structures unequal access to goods and resources, often crosscutting and intersecting with other forms of inequality, such as class, race, and ethnicity.

Modesty in the Service of Justice: Retrieving Tradition and Reversing the Gaze

Horizons ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cara Anthony
Keyword(s):  
Women Of Color ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Attitudes Toward Women ◽  
The Self ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Poor Women ◽  
Cardinal Virtue ◽  
The Mind

ABSTRACTIn recent years, concern for “modesty” has become more prominent in American religious circles. Recent advocates of modest clothing for women voice important concerns, but also perpetuate problematic attitudes toward women, especially poor women and women of color. Thomas Aquinas' description of modesty corrects this error, because it includes modesty of the mind. Contemporary developments in moral theology then enable us to relate both mental and physical modesty to the cardinal virtue of justice, where modesty decenters the self and makes room for other people to flourish. Findings from social psychologists illuminate the dynamics of social power, and clarify specific ways that mental and physical modesty work under the rubric of justice. These findings suggest that men and women may face different challenges in the practice of modesty, and so Christians must attend to all types of modesty in order to adequately address the question of appropriate clothing.

‘Mission Civilisatrice’: French Cultural Policy in the Middle East, 1860–1914

1986 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathew Burrows
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Policy ◽  
Third Republic ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Aspects ◽  
French Colonialism ◽  
French Empire ◽  
The Third ◽  
Colonial Expansion ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
Cultural Components

Mission civilisatnce was one of the bywords of French colonial expansion under the Third Republic. Unfortunately until now there have been few works devoted to its study. Indeed, the notion itself has not been taken very seriously by scholars. As long ago as 1960 when Henri Brunschwig published his seminal work on French colonialism, he stated quite categorically: ‘en Angleterre la justification humanitaire l'emporta’ while ‘en France le nationalisme de 1870 domina’ even if that nationalism ‘ne s'exprima presque jamais sans une mention de cette “politique indigène” qui devait remplir les devoirs du civilisé envers des populations plus arriérées.’ Since then academics both in France and outside have tended to concentrate (in what few works have been written on French colonialism) on the political and economic aspects of the French Empire to the detriment of its cultural components.

Kings of the Mountains: Mayréna, Missionaries, and French Colonial Divisions in 1880s Indochina

Itinerario ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 25 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 185-217
Author(s):  
James P. Daughton
Keyword(s):  
Coastal Plain ◽  
Rocky Mountains ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
French Empire ◽  
High Plateau ◽  
Indigenous Groups ◽  
Vietnamese Population ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
Late Nineteenth

In the late nineteenth century, the distance from Qui Nhon to Kontum – a trip of about two hundred kilometers – was nearly insurmountable. The route most travellers took led from the port town in southern Annam out across a narrow coastal plain of cultivated fields before crossing rivers and gorges, and ascending rocky mountains. Then the path leveled out on a high plateau of extreme weather and dense forests where fever, tigers, and unwelcoming local communities intimidated even the hardiest of travellers. Though well within the borders of French-controlled Annam, there was little Vietnamese – and even less French – about these highlands. The region was inhabited almost exclusively by a variety of indigenous groups like the Sedang, the Bahnar, and thejarai, who were both ethnically distinct from the majority Vietnamese population of Annam, and politically independent from the emperor in Hué as well as the French colonial administration. The region was so isolated from the rest of the colony that Frenchmen invoked the Vietnamese name for the area, calling it the Pays Moï– ‘savages' country’ – and even the missionaries, the only Europeans to live in the region until the early 1900s, referred to their headquarters in Kontum as the ‘Mission des Sauvages’. It was an unlikely focal point for one of the most divisive controversies in the French empire.

The Sahel in West African History

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Edge States ◽  
French Empire ◽  
Islamic Movements ◽  
French Colonies ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
High Concentrations ◽  
Postcolonial States ◽  
Transportation Routes

The Sahel or Sahil is in a sense the “coast” of the Sahara and its cities major “ports” in trade circuits linking long-standing regional exchange in the products of different ecozones to the markets of the Mediterranean through the trans-Saharan trade. Despite botanical diversity and the capacity to support high concentrations of humans and livestock, the productivity of this region depends upon a single unpredictable annual rainy season. Long- and short-term fluctuations in aridity have required populations specializing in hunting, farming, fishing, pastoralism, gold mining, and trade to be mobile and to depend upon one another for their survival. While that interdependence has often been peaceful and increasingly facilitated through the shared idiom of Islam, it has also taken more coercive forms, particularly with the introduction of horses, guns, and a dynamic market in slaves. Although as an ecozone the region stretches all the way to the Red Sea, the political Sahel today comprises Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Chad—all former French colonies. France’s empire was superimposed upon the existing dynamics in the agropastoral meeting ground of the desert edge. Colonial requirements and transportation routes weakened the links between the ecozones so crucial to the success of states and markets in the region. Despite the abolition of slavery in 1905, France tacitly condoned the persistence of servile relations to secure requisitions of labor, food, and livestock. Abolition set off a very gradual shift from slavery to other kinds of labor patterns which nonetheless drew upon preexisting social hierarchies based upon religion, caste, race, and ethnicity. At the same time, gender and age gained in significance in struggles to secure labor and status. “Black Islam” (Islam noir), both invented and cultivated under French rule, was further reinforced by the bureaucratic logic of the French empire segregating “white” North Africa and “black” sub-Saharan Africa from one another. Periodic drought and famine in the region has prompted a perception of the Sahel as a vulnerable ecological zone undergoing desertification and requiring intervention from outside experts. Developmentalist discourse from the late colonial period on has facilitated the devolution of responsibilities and prerogatives that typically belong to the state to nongovernmental bodies. At the same time, competition over political authority in the fragmented postcolonial states of the Sahel has often reinscribed and amplified status and ethnic differences, pitting Saharan populations against the governments of desert edge states. External and internal radical Islamic movements entangled with black market opportunists muddy the clarity of the ideological and political stakes in ways that even currently (2018) further destabilize the region.

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