French female youth and sports inspectors and the challenge of neoliberalism during the Trente Glorieuses

In a society where the politics of life is geared toward maximizing the physical and psychological dimensions of human capital to ensure economic growth, France’s Inspectorate for Youth and Sports played a key role in disseminating a new mode of governance of bodies and youth—a form of self-governance based on the rising neoliberal values that emerged during the period of the Trente Glorieuses. Representing a tiny minority in an essentially male bastion, a small number of women, cherry-picked for their expertise and effectiveness as inspectors, came to play a vital role in a new mode of youth governance aimed, against a backdrop of social control, at encouraging young people to assume greater self-responsibility and to take ownership of their physical education and activities. Guided by research in the human and social sciences as a basis for rethinking how physical education is taught in schools, women may be seen as key contributors to the emergence of a new ethos designed to develop the ability of French youth to adapt to the social and economic transformation of capitalist society by appealing to the psyche (superego) and self-regulation. Despite promoting a “differentialist feminism”.

Des migrants et des revenants. Une histoire des réfugiées et réfugiés hongrois en Suisse (1956-1963)

Il n’a que 14 ans. En 1956, István Borsodi pense choisir la liberté en traversant le Rideau de fer. Il quitte une Hongrie morose – où la Révolution contre l’occupant soviétique a été écrasée – et rejoint la Suisse. István se souvient de son arrivée en terres helvétiques, des applaudissements, « des gens qui venaient nous saluer » dans chaque gare où le convoi spécial faisait halte. Il a conservé la première carte postale destinée à sa famille restée en Hongrie « Je suis à Bière, je me sens bien, j’embrasse tout le monde ». Mais, après quelques temps, le mal du pays, l’ennui des proches commencent à le ronger et ses perspectives professionnelles en Suisse sont moins attrayantes que ce qu’il imaginait. Sa tante restée au pays lui écrit que les jeunes rapatriés bénéficient d’une amnistie. En 1959, István Borsodi choisit alors de rentrer dans la Hongrie de János Kádár. Cet ouvrage retrace l’exode de quelque 200 000 Hongroises et Hongrois de 1956, l’arrivée d’une partie d’entre eux en Suisse, avant d’éclairer le parcours de celles et ceux qui ont décidé de rentrer en Hongrie quelques semaines, mois ou années après leur exil. Ce phénomène migratoire « à contre sens » est au coeur de ce livre. Arrivés dans le « paradis capitaliste » des Trente glorieuses, pourquoi ces personnes choisissent de rejoindre l’ « enfer » communiste ?

De-democratization of the Political Constitution

<Online Only>This chapter examines how institutional change in post-war Europe reconstituted inter-state, state society, and social relations in such a way as to restrain sovereignty, depoliticize the economy, and deradicalize politics. The constitutionalism that developed in the post-war era, and the transformation in state-society relations that it signalled, had international, European, and domestic dimensions, which were themselves intertwined. Constitutionalism contributed significantly to the process of de-democratization, in combination with a demobilization of the masses and a de-radicalization of parties of the Left. The transformation of political problems into technical or legal issues, along with the decline of parliamentarism as a touchstone of political legitimacy, and the constitutionalization of the European Treaties, would be facilitated by the relatively high levels of economic growth during the Trente Glorieuses, which permitted welfare corporatism to complement the constitution of a passive authoritarian liberalism. The chapter concludes by noting how this set in motion a dynamic that takes a sharper turn in the ‘new neoliberalism’ of the 1980s.</Online Only>

Désinences vernaculaires : architecture alpine en Valais

Since the term ‘vernacular’ has been used to frame an ‘architectural gender’, not a constructed heritage, particularly that of the rural economy in the mountains, reality has been dispossessed, and all the natural elements are, in fact, the result of a natural restoration. This was the case in Valais under the architectural governance of Edmond Giroud and Maurice Zermatten during the Trente Glorieuses. Their belief in a narrow regionalism aspiring to an identity, which they defined as a ‘neo-Valaisan’ style, wiped out modernist aspirations. In order to fight against an outdated censorship, architects react by exalting the modernist cause, which sometimes makes them forget that any new form can also be the result of a critique of the forms established by tradition, or the result of an order that is specific to the architectural project. Alongside the multiple conclusions of the ‘vernacular gender’ – the latter understood narrowly as tradition – a more daring project can be measured across the whole of the Valais and Alpine territory. From the simple dwelling house to the imposing dam, the scale adopted is a territorial measure, an order of thought that internalises a necessity, engaging the author in a work that is less autobiographical and more empirical. On the one hand, there are the virtuosos of the vernacular and, on the other, those who propose a territorial project, such as Jean-Paul Darbellay.