This chapter investigates this dimension of French life by focusing upon ‘culture’ and sport, then comparing the two. Both these domains are of wider interest because not only do they encompass so many French men and women, but also because both have been structured by institutions that are the fruit of considerable political work. Moreover, both were largely institutionalized during the same period –1960–80 – one during which, once again, the French state proved central. This is most clearly the case in the cultural affairs domain. As of 1960, the state put in place a range of policies which prompted an expansion of cultural activities and of the professions they concern. Ranging from music to dance or to books, culture was promoted as a means of cultivating the population, but also that of promoting France internationally. Organized sport in France has been strongly affected by equivalent levels of public intervention and support. This said, both culture and sport have also been affected by a certain retraction of state support since the 1990s. Some of the shortfall in funding has been taken up by increasingly powerful municipal and regional public authorities. Indeed, this has tended to attenuate state domination in both sports. Nevertheless, neo-dirigiste state intervention persists. Moreover, as the chapter explains, the role of the state is one of the reasons why, in both the cultural and sports sectors, elitism tends strongly to prevail.

This chapter begins with ‘the cradle’ period of life in France, then moves on to cover nursery and primary schooling. In short, it presents data upon the institutions and power relations which directly affect children from the ages of 0–11, as well as their parents, other carers and initial teachers. Empirically, the subjects dealt with are the health-policy structured medical environment into which infants are born, the types of housing and geographical locations within which they begin to grow up, childcare facilities and ‘family’ policies, and primary schooling. In so doing, commonly experienced institutions and organizations are presented and explained. Moreover, an effort is made to underline that, of course, some children experience this period of life in ideal conditions, whereas others already suffer from being socially disadvantaged. More fundamentally, the chapter is underpinned by an approach to socialization that lays emphasis upon the causal impact of social structures, without however assuming that this impact is the same for all children in all families. Although certain elements of all the above have certainly changed since the 1980s, the overall argument made in this chapter is that the most significant institutions and power relations that structure this tranche of life in France have remained remarkably stable. As such, the period covered in this chapter is very much one during which seeds are sown for the type of society, and its relationship to politics, into which children in this country pass as of the age of 11.

Throughout, the book documents how the category expatriate has become ensnared in the politicisation of migration. The very fact that the expatriate is now understood as a migration category evidences the possibly increasing use of migration as a discursive, legal and everyday site of ‘worldmaking’ (Walters 2015), of articulating social subjects and producing social inequality. In the current conjuncture, increasingly bifurcated migration regimes demonise some movements while glorifying others. Such differentiated (im)mobilisation as a technology of governance depends centrally on ostensibly innocuous and technical categories and criteria. Migration categories are thus at the heart of the insidious ways that intersecting material and symbolic inequalities are enacted today, and any project for social justice thus needs to dissect and dismantle them. The conclusion further elaborates this argument.

Fully understanding the world of work in France can only be achieved by integrating its analysis into that of French capitalism itself, or more precisely how business in France fits within contemporary capitalism. This chapter thus engages directly with a vast literature on the varieties of national capitalism, together with analysis of how the latter have been affected since the 1980s by transnational trends that include the rise of neo-liberalism and globalization. Here the French case is particularly interesting because, during the period 1945–80, its economy had been deeply structured by an interventionist approach which authorized the state to heavily involve itself in markets but also the very capitalization of business – an approach known as dirigisme. The chapter shows that conducting business in France has changed considerably since 1980. Much of it has been liberalized from governmental controls, in particular the finance sector and the very ownership of large companies. Nevertheless, the chapter takes issue strongly with the contention that the French state is no longer involved in the economy and that, consequently, dirigisme is dead. Using case studies from the defence, wine and housing sectors, I argue instead that the French way of doing business is still highly marked by the state’s approach to what I call neo-dirigisme. Rather than intervening through finance and capitalization, the state today continues to be central to a myriad of institutions which structure the production and marketing of goods and services.

This chapter examines Irish republican uses of commemoration and will show how, in utilising public memory, mainstream republicans associated with Sinn Féin are engaging in a diligent fostering of political legitimacy and continuity. In a post-conflict setting, this has been of particular importance both in deflecting political attacks and maintaining cohesion within their own political ranks. Through the Troubles, Irish republicans espoused revolutionary, separatist goals and were prepared to sanction the use of force in pursuit of their political aims. But as the Northern Ireland peace process revealed, pragmatic adaptation and political compromise eventually led republicanism down a purely political path. Memory work and remembrance has played an important role in this process of combining sweeping political adaptation on the one hand, with revered symbols and narratives of legitimacy on the other. Republican sites of memory and ritual activity have mushroomed in the last decade, and the sheer number of republican memory sites is formidable. Commemoration is thus a most important public activity for republican activists and elites. This chapter examines how memory work acts to legitimise the mainstream republican project on three fronts of engagement.

The chapter focuses on the debates leading up to, and following, the introduction of the sugar tax in the UK. Drawing primarily on newspaper coverage, and supported by policy documents and academic studies of sugar taxation and its effects (both measured and anticipated), the chapter explores the ways in which the case for the sugar tax is made (and disputed), the industry response to the tax and the ways in which its success can be measured. It argues that success for the sugar tax marks a shift in the relationship not only between governments and industry but also between industry and the consumers on whom their living depends. The chapter concludes that the decision to introduce a tax marks sugar out as a problem about which something must be done and constitutes an opportunity for governments to show that they are taking tangible action. As a result, the very fact of the tax has become more important than its effects.

If primary schooling in France is a relatively depoliticized issue area, secondary and higher education most certainly is not. Throughout the period covered, these levels of education have frequently been framed as not only a public problem, but one which demands new policy instruments and even a new ethos. If this seemingly egalitarian principle of ‘merit’ is rarely contested, actually instrumenting it within the national system education has proved to be extremely difficult. Indeed, as the chapter shows whilst taking the reader through the evolving structures of intermediate and high schools, then vocational, university and grande école-based education, social inequalities in France are still relatively rarely corrected by the education system itself. The chapter argues that this reflects a lack of institutional change to the French educational system which must be traced to the way education more generally is framed and politically worked upon in France. Despite the findings of educational science, the transmission of knowledge continues to be top-down and highly conservative. Once again, teachers and academics have largely contributed to this outcome. But they have been allowed to do so in particular because parents, and educational science as a source of expertise, have deliberately been kept at a distance from the system itself. Moreover, as vocational education, but also that now administered in the grandes écoles, clearly shows, having largely abandoned the idea that education is a public interest issue, the state no longer provides a firm rudder for governing the system as a whole.

This final empirical chapter addresses a longstanding and controversial debate around Research Ethics Committee (REC) practice; whether they should take the scientific quality of proposed research into account when assessing an application. By coming at this topic from the perspective of trust decisions, highlighting the role of scientific quality as a trust warrant, this chapter sheds light on why this issue is such an intransigent point of dispute between RECs, researchers, and the Department of Health.Historically, this chapter traces the tensions over RECs’ desire to take research quality into account from the late 1960s to the present day, highlighting the recurrent themes in the debate – around expertise, prior scientific review by funding bodies, and separation (or integration) of scientific and ethical issues. In terms of ethnographic work, this chapter explores how these tensions are present in REC meetings as committee members – aware of concerns about overstepping the mark with scientific review – ‘police’ their own and colleagues’ discussion of scientific quality, while at the same time drawing on this information to help make their decisions. Finally, this chapter explores the limits of RECs’ trust in the context of external scientific review of applications and how these fit into REC decisions.

This chapter focuses on two anti-sugar documentary films – Jamie Oliver’s Jamie’s Sugar Rush and Damon Gameau’s That Sugar Film. The films traverse familiar and exotic environments to demonstrate the wrongness both of sugar and of those who overconsume it. Both Oliver and Gameau position themselves as men of action and as amiable non-expert experts, with Oliver’s authority coming from his reputation as a chef and campaigner and Gameau’s lying in his willingness to experiment on his own body by purposefully overconsuming sugar. The chapter argues that in doing so, they communicate to their viewers a way of being in the world that lionises individual acts as a vehicle for change, necessarily smoothing over the social and health inequalities they encounter along the way.