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Never underrate the power of French unions. Don't be fooled by their apparently scant formal membership, tenuous financing, and violent ideological disagreements, this article based on recent firsthand observations advises. The truth is that unions in France represent and have the support of a large segment of the working force for, under French law, certain key union contracts set industry-wide labor standards to which all employers must adhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article asks whether the wave of protest in the fall of 2010 in France can be interpreted as evidence of persisting radicalism. It argues that, in spite of appearances, the French labor movement is no longer radical. This claim does not imply that industrial conflict is disappearing. Strong legacies and institutional processes still feed conflict in the workplace and often push workers to use contentious, extra-institutional means; but industrial conflict is not what it used to be, with the total number of working days lost to strikes decreasing steadily over the past forty years, and with conflict itself being reconfigured and transformed. Labor contention is no longer driven by an offensive agenda and has become essentially defensive. If there is radicalism left in France, it might be best described as a "radicalism of tradition." The article concludes by discussing the relevance of "radicalism" as an analytical category to make sense of labor contention in contemporary France. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author tackles the mixture of anger and hope, poverty and politics that he observed when he arrived in 1989 in La Courneuve, a suburb in Paris, France, which revealed to him a side of Paris that was rarely seen. He says that La Courneuve was not always an urban ghetto, but was a site of social progress. He relates his experience in observing the opening kick-off of their quarterfinal football game against the Jets from St-Cloud in June 1980. He mentions that everything in France was politicized, and roots of French American football were communist.

The article presents a profile of the French urban sociologist Paul-Henry Chombart de Lauwe and an exploration into the development of his social philosophy. Discussion is given highlighting how Chombart de Lauwe's involvement with the working class evolved his activities in the discipline of sociology into a city-planning democratization advocate during the post-World War II era. Comments are given relating the various elements which influenced this turn in Chombart de Lauwe, including his contact with liberal Catholic associations, his research on the needs of the working class, and his studies under ethnologist Marcel Mauss.

This article looks at the religious implications of the scarf affairs that took place in France in 1989 and 2002. The events sparked a call for the prohibition of religious signs in educational institutions. The author notes that political analyses of this legislation have been made but there have been few religious responses published. In this article, the author attempts to make such a response, focusing on how the Jewish leadership reacted in the face of rising anti-Semitic actions.

This article proposes a comparative account of the progress of the managerial revolution in France and Norway over the post-World War Two period. This account is set and framed within theoretical discussions on and around 'Americanization'. We argue that in both the French and Norwegian cases the managerial revolution has been closely tied to a process of Americanization that has had an impact on economic institutions, organizations and philosophy. The process of Americanization has to be contextualized for each of those two countries. The nature of the process has also evolved considerably over time - from 1945 to today. Hence, we propose that the progress of the managerial revolution in France and Norway could be looked at as a non-linear process, albeit with a deep structural logic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts for the featured essays of the issue, including Arnaud's Baubérrot's "Un projet de réforme hygiènique des modes de vie: naturistes et végétariens à la Belle Époque," Max Likin's "'Nothing Fails Like Success': The Marxism of Raymond Aron," and W. Brian Newsome's "Paul-Henry Chombart de Lauwe: Catholicism, Social Science, and Democratic Planning."