tag:theconversation.com,2011:/id/topics/paris-15321/articlesParis – The Conversation2024-03-14T13:28:27Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2254132024-03-14T13:28:27Z2024-03-14T13:28:27ZParis 2024: conflict in Ukraine and the Middle East threaten to turn the Olympic Games into a geopolitical battleground<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581622/original/file-20240313-30-xbar5f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=30%2C0%2C3935%2C2854&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/paris-france-23-september-2017-olympic-736128922">Keitma/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Summer Olympic Games will return to Paris this July exactly a century after it last took place in France. Paris is the hometown of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pierre-baron-de-Coubertin">Pierre de Coubertin</a>, the founder of the modern Olympic Games. </p>
<p>When Coubertin first conceived the revival of this ancient Greek tradition in the late 19th century, he imagined a scene where nations celebrated friendly internationalism by playing sports together. His Olympic idealism provides the foundation for the <a href="https://stillmed.olympics.com/media/Document%20Library/OlympicOrg/General/EN-Olympic-Charter.pdf">Olympic charter</a>, a set of rules and guidelines for the organisation of the Olympic Games that emphasise international fraternity and solidarity. </p>
<p>In 1992, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) moved to uphold Coubertin’s legacy by renewing the tradition of the <a href="https://olympictruce.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/IOTC-2010-Brochure-EN.pdf">sacred truce</a> associated with the ancient Olympics. The Olympic truce calls for the cessation of hostilities between warring nations during the Olympic Games and beyond. </p>
<p>The Olympic truce has contributed to peace before – albeit only fleetingly. During the opening ceremony of the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, the South and North Korean delegations marched into the stadium <a href="https://stillmed.olympic.org/media/Document%20Library/OlympicOrg/News/2018/2018-01-20-Declaration.pdf">together</a> under the single flag of the Korean peninsula. They also fielded a unified Korean ice hockey team for this competition. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-winter-olympics-and-the-two-koreas-how-sport-diplomacy-could-save-the-world-89769">The Winter Olympics and the two Koreas: how sport diplomacy could save the world</a>
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<p>The IOC <a href="https://stillmed.olympics.com/media/Documents/News/2023/10/14/2023-10-14-IOC-Session-Mumbai-Bach-Opening-speech.pdf">hopes</a> that the forthcoming Olympics will be a moment for world peace. But with the Paris Olympic torch relay starting next month, the world is plagued with conflict and animosity. And tensions in eastern Europe and the Middle East show no sign of easing. </p>
<p>The 2024 Olympics will take place amid geopolitical turmoil. These conflicts will affect the Olympic Games and throw into question the capacity of sport to reduce tension between nations. </p>
<h2>Banned Russian athletes</h2>
<p>Moscow ordered its army to invade Ukraine four days after the end of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. The IOC considered this aggression a violation of the Olympic truce and subsequently <a href="https://olympics.com/ioc/media/q-a-on-solidarity-with-ukraine-sanctions-against-russia-and-belarus-and-the-status-of-athletes-from-these-countries">banned</a> Russian athletes from participating in the Paris Olympic Games.</p>
<p>Russia was unhappy with this decision. It <a href="https://www.reuters.com/sports/iocs-ban-russia-cannot-be-compared-with-israel-situation-2023-11-03/">condemned</a> the IOC as being biased towards the west and even appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport against the suspension. But in February 2024, the court eventually <a href="https://www.tas-cas.org/fileadmin/user_upload/CAS_Award_10093.pdf">upheld</a> the IOC’s position.</p>
<p>Russian athletes will not be absent from the Olympics. The IOC allows them to take part in the competition not as a state delegation but as neutral individuals. Ukraine finds this situation unacceptable, <a href="https://olympics.com/ioc/media/q-a-on-solidarity-with-ukraine-sanctions-against-russia-and-belarus-and-the-status-of-athletes-from-these-countries">arguing</a> that neutrality cannot remove Russian identity from the Olympics.</p>
<p>The IOC has denounced the Russian occupation of Ukrainian territories. But it also admits the complexity of this geopolitical conflict, and acknowledges that its best approach would be to keep impartiality on this matter. Ukraine responded by implementing a <a href="https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-olympics-russia-boycott-paris-569d1c75d5e6c835016dd41f1b10c217">policy</a> for its athletes to boycott any contests involving Russians at Paris 2024, although it later lifted this rule. </p>
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<img alt="Three helicopters flying over a war-damaged city." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581616/original/file-20240313-18-ptcldi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581616/original/file-20240313-18-ptcldi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581616/original/file-20240313-18-ptcldi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581616/original/file-20240313-18-ptcldi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581616/original/file-20240313-18-ptcldi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581616/original/file-20240313-18-ptcldi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581616/original/file-20240313-18-ptcldi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The Russian assault on the Ukrainian city of Mariupol in 2022 left thousands of civilians dead and injured.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/war-ukraine-huge-damage-cause-by-2156014785">BY MOVIE/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<h2>Unhappy Russians</h2>
<p>The war between Israel and Hamas will further complicate the 2024 Olympics, with Olympic officials poised to face allegations of inconsistency concerning Israeli athletes. </p>
<p>This conflict is no less brutal than the war between Ukraine and Russia. According to the Hamas-run health ministry, more than 30,000 people have been <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-68430925">killed</a> in Gaza since the start of the war. And there is also <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/10/damning-evidence-of-war-crimes-as-israeli-attacks-wipe-out-entire-families-in-gaza">evidence</a> that Israeli forces have committed war crimes in the Gaza Strip. </p>
<p>However, the resolution for the Olympic truce of Paris 2024 singles out the suspension of Russia and does not contain a single word on the violence in Israel and Palestine. </p>
<p>These two warring parties can participate in the Olympics – though the strict <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/07/gaza-who-lives-there-and-why-it-has-been-blockaded-for-so-long">blockade</a> of the Gaza Strip will make it hard for Palestinians to take part in the games. But the Russian delegation is prevented from taking part in the same competition. Russia considers this discrepancy unfair and again blames Olympic officials for siding with the west.</p>
<p>Israel and its allies are seemingly very vocal within the Olympic circle. In October 2023, the IOC <a href="https://olympics.com/ioc/news/ioc-member-elections-lead-to-increased-female-representation-among-the-membership">offered</a> Yeal Arad, who in 1992 became the first Israeli to win an Olympic medal, their prestigious membership. When accepting this privileged appointment, she <a href="https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1141836/arad-comments-after-elected">urged</a> the Israeli athletes to give inspiration and hope to their fellow citizens suffering from the tragedy. </p>
<p>At the same IOC session, Cassy Wasserman, the chairperson of the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, also declared himself “proud to be Jewish” before his speech. </p>
<p>The 2024 Olympic Games in Paris will take place amid conflict and contention. The Olympic truce and the neutrality of international sport is the idealism of the IOC. Not only that, it volunteers to be a messenger of world peace.</p>
<p>Can Paris 2024 be a catalyst for this vision? Unfortunately, the capacity of the Olympics to act as a festival of peaceful internationalism will inevitably be curtailed in this period of geopolitical turmoil. </p>
<p>Despite the facade of festivity in Paris, the escalation of hostilities around the world is likely to trouble the Olympic Games in the French capital.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225413/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jung Woo Lee does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Olympic Games have also been highly political events – Paris 2024 will be no different.Jung Woo Lee, Lecturer in Sport and Leisure Policy, The University of EdinburghLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2250072024-03-06T17:15:04Z2024-03-06T17:15:04ZAnnie Ernaux’s Exteriors: the sharpness of her writing shines against photos of life in cities<p>When sharp, abrasive arts of differing forms come together, what happens? The rub might make them ring out, possibly grate, or sharpen even more. All of this is happening in the dense, fascinating show that the writer Lou Stoppard has put together with the <a href="https://theconversation.com/nobel-prize-in-literature-annie-ernaux-and-writing-from-experience-192050">Nobel-prize winning author Annie Ernaux</a> at Paris’s <a href="https://www.mep-fr.org/event/exterieurs-annie-ernaux-et-la-photographie/">Maison Européenne de la Photographie</a> (MEP).</p>
<p>Stoppard was writer in residence at the MEP in 2022 and the exhibition Exteriors: Annie Ernaux & Photography is the culmination of that time. The show takes pages from Ernaux’s slim book <a href="https://archive.org/details/journaldudehors0000erna">Journal Du Dehors</a> (1993) and sets them alongside photographs from the MEP’s collection, suggesting possible threads, resonances and affinities. </p>
<p>Ernaux’s Journal Du Dehors was translated by Tanya Leslie as <a href="https://fitzcarraldoeditions.com/books/exteriors">Exteriors</a> and published by Fitzcarraldo in 2021. The text takes the form of random journal entries spanning seven years from the 1980s and early 1990s. It concentrates on fleeting encounters made while Ernaux was travelling regularly into the city from her home on the outskirts of Paris. </p>
<p>The addition of the images and the separation of the pages in the exhibition intensifies Ernaux’s writing, creating plenty for visitors to pore over. But the images also add space in how Ernaux’s writing can be interpreted. The routine of the daily commute, the unchanging underground corridors with their familiar beggars, the same parking lot outside the same supermarket – these are the patterns of the way we live to work, which give Ernaux’s Journal its particular corrosiveness. </p>
<p>Ernaux’s work gains an added brilliance and stillness when it is read from panels on the wall. The paradoxical qualities of her writing in Exteriors, the sense of the timeless tragedy and also the ephemeral nature of the scenes captured become more vivid against the pictures. That moment, that dress, those words, those socks exist in that time and place, but because they have been captured they also exist forever. </p>
<h2>Cutting imagery</h2>
<p>Ernaux has long wanted her writing to <a href="https://theconversation.com/annie-ernaux-french-feminist-who-uses-language-as-a-knife-wins-nobel-prize-for-literature-192084">work like a knife</a>. Her style is short, sparse, unlyrical. She cuts to the heart of the things she is writing about, every word necessary. And the poised, thoughtful curation of this show is an extension of her skill in making the cut. It shows us that everything is in the detail if it is seized sharply enough to reveal its significance. Many of the photographs displayed alongside her words are dazzling in this respect.</p>
<p>They are almost overwhelmingly characterised by what the French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson called “<em><a href="https://www.henricartierbresson.org/en/expositions/henri-cartier-bresson-images-a-la-sauvette/">images à la sauvette</a></em>” – scenes glimpsed and grasped from the street, capturing people without their knowledge, seizing their singular presence in that moment. One particularly successful pairing demonstrates how this approach can generate wonderfully different images. </p>
<p>On one side of the narrow, corridor-like gallery are a succession of small, distinct images by American photographer <a href="https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/constituents/harry-callahan?all/all/all/all/0">Harry Callahan</a>, taken from his French Archives series of the 1950s. These almost black prints are shot through with strips of sunlight or just minimally dappled. Figures appear enigmatically etched against the spare light, crossing in and out of visibility. </p>
<p>On the other wall there is a fabulous montage by Japanese-American photographer <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/18/style/hiro-dead.html">Hiro</a>. These images are life-size, holding the cramped commuters of a 1960s Tokyo train in unwanted exposure through the carriage windows, their gazes and fingers pressed against the glass, reaching out to us. On one side of the gallery, then, there a deep sense of solitude. On the other, the press of people in on us. </p>
<p>Together these photographers illuminate the strange quality of this phase of Ernaux’s work, which was unremittingly close to ordinary life and yet detached. She is always a detached onlooker, even when she imagines that these things are so ordinary that she might as well be looking at herself. </p>
<h2>A detached onlooker</h2>
<p>The inclusion of several series of works by Japanese photographers is striking because it creates a sense of estrangement in contrast to the way Ernaux has systematically embraced the familiarity of ordinary French life. The same effect is produced by the photographs from more recent Parisian times, particularly in the room with two large works by Mohamed Bourouissa and one by Marguerite Bornhauser, the only piece in the show that doesn’t depict people.</p>
<p>The two prints by Bourouissa show scenes of black life in France. One depicts a group of four youths standing around a burnt out car in a dirty alleyway. One of them stands on the roof, his upper torso and head cut off by the framing.</p>
<p>The other photo shows a man being arrested. He is handcuffed, almost naked, staring blankly up at a woman, who might be his girlfriend. She is barelegged, wearing just a long t-shirt. The policeman and the woman are also decapitated by Bourouissa’s framing. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, Bornhauser’s piece shows the impact of a bullet on glass somewhere near the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34818994">Paris attacks in 2015</a> after the terrorist attacks. </p>
<p>These are scenes of modern violence and social decline. They show that even the minimal social and physical mobility of Ernaux’s generation has run aground. They also bring into focus the violence in Ernaux’s work, particularly in the pages alongside Bourouissa’s images. These pages are less documentations of what she saw but extrapolations of what could be. They speak of fear, of empty spaces where violence (even rape) could go unheard, and of the cruelties of parental ambition that creates unhappy adolescence.</p>
<p>All in all, the viewer comes away with a sense of the extraordinary power of these images of everyday life. And for those who already harbour an admiration for Ernaux, Exteriors is an opportunity to see more clearly how she sharpened her eye and her ear against the routine of her daily commute.</p>
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anna-Louise Milne does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Ernaux’s sparse writing about everyday encounters gains a new quality against photos from the MEP’s collectionAnna-Louise Milne, Director of Graduate Studies and Research, University of London Institute in ParisLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2225282024-02-02T16:25:30Z2024-02-02T16:25:30ZDisney’s Cristóbal Balenciaga reveals the power, the politics and the drama of high fashion<p>Born in a small Basque fishing village on the northern coast of Spain at the end of the 19th century, <a href="https://www.cristobalbalenciagamuseoa.com/en/discover/cristobal-balenciaga/">Cristóbal Balenciaga</a> (1895-1972) went on to become one of the most innovative and influential fashion designers of the 20th century – and the king of fashion in Paris.</p>
<p>His dedication to the craft of dressmaking and tailoring was fostered by his seamstress mother and acknowledged by local Spanish aristocracy who recognised his talents. A marquesa’s patronage led to a tailoring apprenticeship in San Sebastián, where he opened his first dressmaking business in 1919 at the age of 24, and later an atelier in Madrid.</p>
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<img alt="A dark-haired man in a smart suit." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573022/original/file-20240202-19-f6wn6x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573022/original/file-20240202-19-f6wn6x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=738&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573022/original/file-20240202-19-f6wn6x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=738&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573022/original/file-20240202-19-f6wn6x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=738&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573022/original/file-20240202-19-f6wn6x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573022/original/file-20240202-19-f6wn6x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573022/original/file-20240202-19-f6wn6x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Cristóbal Balenciaga.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crist%C3%B3bal_Balenciaga#/media/File:Cristobal_Balenciaga.jpg">Louise Dahl-Wolfe, 1950 / WIkipedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>His faultless fit and exceptional skills in cutting, assembling, constructing and sewing garments by hand would earn him a uniquely respected position within the high-fashion world of Paris, where he opened his <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780199891573.001.0001/acref-9780199891573-e-4043#:%7E:text=maison%20noun,-Source%3A%20The%20Oxford&text=M16%20French.In%20France%20and,General%20Links%20for%20this%20Work">maison</a> in 1937.</p>
<p>Balenciaga’s life and work are currently being explored in a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2024/jan/19/cristobal-balenciaga-review-this-classy-drama-is-utterly-gorgeous">six-part Spanish biographical drama</a> on <a href="https://press.disney.co.uk/news/original-drama-series-crist%C3%B3bal-balenciaga-will-debut-january-19-exclusively-on-disney+-in-the-uk#:%7E:text=%22Crist%C3%B3bal%20Balenciaga%22%20begins%20as%20the,the%20Spanish%20elite%20and%20aristocracy.">Disney+</a>. The series details the story of the man who became known as “the master” of <a href="https://www.businessoffashion.com/education/fashion-az/haute-couture">haute-couture</a> fashion for his innovative womenswear designs and distinctive use of textiles during his years in Paris, from 1937 to 1968.</p>
<p>The new Disney series stars Alberto San Juan as Balenciaga and is structured around the designer recalling the events of his life and career during a rare interview in 1971 with the Times’ fashion editor Prudence Glynn (Gemma Whelan).</p>
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<h2>Fashion for a post-war world</h2>
<p>We meet Balenciaga in 1937, a year after accepting the coveted elite status of “couturier”, conferred by the exacting standards of the <a href="https://www.fhcm.paris/en/our-history">Chambre Syndicale de la couture Parisienne</a>. Balenciaga’s tailoring and dressmaking skills, as well as his innovative designs, were crucial to the success and lasting impact of mid-20th century haute couture – a fact that is carefully portrayed in the series.</p>
<p>While artistic licence embellishes intimate and emotional moments in the series, it is broadly historically accurate, including the relationships and rivalries between fellow couturiers <a href="https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/coco-chanel-biography">Coco Channel</a> (Anouk Grinberg), <a href="https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/christian-dior">Christian Dior</a> (Patrice Thibaud) and the mentorship of <a href="https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/hubert-de-givenchy-biography">Hubert de Givenchy</a> (Adrien Dewitte). </p>
<p>In episode two – The Occupation – when Balenciaga’s nervous investor visits Chanel to ask if the designer can succeed in Parisian high fashion, her famous response is resounding: “Cristóbal is the only authentic couturier amongst us. The rest, we are simply just fashion designers.”</p>
<p>The series follows the turbulent political and economic times for fashion in the mid-20th century. Designers had to protect their reputations and creative integrity from invading armies and corporate spies. Meanwhile, artisanal couture traditions of fashion design had to contend with the rise and expansion of the mass manufacturing of <a href="https://www.masterclass.com/articles/ready-to-wear-fashion-guide">prêt-à-porter</a> (ready-to-wear) fashion.</p>
<p>An exciting element of Balenciaga’s influence within couture was his inspired use of Spanish traditional dress and Catholic vestments and regalia, which he incorporated into his collections.</p>
<p>During episodes one and two we watch him struggle to define his maison’s style until he revisits his historic art and costume books to seek inspiration. This engagement with the <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/memories-of-dress-9781350153813/">cultural memory of dress</a>, reveals there is authenticity, meaning and depth to his creations that emerge from his Spanish roots.</p>
<p>Christian Dior famously referred to Balenciaga as “the master of us all”, and the Spaniard was admired for his technical genius and innovation by fashion journalists, critics, clients, employees and his peers within haute-couture circles.</p>
<p>The emerging prêt-à-porter designers, many of whom he mentored, carried his design principles into their luxury mass-manufactured clothing lines, including Givenchy, <a href="https://www.vogue.com/article/remembering-andre-courreges">André Courrèges</a> and <a href="https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/emanuel-ungaro-biography">Emanuel Ungaro</a>. </p>
<h2>Industry and passion</h2>
<p>This is a series written, directed and art-directed by those who respect the place of ideas, skill and innovation within the practice of making designed objects. Balenciaga’s magic is grounded in driven, tireless dedication to an art form. Everywhere we see hands, tools, textiles manipulated, cut, folded, sewn, adjusted, and eventually formed on a body ready to be seen and, ultimately, sold.</p>
<p>This is an exceptional aspect of this series, and a joy to see. In the final episode – I am Balenciaga – the Spaniard grapples with the future of couture and his maison against a booming background of prêt-à-porter. He realises one of his options is to retire and pass on the reins to a trusted collaborator. However, he states: “It wasn’t just a business, it was part of me, like an extension of my body. How can a body survive without a brain?”</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572950/original/file-20240201-25-lvdvbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Woman wearing a black suit with flared bell sleeves and knee-length skirt sitting on a plinth with her right hand raised and pressed against the wall" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572950/original/file-20240201-25-lvdvbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572950/original/file-20240201-25-lvdvbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572950/original/file-20240201-25-lvdvbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572950/original/file-20240201-25-lvdvbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572950/original/file-20240201-25-lvdvbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=695&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572950/original/file-20240201-25-lvdvbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=695&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572950/original/file-20240201-25-lvdvbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=695&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Cristóbal Balenciaga vintage suit, 1951.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/51248231@N04/4711015713">Bianca Lee / flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>Another interesting aspect of the series is the growing power of the media to influence the pace of change within fashion markets. An important character throughout the series is <a href="https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/a92/bazaar-140-0507/">Carmel Snow</a> (Gabrielle Lazure), the fashion chief of the American edition of the highly influential lifestyle magazine <a href="https://www.harpersbazaar.com/">Harper’s Bazaar</a>. Snow had the power to make or break the fortunes of even the greatest of couturiers for, without magazine exposure, there would be no customer interest, nor orders. </p>
<p>Interestingly, episode four – Replicas – shows the start of the debate for the current systems of <a href="https://www.vogue.co.uk/fashion/article/article/history-of-paris-fashion-week">biannual fashion weeks</a>, in order to limit press access to regular intimate couture shows at maisons for fear of copies and counterfeits emerging.</p>
<p>This series is highly recommended and stands as an important piece of dramatised fashion history. As what we wear is a facet of our identity, fashion is at the heart of both everyday and extraordinary events. This series is testament that designing, making and promoting dress will always involve passion and drama.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elizabeth Kealy-Morris does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The new drama provides a fascinating insight into the competitive world of mid-century haute couture via the man considered ‘the master’ of high fashion.Elizabeth Kealy-Morris, Senior Lecturer in Dress and Belonging, Manchester Fashion Institute, Manchester Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2192132024-01-24T17:21:11Z2024-01-24T17:21:11ZVan Gogh’s final months were his most productive<p>Though he had spent the previous year at an asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in the south of France, <a href="https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/art-and-stories/vincents-life-1853-1890">Vincent van Gogh</a> arrived in the village of Auvers-sur-Oise, just north of Paris, in an optimistic mood. It was here, in 1890, that he would spend the last few months of his life which, despite the depression that would soon return, were his most productive.</p>
<p>The move offered him the prospect of a fresh start, close to his brother Theo, and under the watchful eye of Paul Gachet, a homeopathic doctor with an interest in art and mental wellbeing. Over the course of the next two months, Van Gogh produced no fewer than 74 paintings and more than 50 drawings, which are catalogued chronologically by Nienke Bakker, Emmanuel Coquery, Louis van Tilborgh and Teio Meedendorf in their book, <a href="https://thamesandhudson.com/van-gogh-in-auvers-sur-oise-his-final-months-9780500026731">Van Gogh in Auvers-sur-Oise: His Final Months</a>. </p>
<p>As Van Tilborgh observes in the opening essay, Van Gogh’s final works have “a special, almost existential significance” for us. The paintings most closely identified with his final days include the profoundly melancholic <a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/wheatfield-with-crows/dwFdD5AMQfpSew?hl=en-GB">Wheatfield with Crows</a> (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam), whose central path leads us through the golden wheat towards an intensely brooding sky. It was here, in the fields above Auvers, that Van Gogh would shoot himself at the age of 37 in July 1890.</p>
<p>As Meedendorf recounts, Van Gogh was initially enchanted by this “distinctive and picturesque” village nestling in the heart of the countryside. Accessible from Paris by train, it remained surprisingly unspoiled, with thatched whitewashed cottages and a distinctive medieval church.</p>
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<h2>At home in nature</h2>
<p>Unlike previous inhabitants of Auvers, such as the landscape artist and precursor of impressionism, <a href="https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/artists/charles-francois-daubigny">Charles-François Daubigny</a>, Van Gogh ignored the nearby river Oise. He preferred to record the village, its quaint old buildings merging organically with the landscape and the surrounding vineyards. He also chose surprisingly modern motifs such as the town hall bedecked with flags and bunting on Bastille Day. </p>
<p>Another important subject, explored by Nienke Bakker, was a series of floral still lifes, painted between late May and mid-June 1890. Van Gogh had painted irises and roses as if “in a frenzy” towards the end of his stay at Saint-Rémy and was optimistic that his pictures would find a buyer, despite the fact that they had failed to do so in the past.</p>
<p>He had a preference for wild cornflowers, daisies, poppies, buttercups and thistles, but also painted Chinese asters, carnations and marigolds, blossoming chestnuts and acacia, rendered in rhythmic patterns that dominated the picture space.</p>
<p>Flowers and ears of wheat appear also in his portraits, most memorably in the two of Dr Gachet, leaning on his elbow in a <a href="https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2019/11/15/where-is-the-portrait-of-dr-gachet-the-mysterious-disappearance-of-van-goghs-most-expensive-painting">classic melancholic pose</a> and clutching a sprig of foxglove, which he used in his homeopathic remedies.</p>
<p>Gachet was an important early supporter, not only of Van Gogh, but of the impressionist artists <a href="https://www.camille-pissarro.org/biography.html">Camille Pissarro</a>, who lived at nearby Pontoise, and <a href="https://www.paul-cezanne.org/biography.html">Paul Cézanne</a>, who painted Gachet’s distinctive white house at Auvers.</p>
<h2>The final days</h2>
<p>The book includes a useful map of Auvers-sur-Oise which identifies many of the sites at which Van Gogh set up his easel. One of these is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/jul/28/location-van-gogh-final-painting-tree-roots-postcard">Tree Roots</a>(Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam), recently identified as the final work produced by the artist.</p>
<p>It is one of a series of 13 works that were distinctive for their double-square format. As Emmanuel Coquery explains, the format derived from Daubigny, who is referenced in the third canvas in the series, <a href="https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/s0104v1962">Daubigny’s Garden</a> (Rudolf Staechelin Collection).</p>
<p>Daubigny is still celebrated today in the village. His house and studio, decorated by his friend Camille Corot, and also his children, have been preserved for posterity. So, too, has the room at the Auberge Ravoux, in which Van Gogh died on 29 July 1890. </p>
<p>Fittingly, the last two essays in this brilliantly researched and colourfully illustrated book focus on Van Gogh’s final days. Following a visit to Theo in early July, the artist was beset by an extended period of depression, brought on by feelings that he was becoming a burden to his brother.</p>
<p>In his letters he wrote: “My life … is attacked at the very root, my step also is faltering.” He described his latest landscapes as expressions of “sadness, extreme loneliness”. Eventually he shot himself in the chest with a revolver and died in Theo’s arms nearly two days later.</p>
<p>His body was laid to rest in a spacious, sunny plot in the graveyard, close to the wheatfields he loved so much. In 1914, Theo’s remains were transferred to the same ivy-covered grave, remarkable for its simplicity.</p>
<p>As the final essay by Bregje Gerritse and Sara Tas shows, even before his death, Van Gogh was beginning to be appreciated by critics such as Gustave Kahn and Albert Aurier.</p>
<p>He made his only recorded sale when the Belgian artist Anna Boch purchased <a href="https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2022/02/04/how-did-the-only-painting-sold-by-van-gogh-in-his-lifetime-end-up-in-russia">The Red Vineyard</a> (Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow) for 400 francs. Before long he would posthumously achieve the fame and commercial success he had so longed for.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Frances Fowle does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Despite his mental anguish, Van Gogh produced some of his greatest paintings in the last few months of his life.Frances Fowle, Personal Chair of Nineteenth-Century Art, History of Art, The University of EdinburghLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2205912024-01-09T22:05:08Z2024-01-09T22:05:08ZHow security at the 1976 Montréal Summer Games set a precedent for future Olympics<iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/how-security-at-the-1976-montreal-summer-games-set-a-precedent-for-future-olympics" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>With the countdown to the Paris 2024 Olympics in full swing, it’s an ideal time to reflect on legacies of past Olympic Games, including Canada’s past experiences hosting the Games. The legacy of the Montréal Olympic Games is especially relevant this year, as the city is hosting the Olympic trials for <a href="https://www.swimming.ca/en/2024-olympic-paralympic-trials-presented-by-bell-may-13-19-montreal-qc/">swimming</a> and <a href="https://athletics.ca/blog/2023/11/14/national-track-field-tour-returns-in-2024/">track and field</a>.</p>
<p>The Montréal 1976 Summer Olympics remains the <a href="https://www.mqup.ca/montreal-olympics--the-products-9780773535183.php">largest sporting event in Canadian history</a>. It is <a href="https://theconversation.com/will-canada-ever-host-another-olympics-if-not-dont-blame-the-1976-montreal-games-108465">remembered for many things</a>: it was <a href="https://historyofrights.ca/history/montreal-olympics">outrageously expensive</a>, costing over $1.5 billion. It took 40 years to pay off the debt, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal-remembers-1976-olympics-1.256829">despite Mayor Jean Drapeau’s claim</a> in 1970 that the “Olympics could no more have a deficit than a man could have a baby.”</p>
<p>The Olympic stadium was a disaster: it wasn’t even fully completed for the Games. The event saw gymnast Nadia Comaneci of Romania score a perfect 10, which remains one of the great feats of modern sports. The American team fielded the best boxing team in history. Women’s events were held for the first time in <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/sports/montreal-olympics-photo-flashback-more-women-competed-thanks-to-three-new-events">basketball, handball and rowing</a>. </p>
<p>Canada set a record as well: it <a href="https://olympic.ca/games/1976-montreal/">earned a meagre 11 medals</a> and was the first host country to not win a gold. Taiwan, China and 29 African states <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/sports/montreal-olympics-african-boycott-of-1976-games-changed-the-world">boycotted the Games over apartheid South Africa</a>. Twelve men died during the construction of the venues.</p>
<p>Then there were the lesser-known events. The Montréal Fire Department, after hearing from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that Ukrainian protestors planned to strip down and burn Soviet flags, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2014.987342">greased flagpoles around the city with Vaseline</a> (one protestor was injured, and then arrested, in a failed flag-pole climbing incident).</p>
<p>The 1976 Olympics also marked a turning point in Olympic history: it was the first highly visible security operation, which has since become the norm for Olympic Games. After years of requests through the Access to Information Act, the <a href="https://historyofrights.ca/archives/montreal-olympics">RCMP released more than 50,000 pages of documents</a> on security planning for the Montréal Olympics that provide new insights into the scale and cost of securing the Games.</p>
<h2>The road to Montréal</h2>
<p>Most remember the Montréal Olympics as a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/jul/06/40-year-hangover-1976-olympic-games-broke-montreal-canada">financial disaster</a>. Soaring costs threatened to cancel the Games; Drapeau underestimated the cost so badly the National Assembly hauled him before an inquiry to explain the situation. </p>
<p>The Summer Olympics in Tokyo (1964, $9 million), Mexico City (1968, $12 million) and Munich (1972, $495 million) were dwarfed by the more than $1.5 billion spent in Montréal. </p>
<p>With the exception of Moscow (1980, $1.3 billion), subsequent Games in Los Angeles (1984, $408 million) and Seoul (1988, $531 million) were nowhere near as costly. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/019372357800200103">Unlike other host cities</a>, Montréal had little existing sports infrastructure and needed to build most of its venues.</p>
<p>Social services suffered and several projects had to be put on hold. For many years after the Olympics, Montréal was the only major city in North America that was still <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/019372357800200103">dumping waste into adjacent waterways</a>.</p>
<h2>Heightened fear of terrorism</h2>
<p>Olympics security had not been a serious preoccupation before Montréal. By the 1970s, though, the Games were taking place amid a heightened fear of international and domestic terrorism. </p>
<p>According to the <a href="https://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/">Global Terrorism Database</a>, there were at least 4,340 terrorist attacks between 1970 and 1976. In the previous five years, two dozen diplomats around the world had been kidnapped, and six others assassinated. </p>
<p>In 1971 and 1972, there were at least 12 aircraft hijackings involving Canadian airlines (metal detectors were introduced in large numbers at airports in 1973). The <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/october-crisis">Front de libération du Québec</a> was responsible for numerous bombings, robberies and killings across Québec throughout the 1960s and the <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/october-crisis">1970 October Crisis</a>.</p>
<p>In the United States, there were more incidents of domestic terrorism in the 1970s than any other period in history: at least 680 incidents compared to 282 in the 1980s (77 fatalities in the 1970s, 22 in the 1980s).</p>
<p>The Montréal Olympics also took place in the shadow of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Munich-Massacre">Munich massacre</a> — a terrorist attack carried out by the Palestinian militant group, Black September, against members of the Israeli Olympic team during the 1972 Summer Olympics. Eleven Israelis (including <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/massacre-begins-at-munich-olympics">nine hostages</a>), five of the terrorists and one policeman were killed in the incident.</p>
<p>Over five million people would attend the Summer Olympics in Montréal, more than Tokyo in 1964 and Munich in 1972. Such a massive gathering was bound to strain Canada’s limited security apparatus. It was uncommon for such a small country (25 million at the time) to host a Summer Olympics.</p>
<h2>The security operation</h2>
<p>The overall operation was impressive. A <a href="https://historyofrights.ca/wp-content/uploads/olympics/Final_Report_National_Security_Plan.pdf">security force of 17,224</a> included 8,940 Canadian Forces; 1,606 Montréal Urban Community Police; 1,376 RCMP; and 1,140 Sûreté du Québec. </p>
<p>Security personnel also included officers from the Metropolitan Toronto Police, Ontario Provincial Police, National Harbours Board Police, Manpower and Immigration, the Montréal Fire Department and 2,910 private security guards — all to protect fewer than 6,000 athletes. </p>
<p>Rather than spreading the Village across the city (as was the case in past Games), the Montréal Olympic Village was a towering 19-storey pyramidal structure with limited access and a 10-foot high wire fence. Athletes were driven to competition sites on buses with armed soldiers or police officers, while soldiers with automatic weapons patrolled the Village.</p>
<p><a href="https://historyofrights.ca/wp-content/uploads/olympics/Final_Report_National_Security_Plan.pdf">Security was provided for 13 competition sites and 27 training sites</a>, as well as the Village. The Sûreté du Québec alone drew officers from 47 detachments across the province scattered over six districts, and drove 1,462,159 miles in 26 vehicles (and 112 hours in helicopters) over the 46-day operation. </p>
<p>Military personnel who were assigned to assist the police were deputized as law enforcement officers, which authorized soldiers to arrest anyone breaking a law in the absence of police. </p>
<p>The federal government passed special immigration legislation allowing the minister of immigration to deport anyone who might engage in violence during the Olympics. It was an unusual statute: only one sentence, which gave the minister unfettered power to deport non-citizens with no right to appeal. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, local law enforcement was dramatically enhanced, including a squad of 24 officers to police pickpockets. The crime rate in Montréal <a href="https://historyofrights.ca/wp-content/uploads/olympics/COJOReport1976.pdf">dropped by more than 20 per cent during the Games</a>.</p>
<h2>The cost of security</h2>
<p>An initial <a href="https://historyofrights.ca/wp-content/uploads/olympics/Final_Report_RCMP2.pdf">federal budget of $14.3 million dollars for the RCMP</a> was later augmented to $23 million. In addition, the Department of National Defence estimated it cost the ministry $21 million to provide security for the Olympics. </p>
<p>The Montréal Olympic Committee paid $1.8 million for private security. The Montréal Urban Community Police also had a budget of $1.8 million for the Olympics (including regular salaries that would have been paid anyway). The Ontario Provincial Police paid an extra $1.9 million to have 350 officers provide security for the royal visit and sailing competitions in Kingston. </p>
<p>While there were some unknown costs, such as those for overtime pay and additional security, the <a href="https://historyofrights.ca/wp-content/uploads/olympics/Memo_Security_Service_Budget.pdf">total cost for security at the Montréal Olympics</a> was likely about $52 million (or $262 million in 2023 dollars). While this was small compared to the overall costs, it was dramatically higher than Munich’s paltry $2 million budget four years earlier. </p>
<p>The Montréal Olympics may be remembered for many things, but its most significant impact was inaugurating a new era of security planning for the Olympics. When Vancouver hosted the Games 34 years later, the estimated <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0967010614543582">cost of security</a> was over $1 billion. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.reuters.com/sports/terrorism-cyber-attacks-main-paris-2024-threats-security-plan-finalised-2023-11-23/">security budget for the upcoming 2024 Paris Olympics</a> this summer is 320 million euros ($468.37 million) out of an overall budget of 8 billion euros ($11.7 billion). This is perhaps the most enduring legacy of the Montréal Olympics.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220591/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dominique Clément receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council</span></em></p>The 1976 Olympics marked a turning point in Olympic history: it was the first highly visible security operation, which has since become the norm for Olympic Games.Dominique Clément, Professor, Sociology, University of AlbertaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2186512023-12-26T16:03:40Z2023-12-26T16:03:40ZHow the Eiffel Tower became silent cinema’s icon<p>27 December 2023 marks the centenary of the death of the French civil engineer, Gustave Eiffel. Many studies have looked at the way in which the tower that bears his name has inspired painters (Bonnard, Chagall, Delaunay, De Staël, etc.) and poets (Apollinaire, Cendrars, Cocteau, Queneau, etc.) since it was built in 1889 for the Universal Exhibition commemorating the centenary of the French Revolution. But its presence in silent cinema, which coincides with the monument’s construction, has remained in the shadows.</p>
<p>When the cinematograph was born in 1895, six years after the Iron Lady, the new medium was immediately drawn to the tower. In the digitised GP Archives catalogue, for example, 121 entries out of 2,091 are given for “ Eiffel Tower ” between 1895 and the start of talking pictures in France. And yet this is a period for which many reels have not survived, notably because 35mm film was made of cellulose nitrate, which is flammable and fragile.</p>
<h2>In documentary cinema from 1897</h2>
<p>In 1897, a <em>Lumière</em> cinematograph was taken up for the first time in the Tower’s lift, regaling us with a dizzying 42-second panorama of the Trocadero Palace, with the Tower’s metal frame in the foreground. This premiere may not come as a big surprise from the <em>Lumières</em> brothers, who were fond of capturing images of iconic landmarks, but the originality lies in the form of the sequence, which boldly superimposes foreground and background shots to better “ embark ” viewers.</p>
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<p>The presence of the tower is more surprising in the creations of Georges Méliès, best known for his fairy tales and trick films. Méliès made around thirty one-minute films about Paris between 1896 and 1900, some of which showed the Champ-de-Mars and the Eiffel Tower during the 1900 Universal Exhibition.</p>
<p>That same year, the Lumières tried out an experimental format, 75mm, and once again put the Eiffel Tower in the spotlight.</p>
<p>Their slightly crazy idea was to project this tape onto a gigantic 720 m<sup>2</sup> screen during the Universal Exhibition – for reference, the largest screen in Europe today is the “ grand large ” of the Grand Rex, 282 m<sup>2</sup>. Unfortunately, construction of the appropriate projector was not completed in time and the screening never took place.</p>
<h2>In fiction since 1900</h2>
<p>In 1906, Georges Hatot directed <em>La Course à la Perruque</em> (in English: <em>The Wig Chase</em>) for the Pathé brothers, a 6-minute comedy strip packed with twists and turns, with a sequence that transported the viewer in front of, and then inside, the Eiffel Tower.</p>
<p>All cinematic genres seemed to be contaminated. The pioneer of animated cinema, Émile Cohl, created an imaginative and poetic animated film in 1910, <em>Les Beaux-Arts Mystérieux</em> (<em>The Mysterious Fine Arts</em>), a nugget of inventiveness shot frame by frame, in which the basis of the Eiffel Tower can be recognised through an arrangement of matches.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562468/original/file-20231129-21-gfc98v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562468/original/file-20231129-21-gfc98v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562468/original/file-20231129-21-gfc98v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562468/original/file-20231129-21-gfc98v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562468/original/file-20231129-21-gfc98v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562468/original/file-20231129-21-gfc98v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562468/original/file-20231129-21-gfc98v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Photogram from Émile Cohl’s <em>Beaux-Arts mystérieux</em>, 1910.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The craze endured for years. In the summer of 1923, René Clair, a young filmmaker with close ties to the avant-garde, shot <em>Paris qui dort</em> (<em>The Crazy Ray</em>), a medium-length film produced by Diamant Films, set mainly in the Eiffel Tower. The monument’s caretaker wakes up to find that the streets of the capital are empty. Clair followed this up five years later with <a href="https://www.cinematheque.fr/henri/film/47521-la-tour-rene-clair-1928/"><em>La Tour</em></a> (<em>The Tower</em>), 14 minutes of a kind of cinematic poem offering views of the Iron Lady from a variety of angles.</p>
<p>It was in the last years of the silent era that Jean Duvivier’s <em>Le Mystère de la tour Eiffel</em> (<em>The Mystery of the Eiffel Tower</em>) was released, a film in which the leader of a mysterious international organisation of hooded criminals, named Ku-Klux Eiffel, sends signals, <em>via</em> the Eiffel Tower, to his members scattered across Europe.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562469/original/file-20231129-29-tw435f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562469/original/file-20231129-29-tw435f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562469/original/file-20231129-29-tw435f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562469/original/file-20231129-29-tw435f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562469/original/file-20231129-29-tw435f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562469/original/file-20231129-29-tw435f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562469/original/file-20231129-29-tw435f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Photogram from Jean Duvivier’s <em>Mystère de la tour Eiffel</em>, 1928.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The inspirational power of the Eiffel Tower</h2>
<p>These varied examples show just how much the Eiffel Tower inspired the pioneers of the cinematograph and the directors of the silent era.</p>
<p>If they included it in their documentaries, it was to illustrate this architectural feat, which took 26 months to build, and to show the extent to which it left its mark on people’s minds and on the Parisian landscape. It should be remembered that the tower did not meet with unanimous approval and that it was not destined to remain in place. In fact, its construction sparked <a href="https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Protestation_des_artistes_contre_la_tour_de_M._Eiffel_du_14_f%C3%A9vrier_1887">an outcry</a> from a number of artists, who went so far as to voice their protest on 14 February 1887 in the leading daily newspaper <em>Le Temps</em>, in a letter addressed to Adolphe Alphand, director of works for the Universal Exhibition. The signatories included the French poet and novelist, François Coppée, architect of the Palais Garnier, Charles Garnier, and writer, Guy de Maupassant.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562471/original/file-20231129-17-1mmcgl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562471/original/file-20231129-17-1mmcgl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562471/original/file-20231129-17-1mmcgl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1661&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562471/original/file-20231129-17-1mmcgl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1661&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562471/original/file-20231129-17-1mmcgl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1661&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562471/original/file-20231129-17-1mmcgl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=2088&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562471/original/file-20231129-17-1mmcgl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=2088&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562471/original/file-20231129-17-1mmcgl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=2088&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"><em>Incipit</em> of the article published in <em>Le Temps</em> on 14 February 1887.</span>
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</figure>
<p>Despite this opposition, the Eiffel Tower was erected and survived its scheduled demolition thanks to the monument’s scientific and strategic roles. A meteorological station was installed there in 1889 and antennae for wireless telegraphy were added from 1903.</p>
<p>As for the Tower’s presence in fiction films, it testifies to the impact of its architectural audacity, its mysterious aesthetic aura and its modernity the Tower inspires atypical stories, filmed thanks to innovative shots, ingeniously edited.</p>
<h2>A glimpse into the history of silent cinema</h2>
<p>If the presence of the Iron Lady in silent cinema has received so little attention in historical research, it is undoubtedly due to a lack of consideration and legitimisation of the cinematographic medium itself.</p>
<p>The first films were very short, at first lasting a few seconds and then a few minutes. They were shown at fairs, in town and village squares, in cafés and in some theatres. Cinematography was a very popular form of entertainment, often scorned by the elite. Strips of film were bought by fairground dealers who wore them down to the bone. When they broke, they cut them up and glued them back together, so that it was never quite the same tapes that were projected.</p>
<p>From 1907 onwards, there was an economic revolution. The Pathé brothers’ powerful company replaced the sale of copies with a rental system. This change altered the way distribution was organised, and in turn the way films were made and seen. The exploitation of films gave rise to an autonomous industry; screening rooms sprouted throughout in cities and films grew longer.</p>
<p>From 20 metres, or around 60 seconds, this increased to 740 metres, or 30 minutes, in 1909; to 1,500 metres, or one hour, in 1912; and even to 3,000 metres, or two hours, in 1913. Hybrid film shows mixed short films (news, comedy, animation, etc.) before or around a longer film, the core of the screening. The whole show featured attractions ranging from jugglers to poets and acrobats, and was accompanied by music ranging from a single instrument to an orchestra, depending on the size of the venue. While cinema may have been silent (talkies didn’t arrive until 1927), it was anything but!</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218651/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carole Aurouet ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>From technological prowess to new narratives, silent film came into its own against the backdrop of the Iron Lady.Carole Aurouet, Enseignante-Chercheuse en Etudes cinématographiques et audiovisuelles, Université Gustave EiffelLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2021782023-11-05T18:15:02Z2023-11-05T18:15:02ZTwo faces of dignity: a Kantian perspective on Uber drivers’ fight for decent working conditions<p>On November 3, 2016, Emmanuel Macron, who had recently launched a presidential bid, mentioned what he felt was Uber’s positive role in providing work opportunities to low-income or unemployed youth (our translation and emphasis):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“You go to Stains [a low-income town outside of Paris] to tell young people who are Uber drivers that it is better to loiter or deal […]. Our collective failure is that the neighbourhoods where Uber hires these young people are neighbourhoods where we haven’t managed to offer them anything else. Yes, they sometimes work 60 to 70 hours to get the minimum wage, but they return with dignity, they find a job, they put on a suit and a tie.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A year later, the perspective of many Uber drivers in Paris was quite different, as witnessed by a handout distributed by an activist group in November 2017:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“You’ve been used by Uber, regain your dignity!” (“UberUsé, regagne ta dignité!”)</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Dignity as work</h2>
<p>These two quotes refer to quite distinct concepts of dignity. On the one hand, French president Emmanuel Macron tells unemployed youth from low-income towns they ought to consider themselves lucky when Uber offers them the opportunity to don a suit and a tie and get behind the wheel. On the other, Uber drivers see themselves as being exploited by management and are ready to put up a fight to regain their dignity. So does Uber restore or take away workers’ dignity?</p>
<p>The French president’s notion of dignity is what some philosophers refer to as <em>social standing dignity</em>, the traditional conception (Sensen 2011). Rooted in an individual’s rank or office, it centres on the world of behavioural rules, rights and duties that surround these positions.</p>
<p>Hierarchical societies are structured through higher and lower social positions and with each one comes different ranks and different degrees of dignity. Thus, Macron contends that young people from poor areas are better off by taking on work from Uber, even if this means long hours and low wages. Here, employment is presented as the fundamental condition to social dignity.</p>
<h2>Migrant roots</h2>
<p>It is important to note that most people who take on an Uber job hail from a migrant background, sometimes stretching back to several generations. In France, these are mainly from North and Sub-Saharan Africa. As the <a href="https://www.puf.com/content/UberUs%C3%A9s">sociological research from Sophie Bernard shows</a>, most were not unemployed before. Instead, they took on unskilled, low-paying, painful, and precarious jobs – quite a different situation to trafficking drugs or loitering. They became Uber drivers to improve their condition by gaining freedom and higher wages.</p>
<p>But they soon realised they were subjected to a new form of algorithmic management and forced to work more and more to earn less and less. This form of control is exercised remotely and indirectly by algorithms that enable the quasi-automatic supervision of many workers. Drivers are rated by customers for every journey they make. All it takes is one complaint from a customer for their account to be deactivated. Uber drivers are no longer subject to hierarchical control, but rather to customer demands. Nor are they totally free to organise their working hours as they see fit. To entice drivers to work for Uber, the company first offered them bonuses and high remuneration. Once the platform has enough drivers, <a href="https://www.puf.com/content/UberUs%C3%A9s">it removes the bonuses, lowers the fares and increases the commission</a>.</p>
<p>While they thought they were improving their conditions, they found themselves once again in another job as exploited migrants. As if Macron were telling them: “We have this opportunity for you to gain your social dignity with a job that other people in our society don’t want and don’t need, but it’s good enough for you.”</p>
<h2>Kant’s concept of equal moral worth</h2>
<p>The second notion of dignity is that of human dignity, the idea that was implemented into the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and into many constitutions after the Second World War. It is expressed in Kant’s idea of equal moral worth of all human beings. In his famous <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/persons-means/"><em>Formula of Humanity</em></a> of the Categorical Imperative, Kant states:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“So act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Is that the notion Uber drivers can refer to? As we will see it is, but it needs some clarification, and Kantian philosophy has its blind spots when it comes to dignity violations. What does it mean to use someone merely as a means? Kantians think that you are used as a mere means if you cannot (reasonably) consent to the treatment of others. This is especially so if your will is manipulated by deception or coercion. According to Kant, this is addressed by the criteria of deception and coercion that manipulate or enforce consent. Now one could wonder what the problem is from a Kantian perspective, since Uber drivers took on the job willingly, as Macron emphasises.</p>
<p>And indeed, Kant did not think in categories like <em>exploitation</em>. We think that exploitation can also be understood in terms of instrumentalisation. The accusation that Uber drivers formulate: “UberUsé” refers directly to this: not to be used merely as a means to another’s purposes; not to be exploited, in the sense that platform capitalism puts you in a position where long working hours don’t give you the minimum wage, where you take all the risks for a platform that reaps all the benefits, where there’s no reasonable alternative for you and where there’s reasonable alternatives to pay you a decent wage for Uber, since their profit would allow for it. Let’s remember that while Uber defines drivers as self-employed workers who provide the platform with labour and part of the production tools, it is the platform that sets the prices and takes a commission on each trip by passing on all the risks.</p>
<p>Moreover, there is another problem, and this one cannot be captured by the Kantian prohibition of instrumentalisation. It is the unequal social positions in a hierarchical and racist society that lead to an inequality of opportunity. This goes against the Kantian requirement to treat others as ends in themselves: as persons with equal moral standing. Degradation of migrants in the form: “this job is good enough for you” contradicts that requirement. So what Uber drivers could see violated on Kantian terms is their human dignity, their equal moral standing, that would recommend to provide them with equal opportunities in the French society and not just with opportunities that are “good enough for them” because “their” social standing is already at the bottom.</p>
<p>What is striking about how Uber drivers’ striving for social dignity can be abused when it comes to exploitation of their work force. As they fight Uber’s working conditions, they are more faithful to Western Kant-induced values than Macron. The president, by contrast, offers them a glimpse of social dignity in a kind of job that keeps them in an exploitative and precarious situation. One could say in the spirit of Kant that Uber drivers show self-esteem by their protest which aims at (re)gaining their dignity. Kant states in the Doctrine of Virtue: “Do not let others tread with impunity on your rights.”</p>
<p>As <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10677-022-10288-7">Mieth and Williams argue</a>, there are wrongs beyond instrumentalisation when it comes to migration, which concern exclusion and inequality. Under the circumstances Uber drivers find themselves in, they put on a fight to express their human dignity, not their social dignity in Macron’s terms. But this human dignity implies social dignity in another sense: to be acknowledged as an equal member of society which implies equality of opportunity. So we think that Uber drivers’ fight to regain dignity is in line with Kant’s notion of human dignity. Their protest is even giving the notion of equal human dignity reality.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202178/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Corinna Mieth a reçu des financements de Fondation Maison de science de l'homme (FMSH) et du Kant-Zentrum NRW. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sophie Bernard a reçu des financements de l'Institut Universitaire de France. </span></em></p>With an eye to Kant’s work, a philosopher and a sociologist argue that the Uber project robs drivers of their dignity.Corinna Mieth, Legal and political philosopher, Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme (FMSH)Sophie Bernard, Sociologue, professeure des universités, Université Paris Dauphine – PSLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2154122023-10-25T12:32:06Z2023-10-25T12:32:06ZWhat are roundabouts? A transportation engineer explains the safety benefits of these circular intersections<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553088/original/file-20231010-25-nl84ck.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C8%2C1990%2C1483&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A large roundabout in China.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/traffic-circle-at-night-royalty-free-image/1415700368?phrase=roundabout&adppopup=true">Jiojio/Moment via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>If you live on the East Coast, you may have driven through roundabouts in your neighborhood countless times. Or maybe, if you’re in some parts farther west, you’ve never encountered one of these intersections. But roundabouts, while a relatively new traffic control measure, are <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/11/25/roundabout-revolution-traffic-circles/">catching on across the United States</a>.</p>
<p>Roundabouts, also known as traffic circles or rotaries, are <a href="https://highways.dot.gov/safety/intersection-safety/intersection-types/roundabouts">circular intersections</a> designed to improve traffic flow and safety. They offer several advantages over conventional intersections controlled by traffic signals or stop signs, but by far the most important one is safety. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555403/original/file-20231023-29-a5mlzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A bird's-eye view of a roundabout, with a pink circular center with grass in the middle, and four roads converging from north, south, east and west." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555403/original/file-20231023-29-a5mlzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555403/original/file-20231023-29-a5mlzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555403/original/file-20231023-29-a5mlzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555403/original/file-20231023-29-a5mlzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555403/original/file-20231023-29-a5mlzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555403/original/file-20231023-29-a5mlzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555403/original/file-20231023-29-a5mlzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Modern roundabouts can have one or two lanes, and usually have four exit options.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/2020CensusChallenges/f7a70b19f0c9416b85a99e19b874cf1f/photo?Query=roundabout&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=194&currentItemNo=2&vs=true&vs=true">AP Photo/Alex Slitz</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://udayton.edu/engineering/research/research-labs/transportation-group/index.php">I research transportation engineering</a>, particularly traffic safety and traffic operations. <a href="https://udayton.edu/engineering/research/research-labs/transportation-group/research.php">Some of my past studies</a> have examined the safety and operational effects of installing roundabouts at an intersection. I’ve also compared the performance of roundabouts versus stop-controlled intersections. </p>
<h2>A brief history of roundabouts</h2>
<p>As early as the 1700s, some city planners proposed and even constructed circular places, sites where roads converged, like <a href="https://www.discoveringbritain.org/activities/south-west-england/aerial/britain-from-the-air-bath-circus.html">the Circus</a> in Bath, England, and the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Place_Charles_de_Gaulle">Place Charles de Gaulle</a> in France. In the U.S., architect Pierre L'Enfant <a href="https://science.howstuffworks.com/engineering/civil/roundabouts1.htm">built several into his design for Washington, D.C.</a>. These circles were the predecessors to roundabouts.</p>
<p>In 1903, French architect and influential urban planner Eugène Hénard was one of the first people who <a href="https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/9780813526911/ways-of-the-world/">introduced the idea</a> of <a href="https://highways.dot.gov/public-roads/autumn-1995/roundabouts-direct-way-safer-highways">moving traffic in a circle</a> to control <a href="https://trid.trb.org/view/458975">busy intersections in Paris</a>. </p>
<p>Around the same time, <a href="https://enotrans.org/the-life-of-eno/">William Phelps Eno</a>, an American businessman known as the father of traffic safety and control, also proposed roundabouts to alleviate <a href="https://trid.trb.org/view/458975">traffic congestion in New York City</a>. </p>
<p>In the years that followed, a few other cities tried out a roundabout-like design, with <a href="https://www.bridlevehicleleasing.co.uk/blog/why-doesnt-america-have-roundabouts">varying levels of success</a>. These roundabouts didn’t have any sort of standardized design guidelines, and most of them were too large to be effective and efficient, as vehicles would enter at higher speeds without always yielding. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://highways.dot.gov/public-roads/autumn-1995/roundabouts-direct-way-safer-highways">birth of the modern roundabout</a> came with yield-at-entry regulations, adopted in some towns in Great Britain in the 1950s. With yield-at-entry regulations, the vehicles entering the roundabout had to give way to vehicles already circulating in the roundabout. This was made a rule nationwide in the United Kingdom in 1966, then in France in 1983.</p>
<p>Yield-at-entry meant vehicles drove through these modern roundabouts more slowly, and over the years, engineers began adding more features that made them look closer to how roundabouts do now. Many added pedestrian crossings and splitter islands – or raised curbs where vehicles entered and exited – which <a href="https://highways.dot.gov/public-roads/autumn-1995/roundabouts-direct-way-safer-highways">controlled the vehicles’ speeds</a>.</p>
<p>Engineers, planners and decision-makers worldwide noticed that these roundabouts improved traffic flow, reduced congestion and improved safety at intersections. Roundabouts then spread <a href="https://www.bridlevehicleleasing.co.uk/blog/why-doesnt-america-have-roundabouts">throughout Europe and Australia</a>. </p>
<p>Three decades later, modern roundabouts came to North America. The <a href="https://highways.dot.gov/public-roads/autumn-1995">first modern roundabout</a> in the U.S. was built in <a href="https://www.8newsnow.com/news/local-news/highlighting-the-first-modern-roundabouts-in-the-country-during-national-roundabout-week/">Summerlin, on the west side of Las Vegas</a>, in 1990. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/46mOPz3rhHs?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Roundabouts require the driver to yield before entering and signal before exiting.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ever since, the construction of modern roundabouts in the U.S. has picked up steam. There are now about <a href="https://roundabouts.kittelson.com/">10,000 roundabouts in the country</a>. </p>
<h2>Why use roundabouts?</h2>
<p>Roundabouts likely caught on so quickly because they reduce the number of <a href="https://www.transportation.ohio.gov/about-us/basics/roundabouts">potential conflict points</a>. A conflict point at an intersection is a location where the paths of two or more vehicles or road users cross or have the potential to cross. The more conflict points, the more likely vehicles are to crash.</p>
<p>A roundabout has only eight potential conflict points, compared to 32 at <a href="https://www.transportation.ohio.gov/about-us/basics/roundabouts">a conventional four-way intersection</a>. At roundabouts, vehicles don’t cross each other at a right angle, and there are fewer points where vehicles merge or diverge into or away from each other.</p>
<p>The roundabout’s tight circle forces approaching traffic to slow down and yield to circulating traffic, and then move smoothly around the central island. As a result, roundabouts have <a href="https://www.iihs.org/topics/roundabouts#safety-benefits">fewer stop-and-go issues</a>, which reduces fuel consumption and vehicle emissions and allows drivers to perform U-turns more easily. Since traffic flows continuously at lower speeds in a roundabout, this continuous flow minimizes the need for vehicles to stop, which reduces congestion. </p>
<p>The Federal Highway Administration estimates that when a roundabout replaces a stop sign-controlled intersection, it reduces serious and fatal injury crashes <a href="https://www.transportation.ohio.gov/about-us/basics/roundabouts">by 90%</a>, and when it replaces an intersection with a traffic light, it reduces serious and fatal injury crashes <a href="https://www.transportation.ohio.gov/about-us/basics/roundabouts">by nearly 80%</a>.</p>
<h2>Why do some places have more than others?</h2>
<p>Engineers and planners traditionally have installed roundabouts in intersections with <a href="https://www.in.gov/indot/traffic-engineering/roundabouts/">severe congestion or a history of accidents</a>. But, with public support and funding, they can get installed anywhere.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6OGvj7GZSIo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">For some traffic engineers, the sky’s the limit.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But roundabouts aren’t needed in every intersection. In places where congestion isn’t an issue, city planners <a href="https://www.bridlevehicleleasing.co.uk/blog/why-doesnt-america-have-roundabouts">tend not to push for them</a>. For example, while there are <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/11/25/roundabout-revolution-traffic-circles/">around 750 roundabouts</a> in Florida, there are fewer than 50 in <a href="https://www.dot.nd.gov/projects/roundabout/roundabout.htm">North Dakota</a>, <a href="https://www.keloland.com/keloland-com-original/more-roundabouts-possible-in-sioux-falls/">South Dakota</a> and <a href="https://www.dot.state.wy.us/home/news_info/roundabouts.html">Wyoming</a> combined. </p>
<p>Roundabouts have been <a href="https://www.iihs.org/topics/roundabouts#safety-benefits">gaining popularity</a> in the U.S. in recent years, in part because the <a href="https://highways.dot.gov/safety/proven-safety-countermeasures">Federal Highway Administration recommends them</a> as the safest option. Some states, like New York and Virginia, have adopted a “roundabout first” policy, where engineers default to using roundabouts where feasible when building or upgrading intersections. </p>
<p>In 2000, the U.S. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/11/25/roundabout-revolution-traffic-circles/">only had 356 roundabouts</a>. Over the past two decades, that number has <a href="https://roundabouts.kittelson.com/">grown to over 10,000</a>. Love them or hate them, the roundabout’s widespread adoption suggests that these circular intersections are here to stay.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215412/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Deogratias Eustace receives funding from research funding agencies.</span></em></p>Whether you call them rotaries, traffic circles or roundabouts, they offer a safer alternative to the four-way stop. But the modern roundabout has been decades in the making.Deogratias Eustace, Professor of Civil, Environmental and Engineering Mechanics, University of DaytonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2108832023-08-20T12:12:23Z2023-08-20T12:12:23ZGender inequality will still be an issue at the Paris 2024 Olympics — despite the Games being gender-balanced<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542864/original/file-20230815-26675-69iu8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=30%2C7%2C5101%2C3416&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tourists walk past the Olympic rings in front of Paris City Hall with one year until the Paris 2024 Olympic Games opening ceremony, on July 26, 2023. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Christophe Ena)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/gender-inequality-will-still-be-an-issue-at-the-paris-2024-olympics-despite-the-games-being-gender-balanced" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>With one year to go until the Paris 2024 Summer Olympic Games, fans around the world have been following their teams’ performances at the FIFA Women’s World Cup. </p>
<p>For fans <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-upside-to-canada-being-knocked-out-of-the-fifa-womens-world-cup-210782">whose national teams didn’t advance as much as they had hoped</a>, they can look forward to seeing those same teams play at the Paris Olympics.</p>
<p>But the same is not true for the men’s national teams that competed at the <a href="https://theconversation.com/looking-back-on-the-2022-fifa-world-cup-a-tournament-of-surprises-and-controversy-194493">2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar</a>. At the Olympic Games, <a href="https://www.fifa.com/fifaplus/en/articles/mens-olympic-football-tournament-paris-2024-dates-stadiums-cities-qualifiers-qualified-teams-format">men’s national teams are limited to 23-year-old and younger players</a>, with three exceptions for overage players. There are <a href="https://www.fifa.com/fifaplus/en/articles/womens-olympic-football-tournament-paris-2024-dates-stadiums-cities-qualifiers-qualified-teams-format">no age restrictions for the women players</a>.</p>
<p>This is only one of the many gender-based differences in how men and women athletes compete at the Olympic Games. </p>
<h2>Olympic Games sport programme</h2>
<p>My research examines how the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has promoted gender equality at the Games. My book <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Gender-Equality-and-the-Olympic-Programme/Donnelly/p/book/9781032416809"><em>Gender Equality and the Olympic Programme</em></a> focuses on the sport programme — all the sports and events included at the Games — because it is the most visible aspect of the Olympic Games.</p>
<p><a href="https://olympics.com/ioc/olympic-programme-commission">According to the IOC</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“the Olympic programme is the fundamental core of the Olympic Games as decisions regarding the programme have an impact on virtually all other areas of the Olympic Games and Olympic Movement.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The inclusion of specific sports and events, as well as how women and men athletes play those sports (and what they wear to play them), sends important messages about how the IOC and other international sport federations define and attempt to achieve gender equality. </p>
<p>In addition, the sport programme is highly contested. International sport federations, athletes, Games Organizing Committees, broadcasters and the IOC all have interests in its composition. And, sometimes, <a href="https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1101717/ioc-paris-2024-programme-rejections">those interests conflict</a>.</p>
<h2>IOC’s quest for gender equality</h2>
<p>Most of the IOC’s claims about gender equality achievements at the Games are focused on the sport programme. The IOC has announced that at the 2024 Games, for the first time, there will be <a href="https://olympics.com/en/news/paris-2024-first-games-to-achieve-full-gender-parity">an equal number of men and women athletes</a>, and the same number of events (opportunities to win a medal) for men and women.</p>
<p>In 2014, the IOC released <a href="https://library.olympics.com/Default/doc/SYRACUSE/20238/olympic-agenda-2020-20-20-recommendations-international-olympic-committee?_lg=en-GB">a strategic plan for the future of the Olympic Games</a>. Among the 40 recommendations is one about fostering gender equality. Including an equal number of men and women athletes at the Games is one strategy the IOC identified to “foster gender equality.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man in an open-collar shirt and blazer smiles from behind a podium emblazoned with the Olympic logo" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542865/original/file-20230815-29-w6qgzm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542865/original/file-20230815-29-w6qgzm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542865/original/file-20230815-29-w6qgzm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542865/original/file-20230815-29-w6qgzm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542865/original/file-20230815-29-w6qgzm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542865/original/file-20230815-29-w6qgzm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542865/original/file-20230815-29-w6qgzm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Paris 2024 Olympic Organizing Committee President Tony Estanguet takes the stage during the representatives of national Olympic committees ceremony, on July 26, 2023 in Saint-Denis, outside Paris.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Claims about achieving “gender balance” have been an integral part of all the IOC’s statements about Paris 2024. It is crucial to critically examine what these claims mean and how they relate to achieving gender equality. </p>
<p>Ensuring gender parity — the same number of men and women athletes and men’s and women’s events — is important for gender equality at the Games, but it does not address the conditions of men’s and women’s participation. </p>
<h2>Gender differences in sporting events</h2>
<p>The IOC’s <a href="https://stillmed.olympics.com/media/Documents/Beyond-the-Games/Gender-Equality-in-Sport/IOC-Gender-Equality-and-Inclusion-Objectives-2021-2024.pdf">aim to achieve gender balance</a> reveals an incomplete, numbers-focused commitment to gender equality. </p>
<p>When men and women compete in the same sports, international federations continue to enforce differences between men’s and women’s events. These differences include: the <a href="https://assets.ctfassets.net/761l7gh5x5an/3zdJc5antr1dA3GYeDKdBu/bef82a9d7336e9b798c364066db92581/2-ROA-20230613-E.pdf">length of races</a>; <a href="https://iwf.sport/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2020/01/IWF_TCRR_2020.pdf">weight categories</a>; the <a href="https://worldathletics.org/about-iaaf/documents/book-of-rules">height, weight, size and spacing of equipment</a>; the <a href="https://resources.fina.org/fina/document/2021/01/12/a13c160d-b94a-4b63-93aa-a06fa370433f/2019_2021_wp_rules_congress_amended_06012020_0.pdf">size of venues</a>; and differences in <a href="https://www.gymnastics.sport/site/rules/">judging</a>, <a href="https://uww.org/sites/default/files/2019-12/wrestling_rules.pdf">rules</a> and <a href="https://www.fivb.com/en/volleyball/thegame_glossary/officialrulesofthegames">uniforms</a>.</p>
<p>For example, in artistic gymnastics, <a href="https://www.gymnastics.sport/site/rules/">the differences between the men’s and women’s competitions</a> include age requirements (18 years old for men and 16 for women); different apparatus (e.g., parallel bars for men and uneven parallel bars for women); the number of apparatus (six for men and four for women); and uniform requirements (long or short pants for men, leotards or unitards for women).</p>
<p>On the floor and vault — apparatus on which both men and women compete — women’s floor routines are set to music and include dance elements, while the men’s do not. When performing the same skills, men’s eligible scores are lower than women’s. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A young Black women in a leotard balances on one bent leg while on a balance beam" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542862/original/file-20230815-23-n8p5qo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542862/original/file-20230815-23-n8p5qo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542862/original/file-20230815-23-n8p5qo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542862/original/file-20230815-23-n8p5qo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542862/original/file-20230815-23-n8p5qo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542862/original/file-20230815-23-n8p5qo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542862/original/file-20230815-23-n8p5qo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Simone Biles, of the United States, performs on the balance beam during the artistic gymnastics women’s apparatus final at the 2020 Summer Olympics, on Aug. 3, 2021, in Tokyo, Japan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Ashley Landis)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What the audience sees is women’s gymnastics performed in ways that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09523367.2015.1124859">emphasize stereotypical femininity</a> and minimize strength and power. In contrast, men’s gymnastics events are organized to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19799-5_8">emphasize the athletes’ strength and power</a>.</p>
<p>These gender-based differences are examples of gender inequality. </p>
<h2>Complete gender equality</h2>
<p>In cases where sports are gender-differentiated, women’s sports are designed to be a lesser version than the men’s. Women’s races are shorter, there are fewer weight categories, equipment and venues are lighter and smaller and women wear more revealing uniforms.</p>
<p>Differences in men’s and women’s conditions of participation are the result of decisions made by those who control Olympic sports — decision-makers <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243219867914">who continue to be predominantly men</a>. The differences are not naturally occurring, nor are they universal.</p>
<p>In fact, there are several sports and events on the Olympic programme that are not gender-differentiated. For example, men and women athletes competing in <a href="https://www.worldarchery.sport/rulebook">archery</a> and <a href="https://www.worldbadminton.com/rules/">badminton</a> use the same venue, equipment and rules.</p>
<p>This is evidence of internal contradictions in the Olympic programme; some events are constructed to be different for men and women athletes, while others are not. This reinforces the need to identify and explain the remaining examples of gender-based differences.</p>
<p>These internal contradictions also require further attention from the IOC and the adoption of a more complete definition of gender equality — one that includes opportunity and status. </p>
<p>The IOC needs to look beyond the numbers and work with international federations to address athletes’ conditions of participation in the same sports. </p>
<p>Crucially, embracing and enforcing gender equality should not mean using men’s sports as the standard (e.g., increasing the length of women’s races to be the same as the men’s distance). Rather, this is an opportunity for international federations to determine the best possible conditions for all athletes in their sports.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210883/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michele K. Donnelly has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). </span></em></p>The IOC needs to look beyond gender parity and work with international federations to address athletes’ conditions of participation in sports to achieve true gender equality.Michele K. Donnelly, Assistant professor, Department of Sport Management, Brock UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2101862023-08-08T17:20:38Z2023-08-08T17:20:38ZOne year to go: Will the Paris 2024 Olympics see a return to normalcy?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541279/original/file-20230804-27-45h6ws.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5132%2C3428&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A group of tourists walk past the Olympic rings in front of Paris City Hall with one year until the Paris 2024 Olympic Games opening ceremony, on July 26, 2023.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Christophe Ena)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/one-year-to-go-will-the-paris-2024-olympics-see-a-return-to-normalcy" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>We haven’t had a “normal” Olympic Games since the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. The <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-tokyo-olympics-are-going-ahead-but-they-will-be-a-much-compromised-and-watered-down-event-160104">2020 Tokyo Summer Games</a> and the 2022 Beijing Winter Games were both affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in significant changes and schedule disruptions.</p>
<p>There were virtually no spectators, strict COVID-19 protocols for anyone involved in the Games, budget issues, no corporate hospitality, reduced community engagement and a lackluster atmosphere in the two host cities.</p>
<p>But there is hope for a return to a more traditional and enjoyable Games with the upcoming 2024 Paris Olympics. With <a href="https://apnews.com/article/paris-olympics-tickets-transport-accommodation-climate-b6b9798ea2fc65995cb3e4c6c96462f0">10 million tickets available</a>, spectators will be back in stadiums. </p>
<p>Up to 600,000 spectators will be allowed at the opening ceremony in July 2024 which, for the first time in history, <a href="https://olympics.com/en/news/whats-new-paris-2024-opening-ceremony">won’t take place in a stadium</a>, but along the Seine River in northern France. Athletes will parade six kilometres along the river before arriving at the Trocadéro, where the final parts of the ceremony will take place.</p>
<h2>Athletes and sports</h2>
<p>Since pandemic restrictions are no longer in place, competing at the Olympics and living in the Athlete’s Village will be a much better experience for athletes, who will be able to freely mix and mingle again.</p>
<p>There will be 32 sports and 329 events at the Paris Games. Karate, baseball and softball have been dropped. Hoping to attract a youthful audience, breakdancing — known as “breaking” — <a href="https://theconversation.com/breakdancing-in-the-olympics-the-games-have-a-long-history-of-taking-chances-from-pesapallo-yes-its-a-sport-to-kite-flying-151750">will make its first Olympic appearance</a>. </p>
<p>Sport climbing, surfing and skateboarding, all of which made their debut at Tokyo 2020 (held in 2021), will remain in Paris. In the continuing push for gender equity, there will be <a href="https://olympic.ca/2022/04/01/paris-2024-to-have-exact-gender-equality-in-athlete-participants/">equal numbers of male and female athletes for the first time</a>.</p>
<p>In the hopes of having as clean a Games as possible, <a href="https://ita.sport/event/paris-2024/">strict doping controls will once again be in place for Paris</a>. Due to sophisticated laboratory testing, some cheats will inevitably be caught — if not during the Games, then afterwards. </p>
<p>The Canadian men’s 4x100-metre relay team, for example, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/sports/olympics/summer/trackandfield/2023-world-aquatics-championships-day-8-prelims-1.6922437">just received their upgraded silver medals</a> for the Tokyo Games after the British team tested positive for doping.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Four Black men in long-sleeve grey shirts smiling on a podium and holding up silver medals" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541280/original/file-20230804-21-syzil2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541280/original/file-20230804-21-syzil2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541280/original/file-20230804-21-syzil2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541280/original/file-20230804-21-syzil2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541280/original/file-20230804-21-syzil2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541280/original/file-20230804-21-syzil2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541280/original/file-20230804-21-syzil2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Aaron Brown, from left to right, Jerome Blake, Brendon Rodney and Andre De Grasse pose with their upgraded Tokyo Olympics silver medals during a ceremony in Langley, B.C., on July 29, 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Russian and Belarusian athletes</h2>
<p>A chief question is whether, and on what terms, athletes from Russia and Belarus will compete at the Games. Athletes from both countries have been effectively banned from international competition in the aftermath of Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://olympics.com/ioc/news/ioc-eb-recommends-no-participation-of-russian-and-belarusian-athletes-and-officials">International Olympic Committee (IOC) strongly recommended banning athletes from both countries</a> from the Beijing 2022 Winter Games, with the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/03/sports/olympics/paralympics-russia.html">International Paralympic Committee following suit days</a> later.</p>
<p>Since then, the IOC has faced pressure from both sides. On the one side, several Baltic leaders <a href="https://apnews.com/article/politics-sports-latvia-estonia-soviet-union-919f44f8ea48fc382297e02a31f3e411">have threatened to boycott the Games</a> if Russians and Belarusians are allowed to compete. On the other, <a href="https://spcommreports.ohchr.org/TMResultsBase/DownLoadPublicCommunicationFile?gId=27552">human rights groups have been advocating that individual athletes not face discrimination</a> based on their nationality.</p>
<p>The International Olympic Committee has attempted to strike a balance between <a href="https://olympics.com/ioc/news/ioc-continues-to-provide-widespread-support-for-ukrainian-athletes">continued support for Ukrainian athletes</a> without “punishing athletes for the acts of their governments,” <a href="https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1139036/thomas-bach-ioc-paris-2024">as IOC President Thomas Bach stated</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/refugee-team-offers-a-way-for-russian-and-belarusian-dissidents-to-compete-at-the-paris-olympics-202427">Refugee team offers a way for Russian and Belarusian dissidents to compete at the Paris Olympics</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The IOC has the ultimate authority as to who will not receive formal invitations to compete in the Paris Games, and <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/07/14/1187641752/ioc-not-invite-russia-and-belarus-to-2024-olympics">it had earlier stated</a> that it will not invite Russia and Belarus to the 2024 Olympics.</p>
<p>While a final decision about the situation is unlikely to be made before the fall, Ukraine’s recent about-face to <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/sports/olympics/ukraine-athletics-boycott-russia-1.6919538">allow its athletes to compete against Russians and Belarusians</a> reveals the situation’s complexity.</p>
<h2>Olympic culture</h2>
<p>As the host city, Paris will be buzzing with excitement, <a href="https://toronto.citynews.ca/2023/07/26/a-guide-to-how-paris-will-welcome-fans-and-stage-32-sports-at-the-first-post-pandemic-olympics/">offering a variety of Olympic activities</a>. These include <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/paris-olympics-fan-zones-announcement-b2380726.html">special fan zones</a>, free viewings of the Olympic Torch Relay and opening ceremonies, <a href="https://medium.com/road-to-paris/olympic-hospitality-house-list-for-paris-summer-games-ultimate-guide-to-paris-2024-d18d18866ac1">access to hospitality houses</a> and opportunities to visit sponsor sites like Samsung, Visa and Pride House. </p>
<p>Plus, there is the <a href="https://www.paris2024.org/en/the-paris-2024-cultural-olympiad">Cultural Olympiad program</a> that began just after the Tokyo Games finished. This program <a href="https://olympicanalysis.org/section-1/cultural-programming-at-tokyo-2020-the-impossible-olympic-festival-city">provides opportunities for host countries</a> to “start new conversations between sporting and cultural circles during the four years building up to the Games then until the closing ceremony.” </p>
<h2>Record-breaking media coverage</h2>
<p>While the Tokyo and Beijing Games still had extensive media coverage, the upcoming Paris Games are <a href="https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Journal/Issues/2023/07/24/Upfront/paris-2024.aspx?ana=top_stories">expected to have the most coverage out of any Olympics</a>.</p>
<p>By May, Paris organizers had sold 6.8 million tickets — about 70 per cent of the total inventory. And in July, the president of the Paris Olympics organizing committee said they had <a href="https://apnews.com/article/olympics-paris-2024-budget-estanguet-765d98ef0acc061b7ef5dfaa7bec337c">passed the €1 billion (C$1.5 billion) mark in secured sponsorship revenue</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An older man with white hair and glasses gestures while speaking from behind a podium emblazoned with the Olympics logo" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541281/original/file-20230804-27-f0kxeo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541281/original/file-20230804-27-f0kxeo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541281/original/file-20230804-27-f0kxeo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541281/original/file-20230804-27-f0kxeo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541281/original/file-20230804-27-f0kxeo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541281/original/file-20230804-27-f0kxeo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541281/original/file-20230804-27-f0kxeo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach delivers a speech during the IOC invitation ceremony on July 26, 2023 in Saint-Denis, outside Paris.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Coca-Cola, the <a href="https://olympics.com/ioc/partners/coca-cola-mengniu">longest standing Olympic sponsor since 1928</a>, is an official non-alcoholic beverage sponsor and the <a href="https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1128052/coca-cola-paris-2024-torch-relay">major sponsor of the Olympic Torch Relay</a> and pin trading centres. Coke’s marketing agreement extends to 2032 and is estimated to be worth a whopping $3 billion.</p>
<p>The return of corporate sponsorships will also include extensive corporate hospitality and packages from major sponsors, including Visa, Coke, Samsung and others. </p>
<h2>Security at the Games</h2>
<p>From the French Revolution to the modern day, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/sports/olympics/france-penchant-for-protests-offers-challenge-ahead-of-paris-olympics-1.6900277">Paris undoubtedly has a strong history of social demonstrations</a>. Recent events have raised the question of whether this propensity will play out during the Paris 2024 Games.</p>
<p>In July, widespread <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/paris-protest-against-police-violence-banned-after-riots-2023-07-08">protests and demonstrations took place after police shot and killed 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk</a>, a French citizen of Moroccan and Algerian descent, illustrating how fraught tensions are between racialized communities and law enforcement in France.</p>
<p>As for the possibility of demonstrations occurring during the 2024 Olympics, <a href="https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/national-international/a-long-history-of-politics-and-protest-at-the-olympics/2803756">it still remains to be seen</a>. Whether or not they are to be expected, a heavy anti-terrorism security presence can be expected, as has become the norm in recent decades at mega sport events.</p>
<p>On the positive side, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65961949">recent investigations into corruption at French sport’s highest levels</a> may lead to improved transparency regarding corruption in organizing committees as the Games approach.</p>
<h2>One year to go</h2>
<p>The 2024 Paris Olympics should see a return to normalcy compared to the last two games. Although trepidation exists, with one year to go anxieties are normal. </p>
<p>As Paris prepares to host its third Olympics (1904, 1924, 2024) — <a href="https://www.olympiccities.org">only the second city to achieve this milestone after London</a> (1908, 1948, 2012) — there is optimism the event will run smoothly. </p>
<p>The legacy of Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the French founder of the modern Olympic Games, and the <a href="https://olympics.com/ioc/olympic-movement">Olympic Movement</a> should continue unabated.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210186/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There is hope for a return to a more traditional and enjoyable Olympic Games with the upcoming 2024 Paris Games.Angela Schneider, Director, International Centre for Olympic Studies, Western UniversityAlan C Oldham, PhD Student, International Centre for Olympic Studies, Western UniversityRichard Baka, Adjunct Fellow, Olympic Scholar and Co-Director of the Olympic and Paralympic Research Centre, Institute for Health and Sport, Victoria UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2103142023-07-26T12:26:57Z2023-07-26T12:26:57ZParis Olympics: with 365 days to go, will this mega-event clinch a sustainability gold medal?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539479/original/file-20230726-29-aei2bf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C164%2C2560%2C1751&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">On 13 September 2017, Paris was named as host city of the 2024 summer games. Two days later, visitors to the city visited the games' iconic rings, displayed by the Trocadero.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Olympic_rings_in_the_Place_du_Trocad%C3%A9ro_in_Paris.jpg">Anne Jea/Wikipedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Mega-events such as the <a href="https://www.brandvm.com/post/coachella-2023-marketing">Coachella Music Festival</a>, the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/6/25/largest-hajj-pilgrimage-in-history-begins-in-saudi-arabia">pilgrimages to Mecca</a> and the <a href="https://publications.fifa.com/en/annual-report-2022/finances/2019-2022-cycle-in-review/2019-2022-revenue/">World Cup</a> have become increasingly prominent in contemporary times, yet we often neglect to consider the environmental impact of bringing tens of thousands and sometimes millions of people together. </p>
<p>This is perhaps because when we think about environmental sustainability, we tend to weigh up how individuals, households, or even industries might be polluting the planet. However, mega-events are striking examples of the complex phenomenon of sustainability, mostly due to the impact of collective behaviour on the environment. The proof is that when a large gathering ends and everyone goes back to their ordinary lives, they almost invariably leave behind an alarming trail of accumulated waste. Even more troubling is the fact that such events have other negative environmental impacts that aren’t even visible to the eye.</p>
<p>A telling example is the Qatar 2022 World Cup. Host cities and organisations typically look to draw attention on the intended positive outcomes, including economic benefits and fan satisfaction. However, the Qatar event was dogged by a wide range of environmental and social controversies. These included the construction of gigantic stadiums in the middle of the desert, the abusive and <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/article/2022/12/19/world-cup-2022-in-the-end-qatar-wins_6008307_23.html">often deadly working conditions</a> for those constructing the facilities, the air conditioning needed to cool the audience in the country’s <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/qatar-world-cup-environmental-climate-change-cost-desert-rcna57632">extreme temperatures</a>, and the hundreds of international flights taken by more than a million spectators to travel to Qatar.</p>
<h2>The challenges of the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games</h2>
<p>As problematic as the Qatar World Cup was, organising the Olympic Games is perhaps even more challenging. On 26 July 2024, Paris and other cities in France will welcome the Olympics. As the event is around the corner, times are ripe for the development of sustainable solutions.</p>
<p>Even without the Olympics, Paris holds the title of the most-visited city in the world, bringing with it many sustainability-related challenges. <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/exploring-sustainable-paris/a-65081675">Congested boulevards, air and noise pollution, and waste generation</a> are definitely part of what is know as the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/10/paris-syndrome-a-first-class-problem-for-a-first-class-vacation/246743/">“Paris syndrome”</a> faced by many first-time visitors. These issues reveal that the vast number of visitors that the city already receives – more than <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/1365173/tourist-arrivals-paris-ile-de-france/">50 million tourists in 2019</a> – is unsustainable. </p>
<p>The Olympic Games will boost these numbers even higher. The estimate is that at least <a href="https://www.paris2024.org/en/faq/how-many-spectators-will-be-able-to-attend-the-ceremony/">600,000 spectators</a> – the equivalent of the capacity of 10 stadiums – will be able to take part in the opening ceremony, which will take place along 6km of the River Seine’s banks. The question then becomes, how can the Olympic Games in Paris be more sustainable?</p>
<h2>The “sustainable games” plan</h2>
<p>Judging from its official website, Paris 2024 is committed to holding sustainable games while making progress on issues such as the <a href="https://www.paris2024.org/en/">environment, employment, the economy, and education</a>. Such ambitions are inherently paradoxical, in that they can create socio-economic value even while destroying environmental value.</p>
<p>To lighten the games’ carbon footprint, the organising committee has promised a trailblazing project that will be consistent with the 2015 <a href="https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement">Paris Agreement</a> on climate change and the <a href="https://stillmed.olympics.com/media/Document%20Library/OlympicOrg/IOC/What-We-Do/Olympic-agenda/Olympic-Agenda-2020-5-15-recommendations.pdf">Olympic Agenda 2020+5</a>. The organisers are also working in partnership with <a href="https://www.paris2024.org/en/changing-the-rules-of-the-game-with-wwf-france/">WWF France</a>. </p>
<p>Basing themselves on <a href="https://www.paris2024.org/en/delivering-carbon-neutral-games/">a new model</a>, organisers hope to <a href="https://www.paris2024.org/en/a-pioneering-ambition-for-the-environment/">halve the games’ carbon emissions</a> compared to previous editions while offsetting more than what was generated. Thus not only have they pledged to offset an estimated budget of CO<sub>2</sub> emissions after the event is over – a standard procedure – they will begin even before it has started. </p>
<p>Yet, the plan provides <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230725-the-paris-olympics-have-bold-climate-plans-but-few-specifics">few specifics</a> such as dates or further operational details, with some decisions still in the process of being taken. To achieve this goal, Paris 2024 is applying what is called the ARO approach, which is an abbreviation to <em>avoid, reduce and offset</em>. Using this model, the mega-event intends to:</p>
<ul>
<li><p><em>avoid</em> emissions by using existing or temporary infrastructures for 95% of events.</p></li>
<li><p><em>reduce</em> emissions by using renewable energy, <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20230526-paris-to-ban-single-use-plastic-from-the-2024-olympic-games">banning single-use plastic</a> and <a href="https://www.paris2024.org/en/food-vision/">sustainable catering</a>). The overall target for total emissions is 1,5 million tons of CO<sub>2</sub>, which is way lower than previous editions of the Games, such as Rio (<a href="https://www.paralympic.org/news/rio-2016-launches-carbon-footprint-report-games#:%7E:text=The%20Games%20total%20estimated%20footprint,3.6%20million%20tonnes%20of%20carbon.">3,6 million tons</a>) and London (<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-olympics-emissions-idUSBRE8BB0C320121212">3,3 million tons</a>).</p></li>
<li><p><em>offset</em> 100% of residual emissions linked to the games, including indirect ones such as travel by spectators. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>Paris 2024 intends to advance the topic of environmental transition among those involved through an app called <a href="https://www.paris2024.org/en/climate-coach-events/">Climate Coach for Events</a>. It will serve to inform employees and participants and help them measure and slash their personal and professional carbon footprint. The toolkit is planned to remain available for future sports events.</p>
<p>The initiatives, designed by a <a href="https://www.paris2024.org/en/games-ecological-transformation-committee/">dedicated committee</a> of nine experts and government representatives, are extensively explained in a <a href="https://medias.paris2024.org/uploads/2022/01/PARIS-2024-210831-Rapport-Durabilite-et-Heritage-VENG_compressed.pdf">report</a>.</p>
<h2>From plan to reality</h2>
<p>Although the sustainability plan is innovative, ambitious, and promising, greenwashing has been seen in other recent mega-events. The organisers of the Qatar World Cup <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/en/les-decodeurs/article/2022/11/07/qatar-2022-the-world-cup-s-promise-of-carbon-neutrality-lacks-credibility_6003174_8.html">pledged that it would be carbon-neutral</a>, yet it ended up being described as a <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-world-cup-in-qatar-is-a-climate-catastrophe/">“climate catastrophe”</a> and produced as much as <a href="https://www.reckon.news/news/2022/12/qatar-caused-5x-more-carbon-emissions-than-other-world-cups-will-the-us-do-better-in-2026.html">five times more emissions than earlier cups</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539486/original/file-20230726-23-jhiwex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="2022 FIFA World Cup, Korea-Uruguay football match." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539486/original/file-20230726-23-jhiwex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539486/original/file-20230726-23-jhiwex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=277&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539486/original/file-20230726-23-jhiwex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=277&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539486/original/file-20230726-23-jhiwex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=277&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539486/original/file-20230726-23-jhiwex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=348&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539486/original/file-20230726-23-jhiwex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=348&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539486/original/file-20230726-23-jhiwex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=348&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Organisers of the 2022 Qatar World Cup pledged that it would be ‘carbon neutral’, but the simple fact of holding a mega-event in a desert made such promises difficult to keep. Here, spectators watch Korea play Uruguay at Education City Stadium on 24 November 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/2022_FIFA_World_Cup_Korea_Uruguay_01.jpg">Heo Manjin/Wikipedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Taking the longer view, a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-021-00696-5">study published in <em>Nature</em></a> found that the overall sustainability of summer and winter Olympic Games since 1992 is medium and has declined over time. Expectations are not facts until the Paris Olympic Games are over, of course, and to this date, most of the activities are nothing but plans. Needless to say, my hopes are that the event can turn predictions into watershed realities, ultimately serving as a benchmark for other mega-events.</p>
<p>Building on some interpretations from my <a href="https://sites.google.com/view/headinthecloudswasteallaround/p%C3%A1gina-inicial">current research on the environmental impact of mega-events</a>, I visualise a key source of obstacles and a crucial opportunity for the success of the games’ sustainable plans. When it comes to hindrances, managing a large ecosystem of stakeholders with contrasting objectives could be one of the main challenges of the Paris 2024 games. Its ecosystem consists of <a href="https://medias.paris2024.org/uploads/2022/01/PARIS-2024-210831-Rapport-Durabilite-et-Heritage-VENG_compressed.pdf">17 primary stakeholders</a>, including public and private entities as well as NGOs, such as the Paris city council, businesses and corporate sponsors, and the French National Olympic and Sports Committee. All will need to be aligned with the games’ sustainability-driven ideas. </p>
<p>The mega-event gives us a unique chance to trumpet sustainability. According to the organisers, <a href="https://medias.paris2024.org/uploads/2022/01/PARIS-2024-210831-Rapport-Durabilite-et-Heritage-VENG_compressed.pdf">13 million tickets are expected to be sold and 4 billion television viewers should watch the event</a>. This is no small opportunity for educating viewers, whether they’re physically present or watching remotely.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210314/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jannsen Santana ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>One year away from the 2024 Olympic Games, the grim reality of climate change is impossible to deny. How do we make the mega-event sustainable and avoid the pitfalls of greenwashing?Jannsen Santana, Postdoctoral Researcher - Lifestyle Research Center, EM Lyon Business SchoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2088762023-06-30T14:32:23Z2023-06-30T14:32:23ZFrance riots: when police shot a teenager dead, a rumbling pressure cooker exploded<p>Riots broke out in Nanterre, a suburb of Paris, following the lethal police shooting of a 17-year-old boy <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-66052104">named as Nahel M</a>. An investigation into his death is ongoing but the situation has already triggered protest and anger. Whatever the investigation concludes, the incident forms part of a complex, deep-rooted problem in France. </p>
<p>It raises the memory of the violence that spread across the city’s suburbs in 2005, lasting more than three weeks and forcing the country into a state of emergency. Many of the issues behind the unrest back then remain unresolved to this day and have potentially been aggravated by ever worsening relations between the police and the public. </p>
<p>During my extensive fieldwork in the suburban estates of <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-16103-3">Paris, Lyon and Marseille</a> I have seen and heard first-hand the grievances that are now being cried out on the streets of Nanterre. </p>
<h2>The suburbs and poverty</h2>
<p>Certain suburbs of large French cities have, for decades, suffered from what has been labelled the worst <a href="https://www.google.com.co/books/edition/_/APjN-RQuW-sC?hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjg-Kr50-n_AhUFTTABHUkpCmkQre8FegQIDhAG">“hypermarginalisation”</a> in Europe. Poor-quality housing and schooling combine with geographical isolation and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Multi-Ethnic-France-Immigration-Politics-Culture-ebook/dp/B000SEGHXM/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2GOZNEHZ7C1J7&keywords=multiethnic+france&qid=1688082329&s=books&sprefix=multiethnic+fran%2Cstripbooks-intl-ship%2C148&sr=1-1">racism</a> to make it virtually impossible for people to stand a chance at improving their circumstances. </p>
<p>Evidence has long shown that people living in poor suburbs can expect to face discrimination based on the very fact of living in those suburbs when they <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/270757362_Discrimination_based_on_place_of_residence_and_access_to_employment">apply for a job</a>. Even just having a certain name on your CV can rule you out of employment thanks to <a href="https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_protect/---protrav/---migrant/documents/publication/wcms_201429.pdf">widespread racial discrimination</a>.</p>
<p>Discontent among young people in these places has been brewing for decades as a result. The first riots of the kind currently happening in Paris took place in <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9780470712788">Lyon</a> as far back as the 1990s. </p>
<p>And yet, outside moments of crisis, there appears to be practically no discussion by French leadership about how to tackle the problems that drive so much anger in the suburbs. </p>
<p>President Emmanuel Macron presents himself as committed to <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2023/06/13/macron-s-shift-from-start-up-nation-to-reindustrialization_6031051_7.html">re-industrialising</a> France and revitalising the economy. But his vision does not include any plan for using economic growth to bring opportunity to the suburbs or, viewed the other way round, to harness the potential of the suburbs to drive economic growth. </p>
<p>In two presidential terms, he has failed to produce a coherent policy for solving some of the <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/can-emmanuel-macrons-banlieues-plan-reach-the-poor/a-43841633">key problems of the suburbs</a>.</p>
<h2>Police brutality</h2>
<p>Police brutality is a topic of great concern in France at the moment, beyond the Nanterre incident. Earlier this year, international human rights organisation the Council of Europe took the extraordinary step of directly lambasting the French police for <a href="https://www.coe.int/en/web/commissioner/-/manifestations-en-france-les-libert%C3%A9s-d-expression-et-de-r%C3%A9union-doivent-%C3%AAtre-prot%C3%A9g%C3%A9es-contre-toute-forme-de-violence">“excessive use of force”</a> during protests against Macron’s pension reforms. </p>
<p>Policing appears stuck in an all-or-nothing approach. In a recent interview I helped conduct for a documentary in the suburbs of Marseille, residents pointed to successive cuts to community based police officers, based in the estates, as key reasons for increases in tension between the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpLq5YbNmvE">population and the police</a>. Protests, meanwhile, are met with <a href="https://www.euronews.com/video/2023/06/29/watch-tear-gas-fired-at-people-protesting-over-the-police-shooting-of-a-teenager-in-france">tear gas</a> and <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/04/25/france-pension-protests-police-violence-macron-europe/">batons</a>. </p>
<p>Successive governments have used policing to control the population to <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=Police+Reforms+in+France%3A+40+Years+of+Searching+for+a+Model&oq=Police+Reforms+in+France%3A+40+Years+of+Searching+for+a+Model&aqs=chrome..69i57.264j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8">prevent political turmoil</a>, eroding the legitimacy of law enforcement along the way.</p>
<p>And yet, the police are extremely <a href="https://time.com/5852764/french-police-protest/">hostile to reform</a>, a stance that is aided and abetted by their <a href="https://jacobin.com/2022/06/french-police-unions-lefebvre-darmanin-crime-nupes-election">powerful unions</a> and Macron himself, who needs the police to <a href="https://theconversation.com/macrons-mercenaries-police-violence-and-neoliberal-reform-in-france-77979">crush opposition to his reforms</a>. </p>
<h2>Macron vs Sarkozy</h2>
<p>Former president Nicolas Sarkozy is infamous for inflaming tensions during the 2005 riots by referring to the people involved as <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5010930">“scum”</a> who needed to be pressure washed from the suburbs. Macron, too, has been repeatedly criticised for striking an arrogant, tone <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220410-macron-centrist-reformer-dogged-by-accusations-of-arrogance">during his political career</a>, making numerous gaffs including suggesting an unemployed worker only needed to <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/emmanuel-macron-9-greatest-gaffes-blunders-french-president/">“cross the street” to find work</a>. </p>
<p>However, his consiliatory response to the death of Nahel could not be further removed from Sarkozy’s stance. He has called the killing <a href="https://www.euronews.com/2023/06/29/french-police-protesters-clash-after-macron-calls-police-fatal-shooting-of-teen-inexcusabl">“inexcusable”</a> and held a crisis meeting to seek a <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12246303/Emmanuel-Macron-holds-crisis-meeting-riots-sparked-cop-execution-17-year-old.html">solution to the crisis</a>. </p>
<p>A trip to <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/macron-seen-dancing-at-elton-john-gig-as-riots-raged-across-france-12912193">see Elton John perform</a> while the riots occurred was perhaps not advisable and comments about young people being “intoxicated” by video games were somewhat misguided, but Macron has at least tried to calm tensions and not inflame them. </p>
<p>A key problem for him, however, is the diffuse, de-centralised nature of the protestors. There is no leadership to meet and negotiate with, and there are no specific demands that need to be met to defuse the tension. As in 2005, the riots are occurring spontaneously, sometimes estate by estate. </p>
<p>That makes escalation very difficult for the government to stop. And it underscores the need for a far more wide-reaching, thoughtful response to tackle the entrenched, decades-old problems of poor social prospects and police brutality in the suburbs of French cities.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208876/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joseph Downing does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>I’ve interviewed disaffected people across French suburbs. Their anger has been mounting for years.Joseph Downing, Senior Lecturer in International Relations and Politics, Aston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2014272023-03-09T17:10:39Z2023-03-09T17:10:39ZBecoming Frida Kahlo: new BBC documentary paints a compelling portrait of the Mexican artist<p>Nearly 70 years after her death the brilliant Mexican artist <a href="https://www.fridakahlo.org/">Frida Kahlo</a> continues to fascinate for her unique artistic language that interprets her physical and emotional pain, her unconventional relationships with men and women, and her complex marriage to the great Mexican muralist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Diego-Rivera">Diego Rivera</a>.</p>
<p>She has been the subject of many books, the best known of which is Hayden Herrera’s <a href="https://www.londonreviewbookshop.co.uk/stock/frida-the-biography-of-frida-kahlo-hayden-herrera">biography</a> and a <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120679/">Hollywood film</a>, with Kahlo played by Mexican actress and producer Salma Hayek. Her now-iconic face continues to be emblazoned across bags, t-shirts, prints, fridge magnets, jewellery, cushions and myriad other products.</p>
<p>The latest incarnation of the painter is <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001jw97">Becoming Frida Kahlo</a>, a three-part documentary made for BBC Two. The series will delight Frida fans with its wealth of photographs and archival films featuring the artist in her private and public moments.</p>
<h2>The art of self-invention</h2>
<p>Becoming Frida Kahlo <a href="https://roganproductions.co.uk/project/becoming-frida-kahlo/">promises</a> to “strip away the myths to reveal the real Frida”. As I have noted before, this is a particularly tricky endeavour when dealing with an artist for whom self-invention was her craft.</p>
<p>In previous work I <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10509200802433012?journalCode=gqrf20">argued</a> that questions of fact and fiction in the case of the Mexican artist are far from simple. The historical Kahlo created her own persona through art, dress and performances of self. She has become, to a degree, what her fans and admirers desire her to be: a symbol for Mexicans, Mexican Americans, Latinos in the US, feminists, and LGBTQ+ people all over the world.</p>
<p>Still, Becoming Frida Kahlo is a very comprehensive representation of the artist, and showcases the BBC at its best. It achieves this through rigorous research. Much of the narrative is driven by Luis Martín Lozano, professor and series consultant, and author of <a href="https://www.taschen.com/en/books/art/01189/frida-kahlo-the-complete-paintings?gclid=CjwKCAiAmJGgBhAZEiwA1JZolo8NhfAKO">Frida Kahlo The Complete Paintings</a>.</p>
<p>Mexican researchers Ruth Araiza Moreno and Lorenza Espínola Gómez de Parada also ensure a Mexican point of view infuses the series. The final credits reveal the impressive list of archives used to bring to audiences a treasure trove of photographs and film of Kahlo (and Rivera) from her childhood in the 1920s to the time of her death in 1954.</p>
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<h2>Finding Frida</h2>
<p>Through intimate photographs, home movies and newsreels we feel as if we are with Kahlo and Rivera in Mexico, San Francisco, New York and Detroit, among other points on their travels.</p>
<p>This is complemented with voiceovers of Kahlo’s letters and her diary entries, along with those of close friend Lucienne Bloch while in the US, contemporary newspaper articles chronicling events in their lives, and medical reports detailing Kahlo’s worsening health conditions.</p>
<p>Expert witnesses include art historians from Mexico and the US. Testimonials from Kahlo’s Mexican art students (now elderly men), and family members round off this multi-layered and multi-faceted series. </p>
<p>Truths are thus approximated through many voices and images. There is no single narrator, no single oversimplified truth, rather many stories are revealed in this telling of Kahlo’s story. The stories flow as we discover new photographs, new films, new anecdotes, new theories.</p>
<p>Some of these are also likely to create new headlines, such as the revelation by Rivera’s grandson <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Diego_Rivera_the_Complete_Murals.html?id=FmO-zgEACAAJ&redir_esc=y">Juan Coronel Rivera</a>, that he believed Diego may have helped Frida end her life in a final act of love when the pain was too much for her to bear. </p>
<p>This is a celebration of Frida Kahlo and less convenient truths are omitted, such as the fervent love for Stalin that she <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-frida-kahlo-became-a-trinket-for-a-conservative-leader-85334">embraced</a> towards the end of her life. </p>
<h2>Important cultural figures</h2>
<p>Viewers are offered a fascinating insight into the worlds inhabited by Kahlo and Rivera; neither are presented as isolated geniuses, but rather important cultural figures in a period of change and conflict.</p>
<p>In episode one, we are taken to post-Revolutionary Mexico with its vibrant cultural scene, lively parties and fractious communist politics. In episode two we travel to depression-hit New York, and Ford’s repression of striking car workers in Detroit. Here we see the contradictions of the communist couple as Rivera works on mural commissions from wealthy capitalists such as Ford and Rockefeller.</p>
<p>Episode three returns to Mexico, but not before a stop off in Paris on the brink of the second world war and the Nazi invasion of 1940. We see Kahlo’s growing international success; she is invited to Paris to exhibit some of her paintings as the guest of <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/andre-breton-807">André Breton</a>, the French surrealist writer and poet. Breton claimed Kahlo as a surrealist on “discovering” her during his visit to Mexico in 1938. We also learn of her frustration with Breton and fellow surrealists who preferred talk to political action.</p>
<p>And at the centre of everything is Kahlo’s art which we see with new eyes as we learn the stories behind her deeply autobiographical, symbolic paintings. The series chronicles her politics, her miscarriages, Rivera’s infidelities, her physical agony.</p>
<p>Her embodied art is contextualised in her physical and emotional body. Telling a deeply personal story, her life, times and art are beautifully interwoven together here.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201427/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Deborah Shaw does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A new three-part series brings together a wealth of material and voices to present new films, photographs, stories and theories about the brilliant artist.Deborah Shaw, Professor of Film and Screen Studies, University of PortsmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1977532023-02-08T18:39:55Z2023-02-08T18:39:55ZNetflix: is mainstream content squeezing out the daring plots viewers originally fell for?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507117/original/file-20230130-8935-9ng6vm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C2%2C2000%2C1134&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">_Emily in Paris_ is a pure Netflix product, and has received less than glowing reviews.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Allociné</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since the field of cultural studies got its start in the 1950s, academics have been investigating what different pop cultures have to say about society. While popular culture has often been criticised as a sort of dumbing-down of “real” culture driven by <a href="https://www.cairn.info/revue-hermes-la-revue-2005-2-page-60.htm">purely commercial interests</a>, research has provided important insight into modern sociology through study of subjects as diverse as <a href="https://books.openedition.org/editionscnrs/19368">Andy Warhol, hip-hop and punk music, Beyoncé, and Lady Gaga</a>.</p>
<p>Netflix launched in 1997 and by 2007 it began its transformation into a true ‘video on demand’ platform. It’s now the world’s largest streaming platform, putting it front and centre in the pop culture universe. <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2022/10/18/media/netflix-earnings/index.html">Despite a dip in popularity in 2022</a>, the platform has managed to accrue 220 million users and more than 5,000 titles to date.</p>
<p>Netflix has been able to crush its competition, even snuffing out certain services right from the outset. But is this <a href="https://www.cairn.info/revue-nectart-2021-2-page-124.htm">superstore for series</a> promoting diverse narratives and plots or is it nothing more than a gigantic conformity-producing machine? A series that’s received less praise than most of the platform’s offerings is <em>Emilie in Paris</em>, which has been widely panned since its release. As Iva Dixit of <em>The New York Times</em> wrote, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/23/magazine/emily-in-paris-netflix.html">“Emily Is Still in Paris. Why Are We Still Watching?”</a></p>
<h2>A bold spark in a drab landscape</h2>
<p>When Netflix launched its US streaming service in 2007, its immediate concern was distancing itself from competitors such as HBO – which began broadcasting the iconic series <em>Game of Thrones</em> in 2011. To do so, Netflix presented a bold offer of complex plots, strong characters (such as Carrie in <em>Homeland</em> and Piper in <em>Orange Is the New Black</em>) and polished productions.</p>
<p>Three years later, Netflix reached deals with Paramount, Lionsgate and Metro Goldwyn Mayer to provide high-quality, more diverse programming. <em>House of Cards</em> and <em>Orange Is the New Black</em> were the first of the made-by-Netflix offerings, and their success proved that this was the right decision. Original creations soon became the platform’s focus, <a href="https://www.latimes.com/business/hollywood/la-fi-ct-netflix-programming-surge-20180812-story.html">increasing by 88%</a> between 2017 and 2018 to reach over 5,000 titles. It was also during this year that the platform acquired its first major production studio in Albuquerque, New Mexico.</p>
<p>Netflix Originals have since become the brand’s trademark, bringing in directors such as Martin Scorsese and Bong Joon-Ho, and demanding sizeable budgets. Bold series such as <em>Orange Is the New Black</em> shook up audiences’ expectations, shedding light on important issues like feminism, gender and sexual violence – a real first in an audiovisual universe long overpowered by the <a href="https://academic.oup.com/screen/article-abstract/16/3/6/1603296?redirectedFrom=fulltext">“male gaze”</a>. </p>
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<h2>Staying local yet universal</h2>
<p>As it has grown, Netflix has been able to go global, while taking into account local factors both in its original productions and through its partnerships. The platform relies on a certain universalisation of expectations, in a world where pop culture is largely dominated by US productions, but plays on differences, specific traits and regional identities in line with the spirit of <a href="https://www.cairn.info/revue-reseaux-2021-2-page-45.htm">“glocalisation”</a>. Its approach involves purchasing and broadcasting creations made by local studios, the most notable example being <em>Money Heist</em>. With an initial budget of $600,000 per episode – one-tenth that of <em>Game of Thrones</em> – this “minor” Spanish series reached icon status thanks to the platform.</p>
<p>Netflix Original series are often deeply incisive, taking aim at the Modi administration in India with <em>Leila</em> and at the Erdoğan regime in Turkey with <em>Ethos</em>. Since 2020, 18% of Netflix Originals have been produced or co-produced in Europe, 12% in Asia, 5% in Latin America and 2% in Oceania. To date, some 40 countries have been enlisted <a href="https://www.cairn.info/revue-nectart-2021-2-page-124.htm">in Netflix original productions</a>, which have been filmed in around 20 languages.</p>
<p>For now, this “Tower of Babel” strategy is paying off. As Cindy Holland, the platform’s then-vice president of original series, stated in 2018, <a href="https://www.latimes.com/business/hollywood/la-fi-ct-netflix-programming-surge-20180812-story.html">“the most powerful promotional vehicle… is the Netflix service itself”</a>. Put simply, Netflix <a href="https://www.fypeditions.com/brand-success-50-reussites-exceptionnelles-marketing-de-communication-preface-de-maurice-levy-ouvrage-dirige-marc-drillech/">constructs its own autonomy</a> in order to maintain full control over all the inner workings of the service, from creations to in-house writers, production and distribution.</p>
<h2>The attention economy</h2>
<p>Although the <a href="https://econreview.berkeley.edu/paying-attention-the-attention-economy/">“attention economy”</a> has always existed, it has become the be-all and end-all of any audiovisual or editorial production. As with other platforms, the goal at Netflix is to capture our attention, which is the very <a href="https://www.cairn.info/l-economie-de-l-attention--9782707178701-page-7.htm?contenu=resume">basis of its profitability</a>. </p>
<p>Algorithms help Netflix and other services fine tune their attention-economy strategy, all to keep us locked inside our bubbles. They want to attract audiences and keep them engaged as long as possible, concentrating this sly tactic into the one almighty “Next Episode” button. The Netflix algorithm is immensely powerful, profiling users with every site visit, making ever more accurate suggestions and predictions and driving addiction. And so the trap snaps shut and we are turned into mere consumers, helped merrily along by the potent algorithm.</p>
<p>Another trap operates through the narrative arcs constructed essentially around the infamous cliff-hanger - the “to be continued” of <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/narratologie/7570">yesteryear’s soap operas</a>. This is how subtitled Korean series such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/transformer-la-serie-squid-game-en-jeu-de-telerealite-est-ce-trahir-sa-portee-critique-186407"><em>Squid Game</em></a> have become smash hits for Netflix, relying on fierce political and social critique. <em>Extraordinary Attorney Woo</em> follows the story of an autistic lawyer, while <em>The Penthouse</em> charts the lives of Seoul’s wealthiest and often most corrupt residents. These three series have achieved spectacular numbers, clocking in at 46 million viewing hours for <em>Extraordinary Attorney Woo</em> and 142 million for <em>Squid Game</em>. The latter represents twice the number of viewing hours enjoyed by <em>Bridgerton</em>, which was itself a huge success.</p>
<p>These series consistently feature highly emotional climaxes that encourage binge-watching. The same trend can be found in cinema, with multiplexes featuring much-hyped productions alongside more difficult works. For instance, the heist movie <em>Ocean’s Eleven</em> ($450 million at the box office) is a far cry from the more discreet, artistic cinema of Peter Greenaway. Whether we are dealing with a series, a film or a book, “accessibility” is the watchword.</p>
<h2>When algorithms bite back</h2>
<p>Netflix relies on <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-netflix-addiction_b_8473094">neuro-marketing</a> to generate powerful sensory responses. As soon as we stop watching, the dopamine hit subsides, and so we feel “required” to keep watching. In other words, it is difficult on an emotional level for us to miss the next part and the next episode. Evidently, the series-watching phenomenon obeys the stimulation-addiction logic.</p>
<p>Until now Netflix has been able to create daring content, broadening the scope of plots and imagined horizons. But its algorithm-driven success depends largely on binge-watching fuelled by cliff-hangers, the oldest of tropes. There are already series “recipes”, but these push less for conformity than for the ease that is at the heart of attention economics.</p>
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<p><em>Virginie Martin is the author of <a href="https://www.humensciences.com/livre/Le-charme-discret-des-series/85">“Le Charme discret des séries”</a> (“The Understated Charm of the TV Series”), published in French by Humensciences in 2021</em>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197753/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Virginie Martin is the author of Le Charme discret des séries ("The Understated Charm of the TV Series"), published in French by Humensciences in 2021</span></em></p>Ever since it launched, the streaming platform has made its name by spearheading ever more daring innovations. But could this model be hurtling toward uniform plots and worldviews?Virginie Martin, Docteure sciences politiques, HDR sciences de gestion, Kedge Business SchoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1971252023-01-04T19:57:01Z2023-01-04T19:57:01ZStock exchanges: has Paris really stolen the limelight from the City of London?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502901/original/file-20230103-101864-tn6tqf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C3%2C1024%2C763&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Daily trading is worth around $3.7 trillion in London compared to $200 billion in Paris. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In late 2022, the <a href="https://www.lesechos.fr/finance-marches/marches-financiers/paris-ravit-a-londres-la-place-de-premiere-bourse-europeenne-1878797">French press exulted at the news that Paris’s market capitalisation had overtaken London’s</a>. While these financial centres have been <a href="https://www.cairn.info/histoire-de-la-bourse--9782707171665-page-47.htm">competing for more than two centuries</a>, Paris faded from view from 1914 to 1985 before enjoying <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/8065/chapter-abstract/153455884?redirectedFrom=fulltext">“a renaissance”</a>. We read that it has now topped London as Europe’s biggest stock exchange. But what does that mean?</p>
<p>To grasp this, we first need to get our heads around the concept of market capitalisation, which can be defined as the total value of shares in a particular company listed on a stock exchange. As shares represent the property rights of the companies that issued them, the capitalisation of a stock exchange therefore measures the value of the corresponding companies.</p>
<p>However, this value is virtual, both because it represents future profits, and because the company could not convert it into money without selling all its shares and thereby tanking them. A rise in capitalisation is therefore only a promise.</p>
<p>It should also be remembered that:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Not all companies are listed, because although listing allows access to market financing, it entails costs and risks</p></li>
<li><p>There are other sources of financing than the markets, in particular banks</p></li>
<li><p>It is quite possible for a company in a given country to choose to be listed on a stock exchange in a different country.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2>Off-index stocks carry Paris</h2>
<p>On 23 June 2016, the day of the United Kingdom’s referendum on leaving the European Union, the London Stock Exchange’s capitalisation amounted to around 2,900 billion euros, compared to 1,750 in Paris. Since then, the pound sterling has fallen against the euro (-6%) and the London stock market index has risen less than the Paris index: 14% for the FTSE compared to 30% for the CAC All-tradable. However, these two effects combined explain only a quarter of Paris’s catch-up.</p>
<p>Understanding the rest will require that we look beyond stock indices to weigh in factors such as market entries and exits, or “small” stocks price variations that are not accounted for by indexes.</p>
<p>Paris shows limited entries/exits (<a href="https://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/news/999581/paris-may-be-bigger-but-london-remains-europe-s-ipo-destination-999581.html">less than 5 billion per year</a>, with a slightly positive balance) by comparison to London. Though London has a much higher volume of Initial Public Offerings (IPOs), acquisitions still cause the City to bleed much capital: as early as 18 July 2016, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jul/18/arm-holdings-to-be-sold-to-japans-softbank-for-234bn-reports-say">Japan’s SoftBank bought microprocessor maker ARM</a> for £24bn, precipitating ARM’s delisting. While others followed suit, the total net flows still represent less than 5% of the variation in the difference between London and Paris. In the end, we will have to look to non-index shares – i.e., the shares of the smallest companies – which have grown much faster in Paris (+150%) than in London, to understand the three quarters of the variation.</p>
<p>If we focus on the companies listed in Paris, we see that they are not all French: take <a href="https://www.boursorama.com/cours/societe/profil/1rPMLBBO/">Be-Bô</a>, a health start-up domiciled in Geneva; or <a href="https://www.boursier.com/actions/cours/kompuestos-ES0105425005,FR.html">Kompuestos</a>, a Spanish plastics specialist. These two cases differ in important regards, however: the former corresponds to an IPO in Paris, whereas the latter refers to the additional listing in Paris of a company previously introduced on the Madrid stock exchange. So, should the capitalisation of Kompuestos be counted for Paris or for Madrid?</p>
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À lire aussi :
<a href="https://theconversation.com/la-preuve-par-trois-paris-londres-il-ny-a-pas-match-138786">La preuve par trois : Paris–Londres, il n’y a pas match !</a>
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<p>Let’s start out by counting for Paris the shares that are held by people living in France, as is customary. Plus, let’s also include all foreign shares held by residents, even when shares are not actually listed (i.e., traded in real time) on the stock exchange.</p>
<p>In these circumstances, London clearly outperforms Paris. Indeed, the City has a special infrastructure called CREST, which acts as a depository for international securities and issues digital certificates representing foreign shares to UK residents. When all foreign-listed shares are taken into account, the capitalisation held by UK residents is $6.2 trillion, compared to $3.7 trillion for mainland France, as suggested by <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/db5d516a-4b35-4e85-8b02-4ddd73b48e0b?accessToken=zwAAAYSmkdgEkdPbXVFqSzVOhdOLAk3dc7SOCw.MEUCIBROqiacUrVTAAxdwUO6SKav_eIvOveicHxmsjJQ3Y9iAiEArFO07n4_rAb7HnEM7sWtePRX4Hfkj4or5Yekf1BWd_w&sharetype=gift&token=54fe1a0e-83cd-4079-b4c4-9848520ea920">the <em>Financial Times</em></a>. The difference is largely explained by <a href="https://www.oecd.org/daf/fin/private-pensions/Pension-Funds-in-Figures-2021.pdf">pension funds</a> whose asset value is 3,000 billion USD in the UK compared to less than 100 billion in France.</p>
<h2>The City’s ancillary “services”</h2>
<p>Aside from shares, bonds also account for a good chunk of global capitalisation: <a href="https://www.icmagroup.org/market-practice-and-regulatory-policy/secondary-markets/bond-market-size/">$128,000 billion at the end of 2020</a>, with Paris contributing almost 4% to the pie, i.e., a little more than London. On the other hand, the most important market in terms of volume is certainly the foreign exchange market: here, London generates over <a href="https://www.bis.org/statistics/rpfx22.htm">38% of global activity</a> with more than $3.7 trillion in daily transactions, by comparison to $200 billion in the case of Paris. In the area of finance, London also leads through the large number of international contracts drafted under British law by UK law firms.</p>
<p>For example, the first <em>sukuk</em> (sharia-compliant investment certificates) issued by an American company were contracts based on an <em>ad hoc</em> vehicle listed on the London Stock Exchange and <a href="https://www.sukuk.com/sukuk-new-profile/ge-capital-sukuk-ltd-999/">paying a periodic dividend in London</a>. Ships, buildings, containers, works of art: London firms know how to draft the contract necessary to acquire any one of those assets under a favourable tax regime in a chosen jurisdiction (e.g., a Jersey trust or a Bahamian special purpose vehicle) by arranging appropriate financing. In comparison, Paris offers mainly conventional financing means and no special legal regimes.</p>
<p>It is because of these ancillary “services” that London has been the <a href="https://www.longfinance.net/programmes/financial-centre-futures/global-financial-centres-index/gfci-publications/global-financial-centres-index-31/">second-largest global financial centre</a> since the post-war period, well ahead of Paris. London still employs over a million people in the financial sector, <a href="https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=SNA_TABLE3">25% more than Paris</a>. However, the gap between the two stock exchanges has narrowed since Brexit prompted finance professionals to relocate to Paris – the so-called <a href="https://www.dartmouthpartners.com/brexodus-to-paris/">“Brexodus”</a>.</p>
<p>One is left to wonder how this trend might impact the rest of the economy, including in terms of growth. It should be remembered that while <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?locations=DE-FR">Germany’s GDP is 40% higher than France’s</a>, its <a href="https://www.fese.eu/statistics/">market capitalisation is 40% lower</a>. A sobering reminder for the French that, whatever the markets’ <a href="https://www.etfstream.com/news/paris-takes-crown-of-biggest-european-stock-market-from-london/">new-found esteem for their country</a>, a company’s value is ultimately based on far more than indexes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197125/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Pierre-Charles Pradier est président du conseil de surveillance de FIFA Clearing House.</span></em></p>Although Paris’s capitalisation overtook London’s in late 2022, the City of London is still Europe’s leading financial centre. Understanding why will require that we look beyond stock indices.Pierre-Charles Pradier, Maître de conférences en Sciences économiques, LabEx RéFi, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-SorbonneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1965472022-12-21T09:54:46Z2022-12-21T09:54:46ZEmily in Paris season three – Netflix hit loses sight of the real city<p>Everyone in Paris knows it: <a href="https://theconversation.com/emily-in-paris-why-its-so-hard-to-admit-love-for-the-show-despite-it-being-so-popular-196606">Emily Cooper</a> (Lily Collins) is at the top of her game. </p>
<p>Since her arrival in the French capital in season one of this immediate Netflix hit, Emily has used her American influencer flair to successfully promote all manner of luxury products to the French market via her viral social media campaigns. And with all the usual drama along the way, she goes from strength to strength in season three.</p>
<p>The show’s love affair with big-name brands makes it a product placement dream. But it is, of course, the city of Paris that is its most successful product by far.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer for Emily in Paris season three.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The show is not set in the real Paris, the French metropolis of more than 2 million inhabitants, but a parallel “Paris™” – a perfect version. This is Paris the brand, one that has been <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1179/1478731813Z.00000000033">carefully curated</a> by generations of writers, artists and filmmakers over hundreds of years.</p>
<h2>Paris in the global imagination</h2>
<p>Paris is everybody’s favourite fantasy city. </p>
<p>There’s Emma Bovary’s <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1179/ros.1993.11.2.7?journalCode=yros20">imaginary wanderings</a> around the city in Gustave Flaubert’s 1857 masterpiece, and Amélie Poulain’s <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/009715580401500307">playful treasure hunt</a> in the eponymous 2001 blockbuster. <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691009032/the-painting-of-modern-life">The Impressionists</a> painted dreamy scenes of outdoor cafes and sunsets on the Seine. And who could forget Juliette Binoche’s firework-illuminated antics in Leos Carax’s 1991 classic Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (<a href="https://doi.org/10.3828/AJFS.32.1.109">The Lovers on the Bridge</a>)?</p>
<p>As well as the City of Light, Paris has always been a city of dreams, romance and beauty in the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1179/1478731813Z.00000000033">global imagination</a>. </p>
<p>Like its on-screen predecessors, Emily’s Paris is instantly recognisable as “Paris™”. But it is simultaneously unrecognisable, bearing very little resemblance to the real Paris you encounter when you step off the Eurostar at the Gare du Nord. Indeed, even the fleeting representation of this train station in Emily in Paris is unrealistic. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501079/original/file-20221214-6709-iyrp4w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An impressionist painting of Post Neuf Paris with blue skies." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501079/original/file-20221214-6709-iyrp4w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501079/original/file-20221214-6709-iyrp4w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501079/original/file-20221214-6709-iyrp4w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501079/original/file-20221214-6709-iyrp4w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501079/original/file-20221214-6709-iyrp4w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501079/original/file-20221214-6709-iyrp4w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501079/original/file-20221214-6709-iyrp4w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Pont Neuf, Paris by Auguste Renoir (1872).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.52202.html">Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection</a></span>
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<p>When Emily goes to surprise her English love interest, Alfie, on his return from London in the middle of season three, she waits for him outside the station’s main entrance. But anyone who has arrived in Paris by Eurostar knows that travellers from London either vanish underground to the station’s many Métro lines, or turn right to head for the taxi rank at the side-exit. Either Alfie is walking or he is taking the bus – which, given these characters’ addiction to taxis, seems highly unlikely.</p>
<p>In fact, Paris has an efficient, affordable and comprehensive public transport system. The city is served by 14 metro lines, 58 bus routes and three trams. <a href="https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/2011101?geo=DEP-75">Most Parisians</a> (65%) travel to work by public transport And the numbers who travel to work on foot like Emily and her boss Sylvie (Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu) are much smaller (10%). </p>
<p>Despite the enduring cliche, only about 5% of Parisians <a href="https://theconversation.com/can-the-city-cycling-boom-survive-the-end-of-the-covid-19-pandemic-155913">cycle to work</a> like Emily’s colleague Luc (Bruno Gouery). Yet except for a couple of fleeting shots of the picturesque above-ground sections of Métro lines 6 and 2, Emily’s Paris is devoid of public transport. It is equally empty of cars.</p>
<p>Despite recent <a href="https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/teoros/2020-v39-n1-teoros05743/1074090ar/">improvements in pedestrian access</a>, especially along the Seine, Paris is still absolutely full of traffic. Taxis, cars, bikes, mopeds, electric scooters, emergency vehicles, dustbin lorries and roller bladers all battle for space on its always congested roads. And yet Emily and her friends spend hours sitting in outdoor café terraces without ever being affected by noise or air pollution.</p>
<h2>Where are all the Parisians?</h2>
<p>Emily’s Paris is also eerily empty of people. And those who do walk its streets are almost all young and attractive. This gives us dangerously unrealistic expectations of the city. <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6197921.stm">“Paris Syndrome”</a>, the shock experienced by tourists when Paris does not live up to expectations, is responsible for around <a href="https://www.slate.fr/story/47495/folies-voyage-paris-choc-realite">50 episodes</a> of serious mental illness per year.</p>
<p>Real Paris is a bustling metropolis whose pavements are always crowded with people of all ages, races and economic status. Like other European capitals, Paris has seen a huge <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/features/2022/6/29/housing-shortage-blamed-for-tripled-homeless-population-in-france">increase in homelessness</a> over the last several decades. Areas of the city near the ring road and under bridges have been transformed into makeshift refugee camps.</p>
<p>These harsh social and economic realities are airbrushed out of Emily’s Paris along with rubbish bins, police sirens and the building sites that always seem to proliferate in this city.</p>
<p>During filming for season three, the iconic Notre-Dame cathedral was shrouded in scaffolding following the devastating <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notre-Dame_fire">2019 fire</a> – yet the cathedral appears completely unscathed in several shots of the river.</p>
<p>Some comfort can be taken in the fact that the show’s characters are refreshingly aware they are living in a fictional Paris. They frequently acknowledge that life in Paris is a dream and compare their lives to a film with a Hollywood (rather than “French”) ending.</p>
<p>Season three even begins with a dream sequence which is repeated in real life later in the same episode. This blurring of dream and reality reminds us that Emily in Paris is a guilty pleasure, a marvel of escapism which is about as good at impersonating Paris as Emily is at speaking French.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/196547/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hannah J Thompson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As the new series of Emily in Paris drops, an expert in cultural depictions of the city asks – where are all the Parisians?Hannah J Thompson, Professor of French and Critical Disability Studies, Royal Holloway University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1966062022-12-19T10:56:42Z2022-12-19T10:56:42ZEmily in Paris: why it’s so hard to admit love for the show despite it being so popular<p>A <a href="https://www.hollywoodinsider.com/emily-in-paris-season-2/">guilty pleasure</a>. A <a href="https://slate.com/culture/2020/10/emily-in-paris-netflix-hate-watch.html">hate watch</a>. A <a href="https://ew.com/tv/tv-reviews/emily-in-paris-netflix-review/">brain vacation</a>. Open <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2021/12/emily-paris-netflix-season-2/621128/">most reviews</a> of the Netflix original series Emily in Paris, now on its third season, and it’s likely that at least one of these phrases will appear. </p>
<p>A fish-out-of-water comedy about a straight-laced North American marketing exec seconded to a louche Paris office, Emily in Paris was created by Darren Star, who is also responsible for Beverley Hills 90210, Melrose Place and Sex and the City. Star Lily Collins is a well-established Hollywood leading lady, sidekick Ashley Park has a Tony nomination and Emily’s nemesis is played by the respected French actress Philippine Leroy-Beaulieau. </p>
<p>Make no mistake, this is high-budget, prestige programming for Netflix and the show is popular. It was watched by <a href="https://variety.com/2021/tv/people-news/emily-in-paris-netflix-58-million-most-watched-comedy-1234964668/">58 million households</a> in the month after its debut in 2020 and remained in the UK top 10 list for <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/travisbean/2020/10/09/forget-emily-in-paris-and-ratched-because-cocomelon-might-be-the-most-popular-show-on-netflix/">40 consecutive days</a>. The third series is expected to also draw high viewing figures.</p>
<p>Despite its popularity, Emily in Paris is the show we love to hate. We enjoy it in secret, worried people might think badly of us. I have a couple of theories why many feel like they can’t openly express love for it.</p>
<h2>Plus ça change…</h2>
<p>Emily in Paris is a romantic comedy-drama, a genre that has historically been critically <a href="https://mashable.com/article/romantic-comedy-genre-snobbery">dismissed for a lack of seriousness and for primarily catering to female audiences</a>. That’s not been such a problem for the similarly frothy Bridgerton, with which <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/queens-gambit-emily-in-paris-bridgerton-same-netflix-b1787393.html">Emily in Paris has garnered comparisons</a>.</p>
<p>Perhaps Bridgeton eschews the same sort of criticism because it focuses on female empowerment or because it reinvigorates the historical romance through devices such as <a href="https://nylonmanila.com/bridgerton-pure-viewing-pleasure/">colour-blind casting and anachronistic music</a>. Bridgerton avoids tired and familiar tropes, whereas Emily in Paris trades – absolutely, undeniably and no doubt intentionally – in clichés. </p>
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<p>According to the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/dec/17/she-should-listen-to-gainsbourg-bra-less-parisians-respond-to-emily-in-pariss-return">The Guardian’s critic Hannah J Davies</a>: </p>
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<p>The version of Paris seen in the show consisted mostly of tourist highlights (the Eiffel Tower, Café de Flore, Sacré-Coeur), improbably large apartments and suspiciously clean streets … And it was not exactly a considered portrait of the city’s residents, with Parisian characters who leaned heavily into patronising stereotypes. Think rude waiters, lazy, mean-spirited workers and unfaithful men.</p>
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<p>But this is hardly the first time we’ve seen such a [sanitised vision of Paris]. From 1951’s An American in Paris to 2001’s Amélie and beyond, filmmakers on both sides of the Atlantic have traded on Paris’s reputation as <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/French_Film_in_Britain.html?id=1GShzQEACAAJ&redir_esc=y">the City of Light</a> to ramp up the box-office takings. <em>Plus ça change, plus c’est la meme chose</em> – the more things change, the more they stay the same.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/emily-in-paris-season-three-netflix-hit-loses-sight-of-the-real-city-196547">Emily in Paris season three – Netflix hit loses sight of the real city</a>
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<h2>A double bind</h2>
<p>Let me hazard another theory, Emily in Paris has a self-esteem problem. That is, it’s a splashy, spectacular, American show that hates splash, spectacle and most of all, Americans.</p>
<p>Midwestern Emily is sent to Paris after her American company acquires Savoir, a French firm, with a view to easing the transition and imposing American values on the Gallic workplace. It’s little wonder her colleagues are hostile towards the new girl in town. </p>
<p>More surprising, perhaps, is the fact that we’re very clearly meant to side with them, rather than our plucky heroine. Very quickly, the show sets up binary between French sophistication, quality and taste, and American brashness, naivete and pile ‘em high, sell ‘em cheap consumerism. </p>
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<p>While the show has been fairly criticised for its <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/tv-radio/2020/10/how-corporate-girlboss-feminism-ruined-romcoms-emily-in-paris">conspicuous celebration of consumerism</a>, which sits awkwardly with the general mood of the times, it’s not Emily’s overthought outfits we’re meant to aspire to. Rather it’s the effortless Gallic chic of Sylvie, her bed-headed, chain-smoking mentor. </p>
<p>Emily’s French colleagues call her a hick. A celebrated designer refers to her as <em>ringarde</em> – outdated, tacky, a “basic bitch”. That description isn’t entirely unfounded. This is after all a woman who wears a beret and blouse embroidered with Eiffel towers for her first day of work and cheerfully admits to not knowing the language. </p>
<p>At best Emily is something of an embarrassment. At worst she’s the living embodiment of cultural imperialism. To put it simply, throughout the first two seasons, Emily has been the villain of her own series (and that’s without starting on her some of her dubious moral behaviour). </p>
<p>At the end of season two that started to change. Emily’s American boss Madeline (played with glorious crassness by Kate Walsh) takes over the role of the overseas invader and epitome of all things <em>ringarde</em> and Emily is given the ultimate benediction by Sylvie, who tells her “Emily, you’re getting more French by the day”. </p>
<p>In the face of its ongoing demonisation of Americanness, the show finds itself in a double bind. To love Emily in Paris would be to love the very thing the show tells us to hate. So we have to love it despite itself.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/196606/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Catherine Wheatley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It’s riddled with cliches and a dislike of a certain type of “Americaness”.Catherine Wheatley, Lecturer in Film Studies, King's College LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1922702022-10-27T09:34:47Z2022-10-27T09:34:47ZThe French-Algerian war: 60 years on, what is behind France’s reconciliation agenda?<p>If you cross the Seine in the centre of Paris at the iconic <a href="https://www.travelfranceonline.com/pont-saint-michel-paris-bridge-facts/">Pont Saint-Michel</a> and walk along the promenade, you may glimpse a small plaque on your way towards the steps that lead down to the riverbank. Placed not on the actual bridge itself, but on a wall to the side, the plaque was mounted in October 2001 to mark 40 years since Parisian police, led by a Nazi war criminal, massacred hundreds of Algerian demonstrators on October 17 1961.</p>
<p>France and Algeria were gripped in a <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/02/13/france-algerian-war-legacy-politics-colonialism/">bloody war</a> that would eventually lead to <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/11/a-chronology-of-the-algerian-war-of-independence/305277/">Algerian independence</a> in 1962. On October 17, a demonstration organised by the <a href="https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/algeria.htm">Algerian National Liberation Front</a> (Front de libération nationale – FLN) took place in the centre of Paris. The demonstrators were made up of Algerians – men, women, children, the elderly – who were living and working in Paris, mainly on the outskirts of the capital.</p>
<p>Importantly, as the FLN had insisted, this was a peaceful demonstration, protesting against a curfew imposed on Algerians living in Paris. As demonstrators marched in the heart of the French empire’s metropolitan centre, they were met with indiscriminate <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-58927939">violence on the part of the Parisian police</a>.</p>
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<p>Chief of police at the time was <a href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/10/18/papo-o18.html">Maurice Papon</a> who, in 1998, was convicted of complicity with Nazi Germany in crimes against humanity following his role in the deportation of Jews during the second world war. While the Parisian police downplayed the violence meted out to Algerians that night in October 1961, it is generally agreed that between 100 and 300 Algerians <a href="https://webdoc.france24.com/october-17-1961-massacre-algerians-paris-france-police-history/chapter-1.html">were killed</a>.</p>
<p>The commemorative plaque was unveiled in 2001 by mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, but no government official attended the unveiling ceremony. Its inconspicuous location and lack of state presence at its inauguration demonstrates the long period of silence and forgetting in France surrounding the massacre of 17 October 1961 and the Algerian war of Independence (1954-1962) more broadly.</p>
<h2>Agenda for reconciliation</h2>
<p>More recently, French politicians have moved to acknowledge this difficult past. In 2012, then president <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20170405-france-president-francois-hollande-five-years-not-normal-look-back">François Hollande</a> belatedly <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-france-algeria-idUKBRE89G1NE20121017">acknowledged</a> the massacre and paid “homage” to the dead. In 2021, current president <a href="https://www.elysee.fr/en/emmanuel-macron">Emmanuel Macron</a> attended a commemoration ceremony and admitted that “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/18/macron-statement-on-1961-protest-killings-falls-short-say-critics">inexcusable crimes</a>” had been committed by the republic on that date. </p>
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<p>These official recognitions in the past decade reflect the extent to which October 17 and the Algerian war have become a regular and important part of political and public debates around how France comes to terms with its colonial past.</p>
<p>Indeed, Macron has made this – and particularly the Algerian war – a <a href="https://www.institutmontaigne.org/en/analysis/politics-macrons-commemoration-algerian-war">key aspect of his political agenda</a>. So much so that he gave renowned French-Algerian historian <a href="https://benjaminstora.univ-paris13.fr/index.php/biographie/505-biography.html">Benjamin Stora</a> the task of submitting a report on how the war – and France’s colonisation of Algeria – have been remembered.</p>
<p>Underlying the report was the desire for reconciliation between French and Algerians. It <a href="https://www.elysee.fr/admin/upload/default/0001/09/0586b6b0ef1c2fc2540589c6d56a1ae63a65d97c.pdf">was published</a> in January 2021, part of a conciliatory drive which included Macron making an <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/africa/20220826-macron-looks-to-past-and-future-on-algeria-visit-to-turn-a-new-page">official visit to Algeria</a> in August 2022.</p>
<p>But while attention was focused on the memorialisation of colonialism and the war, Macron’s visit was also about <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-62659181">more present and pressing concerns</a>. For example, France may well look to its historical ties with Algeria to draw on its <a href="https://www.trade.gov/country-commercial-guides/algeria-oil-and-gas-hydrocarbons">considerable oil and gas reserves</a> – especially in light of the European energy crisis.</p>
<p>France has other motivations for the recent drive for reconciliation. Algerians have historically constituted one of the country’s largest immigrant populations. As a result, a significant number of French citizens – and therefore the French electorate – have Algerian roots. When Macron commissioned the report and planned his state visit, he would have had one eye on the election in April 2022 (which he won). So his agenda of reconciliation was not necessarily all about coming to terms with France’s complex past, but at least partly motivated by present political concerns.</p>
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<h2>Cultural interpretations</h2>
<p>So, if the state-sponsored approach to remembering the past, imposed from above and seeking easy reconciliation, is insufficient, where do we turn for more nuanced understandings of the complexity of these dark, violent past events? </p>
<p>Literary representations of the war go further back than the relatively recent political debates. A number deal with the events of October 17 in diverse ways. The first prominent text to do so was Didier Daeninckx’s Meurtres pour mémoire (translated into English as <a href="https://www.mhpbooks.com/books/murder-in-memoriam/">Murder in Memoriam</a>, a crime novel originally published in 1984.</p>
<p>The novel mainly deals with that other shameful period in French history, namely the collaboration with Nazi Germany during the second world war. However, the initial chapters of the text comprise a re-imagining of the demonstration and massacre that followed as experienced by a group of young Algerians living in Paris.</p>
<p>Opening the novel in this way, in a text that depicts the extent of French collaboration in the deportation of Jews to extermination camps, also draws attention to other silenced, shameful and more recent, events in French history.</p>
<p>Leïla Sebbar’s La Seine était rouge (<a href="https://iupress.org/9780253220233/the-seine-was-red/">The Seine Was Red</a>), which was published in 1999, places the 1961 massacre at the centre of its narrative. In this short novella, not only is state silence evoked, but also inter-generational silence.</p>
<p>The teenage protagonist, frustrated that her Algerian mother and grandmother have never passed on their memories of October 17 to her, retraces the footsteps of the demonstrators in central Paris. This takes her to important Parisian landmarks which glorify moments in French history. To the side of one such landmark, a commemorative plaque remembering the resistance in the second world war, she spray-paints her own ad hoc commemoration to the Algerians who resisted colonial rule on that October night.</p>
<p>Prefiguring the <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20200624-french-parliament-statue-of-black-code-author-colbert-splashed-with-paint">Black Lives Matter</a> movement, this act invites parallels with the <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20200622-protesters-daub-paris-statues-of-voltaire-french-colonial-era-general-in-red-paint">defacement of statues in 2020 in France</a>, the UK and elsewhere, of historical figures involved in the slave trade and colonial exploitation. The message we are left with in Sebbar’s novel is of the uneasy coexistence of memories of resistance and the difficulty of uncovering silenced histories.</p>
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<p>Austrian director Michael Haneke’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2006/feb/19/worldcinema">2005 thriller Hidden</a> also deals with repressed memories of the massacre, and, like La Seine était rouge, suggests that recovering silenced histories is a necessary, though difficult and traumatic task. On being asked what his opaque mystery was about, Haneke replied: “The real question the film raises is, how do we treat our conscience and our guilt and reconcile ourselves to living with our actions?”</p>
<p>What all of these depictions of October 17 end up telling us is that the path to reconciliation is fraught with intricacy and complexity. A state-sponsored agenda that seeks to impose reconciliation will not change that.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192270/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Lewis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>France’s ‘renewed partnership’ with Algeria may be less about exploring a difficult and painful past and more about pressing political concerns.Jonathan Lewis, Lecturer in French and Francophone Studies, Bangor UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1899402022-09-28T18:10:26Z2022-09-28T18:10:26ZGood coffee, bad coffee: the curious tastes of cultural omnivores<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484146/original/file-20220912-18095-so06fl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C1181%2C6986%2C3116&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">French coffee culture offers us some insights into the way cultural omnivores appreciate different activities and products. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Some people who love classical music <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2014/may/10/why-do-we-feel-the-need-to-apologise-for-mainstream-tastes">also dance to Celine Dion</a>. Others are craft beer aficionados who also enjoy a cold bottle of mass market beer at the beach. Some love independent movies while indulging in the guilty pleasure of blockbuster franchises and “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/05/27/why-do-we-watch-trashy-tv/">trashy</a>” reality TV. </p>
<p>Social scientists call these people “cultural omnivores.” <a href="https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199756384/obo-9780199756384-0134.xml">Research has shown</a> that these omnivores are economically and culturally privileged people who can enjoy both “highbrow” and “lowbrow” cultural products simultaneously. </p>
<p>As consumer researchers, we’ve looked into the phenomenon of cultural omnivores. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucac036">We’ve studied</a> coffee consumption in France for 7 years. That’s helped us understand how people develop their omnivorous tastes. </p>
<h2>Traditional cafés vs. specialty coffee shops</h2>
<p>France has a well-established coffee culture. Paris’ <a href="https://theculturetrip.com/europe/france/paris/articles/how-the-modern-cafe-was-born-in-seventeenth-century-paris/">first cafés opened in the 17th century</a>. Today, cafés are <a href="https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=737">sociable places that welcome people from various social classes</a>. When customers ask for a coffee (usually the cheapest drink on the menu), the waiters bring them a bitter espresso that many would <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2014/01/coffee-in-france-is-terrible-why-cant-the-french-brew-a-good-cup-of-coffee.html">call bad</a>. But despite the coffee’s quality, cafés still remain as important cultural institutions.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484149/original/file-20220912-6373-x84t5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="People sitting on chairs outside a café." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484149/original/file-20220912-6373-x84t5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484149/original/file-20220912-6373-x84t5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484149/original/file-20220912-6373-x84t5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484149/original/file-20220912-6373-x84t5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484149/original/file-20220912-6373-x84t5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484149/original/file-20220912-6373-x84t5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484149/original/file-20220912-6373-x84t5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Cultural omnivores are economically and culturally privileged people who are able to enjoy both highbrow and lowbrow activities simultaneously.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
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<p>Over the last decade, many specialty coffee shops have <a href="https://www.euronews.com/green/2018/05/17/specialty-coffee-is-taking-paris-by-storm">opened in France</a>. Unlike the traditional cafés, these coffee shops use <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2009/04/for-good-espresso-insist-on-arabica/12972/">higher quality coffee beans,</a> roasted by artisans and brewed by trained baristas. The coffee comes in numerous variations and <a href="https://projectbarista.com/coffee-tasting-notes/">complex notes</a>. It is often also twice as expensive as coffee from traditional cafés. </p>
<p>French consumers who were once satisfied with the taste of café coffee first found specialty coffee unfamiliar. But once they gave it a chance, they understood why it tasted better. Still, surprisingly, they continued to go to traditional cafés. To understand why, we first need to look at the <a href="https://www.econstor.eu/handle/10419/156021">“market work”</a> of baristas and the efforts they make to attract consumers to a new market. </p>
<h2>Rise of the skilled barista</h2>
<p>Specialty coffee professionals establish specific criteria about <a href="https://sca.coffee/research/protocols-best-practices">what good coffee is and how to make it</a>. These include the balance of flavours, aromatic complexity, precision and skill of creating of a cup of coffee. They also include service interactions like the friendliness of the barista and their ability to give clear information about the beans to customers. These features of specialty coffee are reinforced by organizations like the <a href="https://sca.coffee/">Specialty Coffee Association</a> and events like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgAZe2hLd1s">barista championships</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/dude-food-vs-superfood-were-cultural-omnivores-53978">Dude food vs superfood: we're cultural omnivores</a>
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<p>Secondly, specialty coffee shops create opportunities to attract customers into their establishment and make them come back. To do this, they play on their curiosity. They might design their space in a unique way or regularly change the <a href="https://perfectdailygrind.com/2018/03/what-is-terroir-and-how-does-it-affect-your-coffee/">coffee beans on offer</a>.</p>
<p>Thirdly, specialty coffee shops educate consumers about the formal qualities of coffee and encourage them to see coffee as more than just a caffeine fix or an opportunity to socialize. To achieve this goal, baristas might present the geographical origin of each coffee, describe its main flavors and explain the <a href="https://theconversation.com/plunger-espresso-filter-just-because-your-coffee-is-bitter-doesnt-mean-its-stronger-188905">difference between brewing methods</a>.</p>
<p>Little by little, consumers come to appreciate coffee like they would a good wine or work of art. They detect the flavors, observe the technical skills of the barista and listen to the information about the origins of beans.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Inside the World of High-End Coffee | Annals of Obsession | The New Yorker.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Cultural omnivores not always snobs</h2>
<p>You’d expect that after all this marketing, those who frequent specialty coffee shops would turn their noses up at the coffee sold at traditional cafés. Interestingly, they do not. Cultural omnivores know that “lowbrow” coffee may not be prepared as well or taste as good. However, the taste is not the primary draw for consumers. </p>
<p>For them, the traditional café is still a space to enjoy the culture that surrounds it. A space to get a shot of energy and spend time with friends, colleagues and family. Although omnivores can have a lot of enthusiasm for “highbrow” coffee, they keep appreciating the energizing and socializing experience of “lowbrow” coffee. </p>
<p>Of course, that duality goes beyond coffee. Think about cinema, for example. Omnivores might watch independent films and appreciate their originality and complexity. But they also watch action-filled blockbusters as a way to clear their head after a long day at work.
When it comes to wine, they might drink an expensive wine for its body and structure. But they might also drink a cheap rosé in summer. They might even add an ice cube to it, despite <a href="https://www.decanter.com/learn/advice/put-ice-cubes-in-wine-318618/">protest from a sommelier</a>.</p>
<p>Omnivores appreciate highbrow activities as aesthetic forms and lowbrow activities as a way to have fun, socialize and to relax. Switching between different modes of appreciation allows them to form more democratic relationships with different cultural forms and maintain social connections with different social classes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189940/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Zeynep Arsel receives funding from Concordia University and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anissa Pomiès does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Cultural omnivores are economically and culturally privileged people who can enjoy both “highbrow” and “lowbrow” cultural products, like good and bad coffee, simultaneously.Anissa Pomiès, Professeur Assistant de Marketing, EM Lyon Business SchoolZeynep Arsel, Concordia University Chair in Consumption, Markets, and Society, Concordia UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1688782021-10-05T11:57:04Z2021-10-05T11:57:04ZPas de souci! The French war on saying ‘no worries’<p>The quirks of the French language are an eternal puzzle for many foreign learners. But what students often don’t know is that they are also the matter of heated debates and controversies within France itself.</p>
<p>The evolution of the language and the variety of linguistic practices throughout society in France are commented upon with passion <a href="https://www.lefigaro.fr/langue-francaise">in the press</a>, and governed by the famous Académie Française – the semi-official authority on the French language whose members, known as “immortals”, issue decrees on how it should be used.</p>
<p>Among the phenomena to which <a href="https://www.lefigaro.fr/langue-francaise/expressions-francaises/2016/10/10/37003-20161010ARTFIG00006-les-expressions-a-bannir-au-bureau-pas-de-souci.php">purists</a> take much exception, probably none is more contentious than the now highly frequent use of <a href="https://www.liberation.fr/culture/2012/08/21/y-a-pas-de-souci_841003/">“pas de souci!”</a>, an expression mirroring the English “no problem!” or “no worries!”</p>
<p>The noun <a href="https://www.wordreference.com/fren/souci"><em>souci</em></a> normally means worry, care or concern, but “pas de souci!” can be used in all sorts of contexts, including as an equivalent of English “all right” or even “you’re welcome”, to signify that the speaker has taken note of the other’s statement or expressed intention.</p>
<p>For instance, if I am sitting in a café and order a coffee, the waiter may answer “pas de souci!” to acknowledge my order. There is of course no concern or no worry at stake here.</p>
<h2>The case against “pas de souci!”</h2>
<p>Some, <a href="https://www.academie-francaise.fr/pas-de-souci">including the Académie Française</a>, say this expression is a mistake; the immortals have ruled that it is a phrase heard “too often”, when the speaker could instead simply say “oui”.</p>
<p>Others say that “pas de souci!” is <a href="https://twitter.com/RaveaudGilles/status/1404349636207419393">rude</a>. In a sketch, stand-up comedian <a href="https://static.blog4ever.com/2017/04/828127/artvideo_828127_7913840_201810145223824.mp4">Blanche Gardin</a> said the phrase was symptom of a “parano-megalomaniac” disposition. For Gardin and others, “pas de souci!” is a self-centred display of excessive vulnerability, or alternatively a misplaced demonstration of one’s own <a href="https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/carnet-de-philo/carnet-de-philo-du-mercredi-12-mai-2021">magnanimity</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/424548/original/file-20211004-25-1nbhasc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The Académie Française at night" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/424548/original/file-20211004-25-1nbhasc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/424548/original/file-20211004-25-1nbhasc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424548/original/file-20211004-25-1nbhasc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424548/original/file-20211004-25-1nbhasc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424548/original/file-20211004-25-1nbhasc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424548/original/file-20211004-25-1nbhasc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424548/original/file-20211004-25-1nbhasc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The Académie Française has a souci with ‘pas de souci’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/drs1ump/8172486036">drs1ump</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
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<p>The claim is the following: by saying “pas de souci!”, or “no worries!”, I am supposedly implying that the other person’s statement might indeed have raised a grave concern or worry, in which case I would have demanded that they withdraw their request.</p>
<p>Some raise a second objection to the use of this expression: its similarity to the English “no worries!” and, above all, “no problem!”. This was the most frequent remark I received after the <a href="https://theconversation.com/pas-de-souci-retour-sur-une-expression-mal-aimee-164361">French-language version of this article</a> was published on The Conversation. “Pas de souci!” is suspected of being a loan translation, a disguised borrowing from English, which, at least for some, is a problem (or… a worry?).</p>
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<p><em><strong>Lire cet article en français:</strong> <a href="https://theconversation.com/pas-de-souci-retour-sur-une-expression-mal-aimee-164361">“Pas de souci”: retour sur une expression mal-aimée</a></em></p>
<hr>
<h2>Taking care without worrying</h2>
<p>But we need not fear “pas de souci”. These days, it is false to say that in French, “souci” stands for “worry” or “concern”.</p>
<p>For instance, “dans un souci de quelque chose” means “for something’s sake” or “in the interest of something”. When we say, “On a un souci”, we mean that something stands in our way, but not necessarily something to worry about. “Le souci de soi” means self-attention or self-care.</p>
<p>In other words, the original meaning of “souci” has morphed into something else. Currently, it is used to point our attention toward the future, anticipating plausible impediments for our plans.</p>
<p>Just like for “no problem!” or “no worries!”, there is no real trace of first-person (<em>je</em>) or second-person (<em>tu</em>) in “pas de souci!” There is nothing egocentric or personal here: what is addressed is the general absence of obstacles.</p>
<p>“Pas de souci!” and “no problem!” also serve an important linguistic function. These types of phrases are known as <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Istvan-Kecskes-2/publication/222838917_Situation-bound_utterances_as_pragmatic_acts/links/5a05bea9aca27233aade6308/Situation-bound-utterances-as-pragmatic-acts.pdf">“situation-bound utterances”</a>. This means that these are not phrases we freely construct ourselves: their form and their meaning have become conventionalised in their entirety.</p>
<p>“Pas de souci!” and “no problem!” are part of what linguists call <a href="https://www.gabrielediewald.de/fileadmin/_gd/downloads/Diewald_Pragmaticalization_LING.2011.pdf">“pragmaticalization”</a>, where certain individual phrases become specialised for certain conversational uses. “Tell me about it!” or “So what?” are both good examples of this.</p>
<p>With this in mind, the question becomes: what is the specific conversational use fulfilled when we say “pas de souci”?</p>
<h2>Saving face</h2>
<p>“Pas de souci!” is an example of what the American sociologist Erving Goffman called <a href="https://web.stanford.edu/%7Eeckert/PDF/GoffmanFace1967.pdf">“facework”</a>. The aim of facework is that each speaker can “save face” throughout the conversation: everybody has to take care of their own face, but also has to preserve the face of the addressee.</p>
<p>“Face” here stands for the symbolic territory claimed by each participant, starting with the image of themselves that they wish to convey. Thus, facework is a matter of both competition and cooperation. It relies on the anticipation and elimination of any kind of micro-aggression, disappointment or wound that may arise from a mismatch in the shared space of conversation.</p>
<p>In this sense, “pas de souci!” and “no problem!” are very useful, precisely because they do not contain any personal references. By leaving aside any difference between me and you, and by not stating who may endure a concern of any kind, these expressions make an interaction smoother and show that the speaker is taking care of everybody.</p>
<p>Another French expression in the same vein as “pas de souci!” is “t’inquiète”, or “don’t worry”, where the second person is referred to by the “t’”. This can easily give the expression a paternalistic flavour (“I’m taking care of that for <em>you</em>”), whereas the impersonal “pas de souci”, means that I don’t judge it relevant to distinguish between me and you in the situation.</p>
<h2>The trouble with purism</h2>
<p>We have to dismiss the claim that “pas de souci!” is a mistake, a manifestation of egocentric attitudes or the result of the covert influence of English.</p>
<p>The reference to English in particular is a strawman and has probably much to do with a more general attitude toward language change in France: the opposition to language change at the micro-level – the evolution in the meaning of individual words or phrases – is framed as opposition to language change at the macro-level – the refusal to let “the French language” turn into something different.</p>
<p>It is true that macro-level language change often happens via the <a href="https://www.routledge.com/On-Language-Change-The-Invisible-Hand-in-Language/Keller/p/book/9780415076722">accumulation of smaller changes</a>. But in opposing “pas de souci!” the superficial dismissal of a small evolution in meaning is used to stigmatise individual speakers who use the disparaged expression as unfaithful to the rules of language, but also as rude, egocentric and socially unaware of the others.</p>
<p>What makes “pas de souci!” so interesting is the fact that a detailed analysis shows the exact contrary to be true. In fact, everybody who cares about meaning in everyday speech should also care about facework both as a concept for the analysis of speakers’ behaviour and as a rule for our own practices when we discuss language use.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/168878/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Pierre-Yves Modicom a reçu des financements de Ministère français de l'Enseignement Supérieur, de la Recherche et de l'Innovation. </span></em></p>It’s one of the most common expressions used in French but also one of the most controversial. A linguist explains why “pas de souci” is no mere English import.Pierre-Yves Modicom, Maître de conférences en études germaniques, Université Bordeaux MontaigneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1655072021-08-25T19:17:46Z2021-08-25T19:17:46ZRevolutionary broth: the birth of the restaurant and the invention of French gastronomy<p>From the rise of click and collect to the advent of <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47978759">dark kitchens</a>, the very concept of the restaurant is undergoing major changes. Even before the pandemic hit, consumers were moving away from the physical location of the restaurant, a transformation which has only been accelerated by coronavirus. These new ways of eating question the very identity of the restaurant itself, and invite us to investigate its origins.</p>
<p>The history of the restaurant is entwined with the history of France, its birthplace.</p>
<p>The word <em>restaurant</em> as we understand it today was accepted by the Academie Française – the body that governs the official use of the French language – in 1835. Until then, the “restauran”, also called “bouillon restaurateur” (restorative broth), was a dish composed of meat, onions, herbs and vegetables. A broth with medicinal and digestive properties, its aim was to give restore people’s strength.</p>
<p>The term <em>restaurant</em> therefore initially had a medical connotation and the places that offered this healing broth for sale in 1760s were also called “health houses”.</p>
<h2>The first restaurant</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://com546termproject.wordpress.com/the-past-19th-20th-centuries/the-origins-of-the-restaurant/">first restaurant</a> as we know it today opened in Paris in 1765 on the Rue des Poulies, today the Rue du Louvre. On the front of the shop is engraved the Latin phrase from the Bible:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Venite ad me omnes qui stomacho laboratis, et ego vos restaurabo.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This translates as, “Come to me, those whose stomachs ache, and I will restore you.”</p>
<p>The owner’s name was Mathurin Roze de Chantoiseau. Other writings mentioned a certain Mr Boulanger. The establishment sold “restauran” dishes such as poultry, eggs, buttered pasta and semolina cakes, whose light colour was said to have health benefits. It first enjoyed culinary success thanks to its signature dish of poultry with chicken sauce, which was renowned throughout Paris.</p>
<p>The philosopher Denis Diderot mentions the restaurant as early as 1767 in a letter to his correspondent and lover, Sophie Volland:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“If I have acquired a taste for the restorer? Really yes; an infinite taste. The service is good, a little expensive, but at the time you want… It is wonderful, and it seems to me that everyone praises it.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The writer Édouard Fournier also describes it in his book <em>Paris démoli: Mosäique de Ruines</em> (Paris Demolished: Mosaic of Ruins), published in 1853:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Nearby, in the Rue des Poulies, the first Restaurant opened in 1765, which was later transferred to the Hôtel d’Aligre. It was a broth establishment, where it was not allowed to serve stew, as in the catering trade, but where poultry with coarse salt and fresh eggs were served without tablecloths, on small marble tables.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Roze de Chantoiseau is said to be the first to propose the innovative concept of serving food without a fixed schedule, at an individual table and offering a choice of dishes, the price of which was indicated in advance, on the outside of the building.</p>
<p>At that time, in pre-Revolutionary France, the only place to eat outside the home was in a tavern or inn. But these places only offered <em>tables d’hôtes</em> (guest tables) with a single dish, at a price that was not fixed in advance, where people only came at a fixed time. The quality was not always good – people who went to these places did so to eat and not to enjoy the taste of a dish. Roasters and caterers who were also present at the time could only sell whole pieces and not individual portions.</p>
<p>This new way of eating was a great success, and <a href="https://www.frenchrights.com/the-birth-of-french-gastronomy">this style of restaurant spread and evolved</a>. The notion of the pleasure of eating became predominant, gastronomy developed and, to a certain extent, became more democratic. Before then, the only people who ate very well in France were the members of the court at Versailles and other nobles who had own personal cooks.</p>
<h2>The birth of the menu</h2>
<p>On the eve of the French Revolution, many of the hundred or so restaurants in the capital were very well known. Customers came to these places to sample dishes that pleased their taste buds, not simply sate their hunger.</p>
<p>The restaurant of the time was a luxurious place that could be found mainly in the Palais Royal district of Paris. Here lived an affluent, elite clientele capable of affording meals, which, although no longer reserved for aristocrats, were no less expensive for it.</p>
<p>The great novelty of the time was the introduction of the menu. Restaurants often offered a huge selection of dishes, so as historian Rebecca Spang notes, diners were usually invited to choose a from a smaller selection of these, displayed on a menu (derived from the latin “minutus”).</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414293/original/file-20210803-15-13orsul.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414293/original/file-20210803-15-13orsul.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414293/original/file-20210803-15-13orsul.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414293/original/file-20210803-15-13orsul.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414293/original/file-20210803-15-13orsul.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414293/original/file-20210803-15-13orsul.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414293/original/file-20210803-15-13orsul.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414293/original/file-20210803-15-13orsul.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Extract from the menu at Véry, 1790.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bibliotheque de la Ville de Paris</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Antoine de Beauvilliers, a former officer of the kitchen of the Count of Provence, brother of the King, was the first private cook to leave his master and set up his own restaurant business in Paris. In 1782, he opened Le Beauvilliers in the Palais-Royal district on Rue de Richelieu.</p>
<p>This very luxurious place quickly became a huge success because it offered its customers – mainly aristocrats – the chance to eat as if they were in Versailles. The setting was magnificent, the service impeccable, the wine cellar superb and the dishes exquisite and carefully presented on magnificent crockery. For many years, its cuisine was unrivalled in Parisian high society. Le Beauvilliers is thus considered the first French gastronomic restaurant.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414295/original/file-20210803-23-p62s8t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The art of cooking, by Antoine Beauvilliers" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414295/original/file-20210803-23-p62s8t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414295/original/file-20210803-23-p62s8t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1014&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414295/original/file-20210803-23-p62s8t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1014&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414295/original/file-20210803-23-p62s8t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1014&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414295/original/file-20210803-23-p62s8t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1274&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414295/original/file-20210803-23-p62s8t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1274&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414295/original/file-20210803-23-p62s8t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1274&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The art of cooking, by Antoine Beauvilliers.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the years before and after the French Revolution, many cooks who had previously worked for members of the nobility followed de Beauvilliers’ example and opened their own restaurants. Quality cuisine based on recipes, rituals and new ways of eating moved from the private kitchens of the aristocracy to the public kitchens of high society.</p>
<p>French gastronomic restaurants emerged and famous and luxurious brands such as Véry, Les Trois-Frères Provençaux (which imported brandade de morue and bouillabaisse to Paris from the south) or the restaurant <a href="https://www.grand-vefour.com/en">Le Grand Véfour</a>, which is still in service, were created.</p>
<p>The medical aspect of the first “bouillons restaurans” was now long gone and had been replaced by gastronomy, a cultural reference recognised worldwide to this day.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165507/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nathalie Louisgrand ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>The first restaurants in Paris were based on the medicinal powers of soup, but these establishments soon transformed into the temples to gastronomy we know today.Nathalie Louisgrand, Enseignante-chercheuse, Grenoble École de Management (GEM)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1578622021-05-10T19:50:39Z2021-05-10T19:50:39ZIf I could go anywhere: searching for music in the places where Chopin lived and died<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399383/original/file-20210507-19-1aik5i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C3%2C1227%2C840&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Chopin's grave, Paris. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Chopins_Grave_October_1978.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/if-i-could-go-anywhere-102157">this series</a> we pay tribute to the art we wish could visit — and hope to see once travel restrictions are lifted.</em></p>
<p>The appreciation of art is enriched through experience, and there is perhaps no greater experience than travel. But while landmark destinations, such as Carnegie Hall or Glyndebourne, are wonderful to visit, it can be paradoxical to travel for music. </p>
<p>Music is less tangible than other art-forms — like architecture or painting — and is often hard to pin down. Where exactly “is” music? Can it be embodied within one place? If one searches for it, where exactly does one end up? </p>
<p>As a classical pianist, I’ve been searching for Polish composer and piano virtuoso <a href="https://www.classicfm.com/composers/chopin/">Frédéric Chopin</a> since my early teens. </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/performing-beethoven-what-it-feels-like-to-embody-a-master-on-todays-stage-129184">Performing Beethoven - what it feels like to embody a master on today's stage</a>
</strong>
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<h2>Delacroix’s portrait of Chopin</h2>
<p>The journey began after inheriting a dog-eared volume of piano pieces which featured <a href="http://www.eugenedelacroix.net/frederic-chopin/">Eugène Delacroix</a>’s well-known portrait of the composer on the cover. I later learned that the painting hung on the walls of the <a href="https://www.louvre.fr/en">Musée de Louvre</a>, so when I first visited Paris I searched for it.</p>
<p>Chopin had arrived in Paris after leaving Poland in 1830. A fierce nationalist, the failure of the November Uprising against Russian occupation meant he was unable to return. Subsequently, he made Paris his home, dying there at the tragically young age of 39. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399392/original/file-20210507-21-1axor34.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Painting of man's face" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399392/original/file-20210507-21-1axor34.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399392/original/file-20210507-21-1axor34.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399392/original/file-20210507-21-1axor34.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399392/original/file-20210507-21-1axor34.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399392/original/file-20210507-21-1axor34.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1008&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399392/original/file-20210507-21-1axor34.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1008&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399392/original/file-20210507-21-1axor34.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1008&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A section of Eugène Delacroix’s 1838 portrait of Chopin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eug%C3%A8ne_Ferdinand_Victor_Delacroix_043.jpg">Wikimedia Commons/Louvre</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Today, it is a challenge to see Paris as he would have known it. Some of the half-dozen homes where he lived no longer exist. This is also true of the original <a href="https://www.sallepleyel.com/tag/la-salle-pleyel_t5/1">Salle Pleyel</a>, where Chopin gave rare public performances. While the grand boulevards seem quintessentially Parisian, the construction of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/mar/31/story-cities-12-paris-baron-haussmann-france-urban-planner-napoleon">Georges-Eugène Haussmann</a>’s elegant urban design post-dates the composer’s death.</p>
<p>Yet, in Chopin’s day the Louvre was already established as a museum. When I visited, I fairly much ignored the great masterpieces by Titian, Caravaggio, Vermeer, and da Vinci. At last, I found the room in which the Delacroix portrait was hung. But I was, sadly, disappointed: it had been removed for repair. My search would continue. </p>
<h2>Winter in Majorca</h2>
<p>Delacroix’s portrait has another story to tell. It is cut from a larger, unfinished canvas, which depicted Chopin with George Sand (the pen name of Aurore Dupin), a novelist as famed for her literary works as for wearing men’s clothing and smoking cigars. For eight years Chopin and Sand were romantically linked, yet their relationship ended acrimoniously. (Perhaps fittingly, Sand’s portion of the painting now <a href="https://ordrupgaard.dk/en/portfolio_page/delacroix-george-sand-2/">hangs in Copenhagen</a>.)</p>
<p>From Sand’s autobiographical <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2411990.Winter_in_Majorca">Winter in Majorca</a>, we have a chronicle of their four-month stay on the island of Majorca in Spain, among many valuable glimpses of the composer at the beginning of their romance. The trip to warmer climes was for Chopin’s “delicate” health, yet an unseasonably cold and wet winter likely exacerbated the tuberculosis that later killed him. </p>
<p>At first, the setting was idyllic, with Chopin writing joyfully <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=mdzCAgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA185&ots=rkV4EGZL9s&dq=Chopin%20%20%E2%80%98palms%2C%20cedars%2C%20cacti%2C%20olives%2C%20and%20pomegranates.%E2%80%99&pg=PA185#v=onepage&q=Chopin%20%20%E2%80%98palms,%20cedars,%20cacti,%20olives,%20and%20pomegranates.%E2%80%99&f=false">in letters home</a> about the “palms, cedars, cacti, olives, and pomegranates”. Yet the unmarried couple grew frustrated with the religious conservatism of locals and, when the composer’s ill health was assumed to be contagious, they retreated to the <a href="https://www.cartoixadevalldemossa.com/en/">Carthusian Monastery at Valldemosa</a>.</p>
<p>The imposing stone building is today about 25 minutes’ drive from Palma, yet in Chopin’s time the journey north through mountainous terrain was taken perilously by carriage. He described his room there as being like a cell “in the shape of a tall coffin”. According to Sand, he also believed it was haunted. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399404/original/file-20210507-15-1bvjco0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="bust in lush garden" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399404/original/file-20210507-15-1bvjco0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399404/original/file-20210507-15-1bvjco0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399404/original/file-20210507-15-1bvjco0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399404/original/file-20210507-15-1bvjco0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399404/original/file-20210507-15-1bvjco0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399404/original/file-20210507-15-1bvjco0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399404/original/file-20210507-15-1bvjco0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chopin’s bust in the grounds of Valldemossa’s monastery, Spain.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/valldemossa-mallorca-spain-july-2015-statue-1523678429">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-original-love-island-how-george-sand-and-fryderyk-chopin-put-mallorca-on-the-romance-map-121148">The original Love Island: how George Sand and Fryderyk Chopin put Mallorca on the romance map</a>
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</p>
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<p>Yet some of his most inspired pieces appear to have been created there, like the so-called “raindrop” <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVau-JRGirg">prelude</a>. Sand recounted returning to the monastery late at night, finding Chopin “pale, at the piano, wild-eyed, his hair standing almost straight up”. He imagined that he had been drowned in a lake, with the repetitive notes of the piece representing “heavy and icy raindrops” falling on his chest. </p>
<p>My own journey resumed when I had the opportunity to visit Majorca in my late 20s. I enjoyed better weather, with winter sunshine bringing warmth and colour. Chopin’s room itself is now a museum, and in a corner stands the fine Pleyel piano which arrived, with cruel timing, only shortly before he left.</p>
<p>Off his room is a long terrace which overlooks a deep valley. While imagining Chopin enjoying the view, I watched as a bank of dense mist rolled incongruously up the slope. A minute later it had enclosed me, and the place was grey and silent. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-gDinVAmtA0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘He passed away with his gaze fixed on me,’ remembered Chopin’s daughter Solange.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Final resting place</h2>
<p>The relationship between Chopin and Sand dissolved after an argument over her daughter, Solange. While the couple would never again speak, Solange remained loyal until his death in 1849. Years later she recounted his <a href="https://journal.chestnet.org/article/S0012-3692(16)39573-3/fulltext">final moments</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We wanted to give him a drink, but death prevented us. He passed away with his gaze fixed on me […] I could see the tarnishing in his eyes in the darkness. Oh, the soul had died too!</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399406/original/file-20210507-13-1ot0s27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="cemetary" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399406/original/file-20210507-13-1ot0s27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399406/original/file-20210507-13-1ot0s27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399406/original/file-20210507-13-1ot0s27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399406/original/file-20210507-13-1ot0s27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399406/original/file-20210507-13-1ot0s27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399406/original/file-20210507-13-1ot0s27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399406/original/file-20210507-13-1ot0s27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pere Lachaise in Paris, reportedly the world’s most visited cemetery.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/paris-france-december-22-2014-view-319007234">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Appropriately, my search for Chopin concludes with a visit to the cemetery of <a href="https://en.parisinfo.com/paris-museum-monument/71470/Cimetiere-du-Pere-Lachaise">Père Lachaise</a>, where artist Delacroix had been among the composer’s pallbearers. After looking at the graves of Rossini, Oscar Wilde, and Jim Morrison, my companions and I looked for the final resting place of Chopin.</p>
<p>We walked in silence, but on finding the place — marked by a statue of the muse <a href="https://www.theoi.com/Ouranios/MousaEuterpe.html#:%7E:text=EUTERPE%20was%20one%20of%20the,attribute%20was%20the%20double%2Dflute.">Euterpe</a> weeping over a broken lyre — I asked what they’d thought of the piano music that had played in the distance. I thought that it seemed like a composition by Chopin, but couldn’t place it. </p>
<p>Yet they hadn’t heard a thing, and to this day I can’t account for the strange occurrence. In such a place, perhaps the mind plays tricks.</p>
<p>Audiences expect performers to do more than play the notes; they expect insight and personal conviction. For me, tracing Chopin’s footsteps has contributed to that conviction and, certainly, these experiences have enriched his music to me. </p>
<p>But, as with all travel, the urge continues. And if I could go anywhere now, I’d keep on searching. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/four-indigenous-composers-and-a-piano-from-colonial-times-making-passionate-layered-honest-music-together-152080">Four Indigenous composers and a piano from colonial times — making passionate, layered, honest music together</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/157862/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Scott Davie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As a concert pianist, Scott Davie has been searching for the spirit of Chopin since his teens. It’s taken him to Paris and Majorca and channeled tantalising notes through time.Scott Davie, Lecturer in Piano, School of Music, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1566292021-04-07T12:27:48Z2021-04-07T12:27:48ZNetflix’s big bet on foreign content and international viewers could upend the global mediascape – and change how people see the world<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393669/original/file-20210406-15-13jt0pi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C130%2C2820%2C1849&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">TV and movies are one way we understand people and places we've never had direct contact with – and maybe never will.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/lonely-kid-watching-tv-in-a-dark-room-education-royalty-free-image/1271102479?adppopup=true">iStock / Getty Images Plus</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As a kid growing up in Italy, I remember watching the American TV series “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070992/">Happy Days</a>,” which chronicled the 1950s-era Midwestern adventures of the Fonz, Richie Cunningham and other local teenagers. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393258/original/file-20210402-21-1v4xype.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Poster featuring the cast of 'Happy Days'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393258/original/file-20210402-21-1v4xype.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393258/original/file-20210402-21-1v4xype.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=882&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393258/original/file-20210402-21-1v4xype.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=882&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393258/original/file-20210402-21-1v4xype.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=882&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393258/original/file-20210402-21-1v4xype.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1109&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393258/original/file-20210402-21-1v4xype.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1109&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393258/original/file-20210402-21-1v4xype.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1109&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Happy Days’ ran on ABC from 1974 to 1984.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMzEzOGJhZGEtODA0Zi00NTZiLTkwYjgtNmVmZjk4MjBjNjdiXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNzY5MTE3OTQ@._V1_.jpg">IMDB</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The show, combined with other American entertainment widely available in Italy in the 1970s and 1980s, shaped my perception of the United States long before I ever set foot in the country. Today, I call the U.S. home, and I have developed my own understanding of its complexities. I am able to see “Happy Days” as a <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/book/16097">nostalgic revival of an ideal, conflict-free American small town</a>.</p>
<p>“Happy Days” was a product of Hollywood, which is arguably still the epicenter of the global entertainment industry. So recent news that the streaming service <a href="https://variety.com/2021/digital/news/netflix-italy-office-2021-originals-1234903855/">Netflix is opening an Italian office</a> and will begin massively funding original local content with the intent of distributing it <a href="https://jobs.netflix.com/location?slug=rome-italy">globally on its platform</a> – following a strategy already launched in other European countries – struck me. </p>
<p>This could be a potentially game-changing move in global entertainment. And it might even change how the world perceives, well, the world.</p>
<h2>Learning by watching</h2>
<p>I have explored the <a href="https://annenberg.usc.edu/faculty/paolo-sigismondi">global media landscape</a> from the privileged vantage point of Los Angeles for the past 15 years.</p>
<p>TV and movies are one way that people, as we go through life, make sense of the world, building on the <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2002-00742-003">archive of our personal experiences and opinions of other places</a>.</p>
<p>Absent direct experience with a people or nation, we speculate on what we do not know. This process involves a variety of sources, including reading, Googling and accounts from somebody we trust. But often it is media that exposes people to other cultures, above and beyond our own. </p>
<p>TV and movies fill the knowledge gaps with powerful images and stories that inform the way we think about different cultures. If the media’s messages have consistency over time, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12128">we may come to understand these as facts</a>. </p>
<p>But media portrayals may well be inaccurate. Certainly, they are incomplete. That’s because movies and TV series aren’t necessarily meant to depict reality; they are designed for entertainment. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393260/original/file-20210402-23-nofjgt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Angelina Jolie in a boat in a Venice canal, surrounded by crew members" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393260/original/file-20210402-23-nofjgt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393260/original/file-20210402-23-nofjgt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393260/original/file-20210402-23-nofjgt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393260/original/file-20210402-23-nofjgt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393260/original/file-20210402-23-nofjgt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393260/original/file-20210402-23-nofjgt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393260/original/file-20210402-23-nofjgt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Actor Angelina Jolie filming ‘The Tourist’ in Venice, Italy, in 2010.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/actress-angelina-jolie-is-seen-on-location-at-the-arsenale-news-photo/97870212?adppopup=true">Barbara Zanon/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As a result, they can be misleading, if not biased, based on and perpetuating stereotypes. </p>
<p>For example, there is no shortage of <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/what-is-the-godfather-effect-83473971/">Italian and Italian American stereotypes in American entertainment</a>. From the award-winning “Godfather” saga to the less critically acclaimed “Jersey Shore” TV series, Italians are often depicted as tasteless, uneducated, linked to organized crime – or all three.</p>
<h2>Media is a window to the world</h2>
<p>But the way people are exposed to <a href="https://www.routledge.com/World-Entertainment-Media-Global-Regional-and-Local-Perspectives/Sigismondi/p/book/9781138094024">media entertainment</a> is changing. Today streaming platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+ and Disney+ collectively have <a href="https://www.rapidtvnews.com/2020061258639/tv-streaming-accounts-to-break-billion-barrier-in-2020.html?utm_campaign=tv-streaming-accounts-to-break-billion-barrier-in-2020&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter_2443#axzz6PAJp7Ich">1 billion subscribers globally</a>.</p>
<p>Being a relative newcomer in producing original content, Netflix cannot rely on a large library of proprietary content to feed its <a href="https://ir.netflix.net/investor-news-and-events/financial-releases/press-release-details/2021/Netflix-to-Announce-First-Quarter-2021-Financial-Results/default.aspx">204 million paid members in over 190 countries</a>, as legacy Hollywood players can. So it is increasingly creating original productions, including a number of <a href="https://ir.netflix.net/ir-overview/long-term-view/default.aspx">non-English language originals</a> from places such as Mexico, France, Italy, Japan and Brazil.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393257/original/file-20210402-13-1iwupqz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Screenshot of Netflix homepage" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393257/original/file-20210402-13-1iwupqz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393257/original/file-20210402-13-1iwupqz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393257/original/file-20210402-13-1iwupqz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393257/original/file-20210402-13-1iwupqz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393257/original/file-20210402-13-1iwupqz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393257/original/file-20210402-13-1iwupqz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393257/original/file-20210402-13-1iwupqz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A snippet of Netflix’s international lineup on April 2, 2021.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.Netflix.com">Screenshot, Netflix.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We might call this an example of “<a href="https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9781461409076">glocalization of entertainment</a>” – a company operating globally, adapting its content to meet the expectations of locally situated audiences across the world. </p>
<p>This is already the modus operandi, for example, of <a href="https://mediarep.org/bitstream/handle/doc/3302/NECSUS_3_1_2014_319-325_Kooijman_Globalisation_television_formats.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">many popular reality TV shows</a>. “American Idol” is an American adaptation of Europe’s “Pop Idol.” “The X Factor,” “Big Brother” and “Dancing with the Stars” have similarly international origins.</p>
<p>Now, however, glocalization comes with a twist: Netflix intends to distribute its localized content internationally, beyond the local markets.</p>
<p>It is not the global reach of Netflix’s platform per se that would break down old stereotypes. French critics panned the American-produced, internationally distributed Netlix series “<a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/embarrassing-netflixs-emily-in-paris-blasted-by-french-critics">Emily in Paris</a>” for its cliched, romanticized portrayal of the city.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/p4Okq1Wdpg0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Emily in Paris’ was an American take on Paris, and French critics hated it.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Foreign TV executives must create shows for Netflix that both appeal to local audiences and have international potential, while remaining authentic in their portrayal of their country. If Netflix’s Italian team thinks “The Godfather” is what international audiences expect from Italy, international audiences may tune in – but Italians won’t. </p>
<p>To become truly international, Netflix would also have to foster the development of original local ideas not only in European countries with well-developed cultural industries but also in smaller countries and those with emerging entertainment industries, <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/netflix-will-first-african-series-launch-a-new-chapter-in-african-filmmaking/a-52528867">such as African nations</a>.</p>
<h2>Netflix’s opportunity – and challenge</h2>
<p>A side effect of this strategy could be that Netflix upends the traditional way that media informs our understanding of foreign people and lands by more accurately representing these places. </p>
<p>But that’s a tall order, and it’s not, of course, guaranteed.</p>
<p>Netflix’s transformative potential comes from allowing local creatives to tell stories about their own cultures and then distributing them truly internationally. It will depend on the company’s willingness to implement this strategy in a consistent, sustained, inclusive and thoughtful fashion. </p>
<p>Over time, widespread exposure to a diverse array of international media content might change the way people in the U.S. and worldwide think and feel about other cultures they have never, and may never, come into direct contact with. </p>
<p>All it takes is one click – one choice to watch, perhaps even unknowingly, a foreign-produced series.</p>
<p>The way Netflix works, using <a href="https://help.netflix.com/en/node/100639">algorithms to suggest content</a> as viewers make selections, can prolong an initial exposure to and interest in foreign content. Artificial intelligence meant to feed us more of what we like may end up a surprising force for change, making us rethink what we thought we knew.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/156629/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paolo Sigismondi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>An Italian media scholar raised on American TV assesses Netflix’s ambitious strategy to create original productions in Italy, Japan, Brazil and beyond – and distribute them globally.Paolo Sigismondi, Clinical Professor of Communication, USC Annenberg School for Communication and JournalismLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1559132021-03-03T17:50:38Z2021-03-03T17:50:38ZCan the city cycling boom survive the end of the Covid-19 pandemic?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386445/original/file-20210225-23-1u1pnz3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C2%2C1495%2C934&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In Paris, the major east-west axis, from the Place de la Concorde to the Place de la Bastille, as given a temporary 'coronapiste' after the pandemic broke out. Mayor Anne Hidalgo has said that it will become permanent.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.paris.fr/pages/deplacements-les-mesures-de-la-ville-pour-le-deconfinement-7788">Mairie de Paris</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article was co-written by Philip Adkins, cycling writer and consultant.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>When the Covid-19 pandemic broke out in 2019-20, it had an immense impact around the world, but particularly in urban areas, where it was particularly transmissible. Lockdowns and curfews were imposed, as well as distance work and remote learning, in an attempt to reduce infection rates. As car and plane travel dropped precipitously, <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201014082806.htm">air quality improved</a> unintentionally due to an “unprecedented decline in CO<sub>2</sub> emissions”. At the same time, because cycling was a form of <a href="https://www.iisd.org/sustainable-recovery/cycling-and-covid-19-why-investments-to-boost-cycling-are-important-for-a-sustainable-recovery/">“safe mobility”</a>, leading cities created <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-53105020">“pop-up” cycling lanes</a> to encourage socially distanced mobility.</p>
<p>The result was an <a href="https://ecf.com/news-and-events/news/covid-19-cycling-boom-real-numbers-say-yes">unprecedented bike boom</a> around the world. It was in part enabled by <a href="https://journalistsresource.org/environment/bikeshare-research-growth-user-demographics-health-societal-impacts/">bike-sharing systems</a> that began to spread in the 2000s as well as technological innovations such as electric bikes. The sudden emphasis on <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01441647.2017.1340234">low-pollution, active transportation</a> has permitted cities to move closer to pollution reduction targets – the UK has targeted an <a href="https://www.wired.co.uk/article/hitachi-social-innovation-climate">80% reduction in emissions by 2050</a>, while France is seeking <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-energy-idUKKCN1TS30B">carbon neutrality in 2050</a>.</p>
<p>The gold standard for active transportation has long been the cities of <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02723638.2019.1709757">Amsterdam</a> and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01441640701806612">Copenhagen</a>, where cycling is embedded in the culture. So much so that to “Copenhagenize” is now a common term among promoters of urban cycling. While it is easy to assume that this is cultural and has always been the case, Amsterdam only committed to improving cycling access <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/05/amsterdam-bicycle-capital-world-transport-cycling-kindermoord">during the 1970s</a>. </p>
<p>Bringing about transportation and lifestyle change is achievable, but requires political will and public support. Other examples of significant cultural changes in shorter periods of time include the compulsory use of seatbelts in cars and the prohibition of smoking in public buildings. Amsterdam and Copenhagen present high standards by which to judge other cities, but if the growth in cycling is to be safe and sustainable, standards must be high.</p>
<h2>How Covid-19 has helped cities shift to active transportation</h2>
<p>Three leading cities – London, Paris and New York – have all seized on the Covid-19 pandemic as an opportunity to make improvements to their cycling infrastructure to improve mobility, reduce congestion and cut pollution. While these cities are distinct, how do their cycling infrastructures compare?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="London 'cycling superhighway'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386453/original/file-20210225-13-cdfwaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386453/original/file-20210225-13-cdfwaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386453/original/file-20210225-13-cdfwaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386453/original/file-20210225-13-cdfwaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386453/original/file-20210225-13-cdfwaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386453/original/file-20210225-13-cdfwaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386453/original/file-20210225-13-cdfwaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The ‘cycle superhighway’ on London’s Southwark Bridge Road.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1979700">Geograph.org.uk</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>London</strong></p>
<p>The introduction of a number of <a href="https://www.smartcitiesworld.net/news/news/london-launches-action-plan-for-cycling-3677">“cycling superhighways”</a> in London over the past few years has expanded segregated cycling facilities, while routes on existing roads have improved user safety. The addition of <a href="https://tfl.gov.uk/travel-information/improvements-and-projects/streetspace-for-london">temporary cycling lanes</a> could help link these existing facilities together, to provide a convenient and comprehensive cycling plan for London.</p>
<p>The UK transport secretary, Grant Shapps, has promoted cycling during lockdown and as a legacy of the pandemic, <a href="https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/cycle-lanes-and-wider-pavements-to-be-fast-tracked-for-post-Covid-streets-11-05-2020/">stating</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Millions of people have discovered cycling – whether for exercise or as a means of safe, socially-distanced transport. While there is no change to the ‘stay at home’ message today, when the country does get back to work we need those people to stay on their bikes and be joined by many more.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>To support this goal, in May 2020 the government established a <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/2-billion-package-to-create-new-era-for-cycling-and-walking">£250 million emergency active travel fund</a>, kept bicycle shops open, and issued £50 bicycle repair vouchers to encourage people to cycle. The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, is aiming to have 80% of journeys be made by foot, bike or on public transport by 2041. A key element of the program, known as <a href="https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/cycle-lanes-and-wider-pavements-to-be-fast-tracked-for-post-Covid-streets-11-05-2020/">Streetspace</a>, is the construction of a “strategic cycling network, using temporary materials”. The intention is for changes to become permanent fixtures, accommodating a projected 10-fold increase in cycling.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386443/original/file-20210225-15-1wqqa2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Pop-up cycling lane in Paris" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386443/original/file-20210225-15-1wqqa2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386443/original/file-20210225-15-1wqqa2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386443/original/file-20210225-15-1wqqa2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386443/original/file-20210225-15-1wqqa2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386443/original/file-20210225-15-1wqqa2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386443/original/file-20210225-15-1wqqa2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386443/original/file-20210225-15-1wqqa2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The ‘Velopolitain M’ pop-up cycling lane on the Avenue de Saint Ouen in Paris. It designed to follow the city’s number 13 metro line, allowing former or occasional subway users to easily find their way when cycling.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Velopolitain_M13_-_avenue_de_Saint-Ouen.jpg">Chris93/Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>Paris</strong></p>
<p>Long an advocate of reducing car traffic in Paris, mayor Anne Hidalgo has recognised the danger of air pollution in conjunction with the <a href="https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20200505-cyclists-inherit-50km-of-post-Covid-19-paris-streets-mayor-hidalgo-opens-boulevards-to-bikes">coronavirus</a>, calling the combination “a dangerous cocktail”.</p>
<p>During her first term in office she spearheaded a significant increase in cycling-specific infrastructure. The Rue de Rivoli, which runs east-west through the heart of the city, was already reconfigured to reduce traffic and prioritise cycling. When the pandemic broke out, what was already the equivalent of one of London’s “cycling superhighways” was doubled in width, removing an entire lane once dedicated to car traffic. The long-term goal is that even when the pandemic ends, the <a href="https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20200505-cyclists-inherit-50km-of-post-Covid-19-paris-streets-mayor-hidalgo-opens-boulevards-to-bikes">pop-up cycling lanes will become permanent</a>. </p>
<p>The city has also introduced <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/business/paris-bicycles-commute-coronavirus.html">€500 subsidies for the purchase of E-bikes</a> and €50 reimbursements for bike repairs.</p>
<p><strong>New York</strong></p>
<p>New York would not perhaps be the first city to come to mind as being cycle-friendly. However, even prior to the pandemic it had committed to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/01/new-york-city-bike-lanes-car-culture">“breaking the car culture”</a>, as the city council speaker Corey Johnson put it. The plan is to spend $1.7 billion on 250 miles of new cycle lanes adding to the existing 1,240 miles (of which 480 are segregated).</p>
<p>In the early period of the pandemic, this was supplemented with some street closures for safer cycling and walking, the goal being up to 100 miles of streets being closed. In April 2020, Mayor Bill de Blasio opened <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/05/04/850357743/new-york-city-is-latest-to-close-some-streets-to-cars-making-more-space-for-peop?t=1610114786893">seven miles of streets to pedestrian and cyclists</a>.</p>
<p>There was also a commitment to opening temporary cycle lanes during the early part of the pandemic. This “Open Streets” initiative closed 67 miles of streets by late June 2020 and also created <a href="https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2020/06/24/breaking-city-doubles-temporary-protected-bike-lanes-in-response-to-covid/">temporary protected cycle lanes</a>, but the city has not committed to creating a comprehensive transportation network for cyclists across its 6,000 miles of streets.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="New York City bicycling lane" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386449/original/file-20210225-23-y6incp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386449/original/file-20210225-23-y6incp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386449/original/file-20210225-23-y6incp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386449/original/file-20210225-23-y6incp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386449/original/file-20210225-23-y6incp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386449/original/file-20210225-23-y6incp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386449/original/file-20210225-23-y6incp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Starting with the administration of Michael Bloomberg and continuing with his successor, Bill DeBlasio, the city of New York has built hundreds of miles of protected cycling lanes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WTM3_Gnarly_0030.jpg">Gnarly/Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Will leading cities really “Copenhagenize”?</h2>
<p>The test of these cities’ commitments will be whether the new cycling infrastructure survives once vaccination becomes widespread and the Covid-19 pandemic recedes. Will we simply return to a pandemic of <a href="https://www.oecd.org/tax/rising-air-pollution-related-deaths-taking-heavy-toll-on-society.htm">air-pollution-related illnesses</a>? Is there the political will to ensure that this cycling boom is not just another passing symptom of the pandemic?</p>
<p>Naturally, city politicians and residents are not uniformly in support of leaving behind old ways, whatever their health and societal cost may be. In London, a temporary cycle lane in Kensington was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/nov/30/kensington-and-chelsea-council-criticised-for-scrapping-cycle-lane">removed just seven weeks after construction</a> despite daily use by thousands of cyclists. Members of the London Assembly proposed removing the Euston Road pop-up cycle lane, and <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/euston-road-covid-cycle-lanes-removed-a4567221.html">launched a petition</a> to eliminate road closures, “school streets” and low-traffic neighbourhoods. However, the survey received only 25% of required signatures, and the government <a href="https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/552306">reiterating its commitment</a> to move toward more active travel.</p>
<p>Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has confirmed that 50km of temporary cycling lanes <a href="https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20200701-paris-temporary-bike-lanes-to-become-permanent-after-hidalgo-re-election-mayor-green-pollution-cars">will become permanent</a>, including the highly symbolic conversion of the Rue de Rivoli in the city centre.</p>
<p>In New York, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/10/nyregion/nyc-streets-parking-dining-busways.html">Bruce Schaller</a>, a consultant and former city transportation official, said, “This is the time to reconfigure the streets. Traffic will fill however much – or however little – street space it’s allotted. Now is the time to literally redraw the lines.” Whether the required action will follow is in the balance.</p>
<h2>The key to Europe’s recovery?</h2>
<p>The <em>New York Times</em> has stated that cycling as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/business/paris-bicycles-commute-coronavirus.html">key part of Europe’s economic recovery</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Governments are trying to revive their economies… but can’t fully rely on public transportation… In urban areas at least, bicycles are suddenly an unlikely component to restarting economic growth.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This “new normal” for personalised transport, could be, in and of itself, a growth industry for a “green recovery”. The need for clear policies, creative thinking and substantial investment is self-evident.</p>
<p>Cultural changes are required across the world to combat air pollution, and worldwide, local groups are seizing the opportunity for change and encouraging people to get on bikes. The UK’s <a href="https://www.bikeisbest.com/home">Bike Is Best</a> and <a href="https://betterbybike.info/">Better by Bike</a> provide resources for new cyclists. France’s <a href="https://parisenselle.fr/">Paris en Selle</a> is working to get more city residents on their bikes and to extend cycle lanes into areas that have been previously inaccessible, such as the car-centered <a href="https://www.defense-92.fr/mobilite/paris-en-selle-baptise-la-coronapiste-de-la-defense-velopolitain-1-65200">La Defense business district</a>. Even in cities such as <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Tour-De-Hood-147646565259515/">Houston</a>, Texas, and <a href="https://rotaryclubofbombay.org/mumbais-bicycle-mayor-firoza-suresh-wants-mumbai-to-become-the-bicycle-capital-of-india/">Mumbai</a>, India, commuting by bike is on the rise.</p>
<p>The unforeseen fall in air pollution when the pandemic took hold revealed that cities could be made more pleasant and safe for people to live and work. Given the importance of reducing CO<sub>2</sub> emissions to fight climate change, it’s an opportunity worth seizing.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/155913/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hélène Duranton ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>The need for social distancing sparked a cycling boom, cutting air pollution and boosting city dwellers’ mental and physical health. But when the pandemic ends, will it be back to life as usual?Hélène Duranton, Directrice de l'Institut des Langues et Sport (expertise: enseignements des langues, interculturel, sport, innovation pédagogique), SKEMA Business SchoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1445952020-08-17T15:01:30Z2020-08-17T15:01:30ZPayment for past crimes: 12th-century French cleric who called on Denmark to pay for Viking raids<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353141/original/file-20200817-16-gqye6m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C200%2C1586%2C1629&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The abbey of St Genevieve in Paris was destroyed during the French revolution.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nicolas Ransonnette (1745-1810). Dessinateur (illustrator) - Bibliothèque nationale de France</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1188 Stephen, the abbot of the monastery of <a href="https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13347a.htm">St Genevieve in Paris</a>, who would become bishop of Tournai, wrote a <a href="https://www.medievalists.net/2014/07/medieval-letter-collections-mirror-circles-friendship-example-stephen-tournai-1128-1203/">series of letters</a> to members of the royal family and church leaders in Denmark. He gave news of events at his monastery and attempted to calm frazzled tempers concerning rumours about the homosexuality of Peter Sunesen, a chaplain of the archbishop of Lund, who was later to become chancellor to the Danish king.</p>
<p>He also presented a remarkable demand. Needing money to pay for the restoration of the monastery, he demanded reparations from the Danes for the destruction of his church and the enslavement of numerous Frenchmen during Viking raids on Paris more than three centuries earlier. Both the attack on the church and the enslavement and slaughter of French subjects are attested to in the contemporary <a href="https://www.manchesterhive.com/view/9781526112729/9781526112729.00006.xml">annals of St Bertin</a>.</p>
<p>In the letters, which were to be read out in front of their recipients by his chaplain, Geoffrey, Stephen may have been the first European legal scholar to attempt to claim reparations for enslavement and war crimes. While he did not claim that the Danish king, Canute VI, was a direct descendent of these particular Viking raiders, he noted that Canute and his family had certainly profited from the raids of their Viking forebears. </p>
<p>Stephen was careful to praise Canute’s benevolence towards the church and emphasised the efforts of the Danish king to preserve its freedoms. But he also referred to the “extensive and powerful might found in the realm of the Danes by whose virtue your ancestors who until then laboured in pagan error, attacked Gaul with powerful arms and their full force”.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353142/original/file-20200817-14-c1pdga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Coin showing head of Danish king Canute VI." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353142/original/file-20200817-14-c1pdga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353142/original/file-20200817-14-c1pdga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353142/original/file-20200817-14-c1pdga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353142/original/file-20200817-14-c1pdga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353142/original/file-20200817-14-c1pdga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353142/original/file-20200817-14-c1pdga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353142/original/file-20200817-14-c1pdga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Canute VI could have sent some of these coins in reparation, but he didn’t.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Stephen suggested that Canute might want to make reparation for these crimes by putting pressure on the powerful White clan, who had fostered Canute’s father as a teen and whose members included Absalon, the current archbishop of Lund, and the two brothers Peter and Andrew Sunesen, who later became king’s chancellor and archbishop of Lund respectively. He wanted them to hand over the inheritance of one of their number who had joined the monastery of St Genevieve but had died before his inheritance had been transferred to the monastery.</p>
<p>It is clear from the letters that Stephen was aware that he was treading on thin ice in raising the issue of reparations for Viking misdeeds. In his instruction to his chaplain Geoffrey, who delivered the letters, he suggested that the letters be read “in a light manner and must not produce anger but appeal to compassion”. </p>
<p>But he didn’t pull any punches when describing the horrors of the Viking raids and how the invaders had destroyed French buildings and tortured and enslaved their inhabitants. The letter to Absalon, for example, describes how the Vikings:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… harried landscapes, villages and fields. Some people they took away as booty and into captivity, others they pierced with the points of their swords. They razed holy foundations to the ground with fire and destruction. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The impact of these actions was still felt three centuries later. As Stephen pointed out, the attack on his own monastery of St Genevieve had left “the walls of our church … damaged and destroyed by fire, and because of their great age and fragility threaten to collapse. They sigh to be strengthened by buttresses and be covered by a roof”.</p>
<h2>Legal and moral</h2>
<p>Stephen of Tournai was a leading scholar in church law. He taught law in Paris and wrote one of the first commentaries on the groundbreaking <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Gratians-Decretum">Harmony of Discordant Canons</a> (circa 1140) attributed to the Bolognese teacher of canon law, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gratian-Italian-scholar">Gratian</a>.</p>
<p>Yet Stephen did not frame his argument in legal terms. Putting pressure on the Sunesens to send money to the monastery was the right and moral thing for the Danish king and church leadership to do, he argued.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="17th-century painting of St Genevieve in front of Paris' town hall." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353146/original/file-20200817-20-1c6uvkg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353146/original/file-20200817-20-1c6uvkg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353146/original/file-20200817-20-1c6uvkg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353146/original/file-20200817-20-1c6uvkg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353146/original/file-20200817-20-1c6uvkg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353146/original/file-20200817-20-1c6uvkg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353146/original/file-20200817-20-1c6uvkg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">St Genevieve, patron saint of Paris is said to have saved the city from being sacked by Attila the Hun with a ‘prayer marathon’ in 451AD.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Since the Viking raiders were of course dead and buried, it was up to their heirs to make sure that reparation was made and that the walls of St Genevieve were repaired and strengthened to ensure that they once again provided a fitting and safe place to worship God and to venerate St Genevieve’s relics.</p>
<h2>Never paid</h2>
<p>The question of reparations for enslavement is of course a live one. No reparations have ever been paid to former slaves or the descendants of those involved in the Atlantic slave trade. The only reparations paid under the UK’s <a href="https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/articles/the-slavery-abolition-act-of-1833/">Slavery Abolition Act of 1833</a> were to British slave owners to compensate for their losses. </p>
<p>In 2006, the then UK prime minister, Tony Blair, expressed regret and “deep sorrow” over Britain’s involvement in the Atlantic slave trade – although MP <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/blair-admits-to-deep-sorrow-over-slavery-but-no-apology-426058.html">Oona King noted</a> that he stopped short of a full apology “mainly because it leaves the state open to claims for reparations”. </p>
<p>The recent toppling of the statue of <a href="https://theconversation.com/edward-colston-statue-toppled-how-bristol-came-to-see-the-slave-trader-as-a-hero-and-philanthropist-140271">slave owner Edward Colston</a> in Bristol and the Black Lives Matter protests have once again raised uncomfortable questions about the UK’s role in the slave trade. In July 2020 the Caribbean Community (Caricom) <a href="https://caricom.org/caricom-reparations-commission-steps-up-advocacy-for-reparatory-justice/">repeated its demands</a> for reparations for native genocide and African enslavement from 10 European nations, including Denmark and the UK.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/edward-colston-statue-toppled-how-bristol-came-to-see-the-slave-trader-as-a-hero-and-philanthropist-140271">Edward Colston statue toppled: how Bristol came to see the slave trader as a hero and philanthropist</a>
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<p>The issues relating to reparations for the Atlantic slave trade will continue to be debated in the US and Europe. As far as reparations for the crimes of the Vikings were concerned, Stephen of Tournai sent letters to, among others, Canute VI of Denmark, Bishop Valdemar of Schleswig, Absalon, archbishop of Lund, and Peter Sunesen – a canon of Lund and a former student of Stephen. But he received no replies and no reparations were ever paid.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/144595/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Frederik Pedersen has received funding from Carlsbergfondet in Denmark. </span></em></p>Stephen of Tournai wanted Denmark to pay damages for Viking raids on France three centuries before.Frederik Pedersen, Senior Lecturer in History, University of AberdeenLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.