Individuals, consumer groups, nation states and supra-national bodies increasingly have interrogated the ethics of particular production and consumption relations such as GM foods. Flowing from and bound up with these political concerns is the growing interest in the mutual dependence of sites of (for example) production, distribution, retailing, design, advertising, marketing and final consumption. This timely volume draws together contributions concerned with the production, circulation and consumption of commodities. Not only do these case study examples seek to transcend older understandings of production and consumption, but they also explicitly tap into wider public debate about the meanings, origins and biographies of commodities. Taking a geographical approach to the analysis of links between producers and consumers, the book focuses upon the ways in which these ties increasingly are stretched across spaces and places. Critical engagements with the ways in which these spaces and places affect the economies, cultures and politics of the connections between producers and consumers are skilfully threaded through each section.

Individuals, consumer groups, nation states and supra-national bodies increasingly have interrogated the ethics of particular production and consumption relations such as GM foods. Flowing from and bound up with these political concerns is the growing interest in the mutual dependence of sites of (for example) production, distribution, retailing, design, advertising, marketing and final consumption. This timely volume draws together contributions concerned with the production, circulation and consumption of commodities. Not only do these case study examples seek to transcend older understandings of production and consumption, but they also explicitly tap into wider public debate about the meanings, origins and biographies of commodities. Taking a geographical approach to the analysis of links between producers and consumers, the book focuses upon the ways in which these ties increasingly are stretched across spaces and places. Critical engagements with the ways in which these spaces and places affect the economies, cultures and politics of the connections between producers and consumers are skilfully threaded through each section.

China has long been an object of fascination for the French, who celebrated theirannee de la Chine in 2004. Symptomatic of that fascination are the movements into China made by groups as diverse as the Jesuits, who arrived inL'Empire du Milieu in the late seventeenth century, and theTel Quel intellectuals, whose will to political pilgrimage took them to the People's Republic in 1974. Symptomatic, too, are the narrative and visual representations of China offered by such as Pierre Loti, Victor Segalen, Paul Claudel, Michel Leiris, Simone de Beauvoir, Andre Malraux, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Marc Riboud. In this penetrating study, Alex Hughes explores models of intercultural encounter between France and China elaborated in the modern French.

The international team of contributors and consultants have provided over 700 entries offering wide-ranging coverage and crossing the traditional boundaries between disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. French culture is defined in its broadest sense and areas covered include:
Economy
Education
Film
Food and Wine
Gender and Sexuality
Intellectual Life
Language and Identity
Literature
Media
Music
Performing Arts
Politics
Religion
Society
Visual Arts.
Entries range from shorter, factual contributions to longer overview essays, and provide an essential context for anyone studying French, readers with an interest in critical theory and anyone pursuing comparative studies in European culture. To assist readers with their research a classified contents list identifies relevant entries within a particular field. The articles are extensively cross-referenced to provide links between subjects and conclude with annotated suggestions for further reading.

More than 700 alphabetically organized entries by an international team of contributors provide a fascinating survey of French culture post 1945.
Entries include:
* advertising * Beur cinema * Coco Chanel * decolonization * écriture feminine * football * francophone press * gay activism * Seuil * youth culture
Entries range from short factual/biographical pieces to longer overview articles. All are extensively cross-referenced and longer entries are 'facts-fronted' so important information is clear at a glance. It includes a thematic contents list, extensive index and suggestions for further reading.
The Encyclopedia will provide hours of enjoyable browsing for all francophiles, and essential cultural context for students of French, Modern History, Comparative European Studies and Cultural Studies.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203003306

China has long been an object of fascination for the French, who celebrated their annee de la Chine in 2004. Symptomatic of that fascination are the movements into China made by groups as diverse as the Jesuits, who arrived in L'Empire du Milieu in the late seventeenth century, and the Tel Quel intellectuals, whose will to political pilgrimage took them to the People's Republic in 1974. Symptomatic, too, are the narrative and visual representations of China offered by such as Pierre Loti, Victor Segalen, Paul Claudel, Michel Leiris, Simone de Beauvoir, Andre Malraux, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Marc Riboud. In this penetrating study, Alex Hughes explores models of intercultural encounter between France and China elaborated in the modern French cultural arena. Locating forms of bodily experience as critical to that encounter, she reflects on its forms and foundations.

Orphenn is an orphan, and he was beginning to think that that was all he would ever be. So when a strange woman who calls herself his sister spirits him away and hurls him into another universe, he felt absolutely overwhelmed. Family, friends, and allies await him there-three things that were beyond an orphan's wildest dreams. Only afterward does he find the truth about his family: that his twin sisters began as triplets, and that the third sister, who had murdered their parents, was leading a comeback to conquer the world of Aleida. With their squadron, the White Herons, and Aleida's mutant army, Orphenn and his companions must overcome his sister's conquest and destroy her nation. But how can they destroy their own sibling? Separate dimensions, mutants, families, bonds, turncoats, rebellion, and betrayal-Enma is a riveting story of dreams and gifts. In this world of cliche vampires and overused werewolves, Hughes's world of conquest and romance is a breath of fresh air. In her unique, dramatic style, she writes of the hardships Orphenn and his newfound family must endure in a time of civil war, in a universe beside our own.

This book opens up the history of twentieth-century French cinema from the silent era to the present day by exploring the key role of gender and sexual politics. A much-needed sequel to Berg's bestselling Gender and German Cinema, the volume tackles such questions as:
- What role did the female voice play when sound cinema was first developed?
- How have film genres and movements been shaped by gender and sexual politics?
- How does gender intersect with factors of race, class, ethnic and national identity?
The contributors also throw into relief broad issues such as the evolution of film in the context of 20C French social, political and cultural history.
Bringing together original essays by French, British and American scholars, the collection fully covers the development of French cinema. It addresses the work of individual auteurs, the French star system, and film genres and movements such as Dada and Surrealism, the New Wave and the New New Wave. It also focuses on film narratives in which issues of gender are particularly pertinent. The volume, which features illustrations, a filmography and bibliography, will be one of the standard handbooks in French cultural/film studies for some time to come.

Within the domain of French literary analysis, gender criticism has until now focused primarily on women's writing and has drawn largely on the writings of French feminist theorists, even though male-authored texts provide an equally revealing window through which to analyze gender. Except by mainly male critics working predominantly in the field of gay and queer studies, the issue of how 'maleness' informs the construction of the self and the creative act more broadly has been virtually ignored. Further, even though much more work has been done on women, it can be argued that the construction of 'femaleness' is most profitably illuminated by an approach that allows for a comparison between the sexes.
This book starts with the premise that sex and gender are fundamental components of the autobiographical writing of both sexes. This is demonstrated through close readings of works by a number of twentieth-century authors who are paired, one male with one female. In tackling, amongst other things, colonial and postcolonial writing, Aids writing, the question of photography and fetishism, queer politics and culture in writings by Sartre, Beauvoir, Gide, Duras, Guibert, Cardinal, Leduc and Doubrovsky, this book provides an excellent model for analyzing gender and the autobiographical act more broadly.
Winner of the R. H. Gapper Prize 2000

This interdisciplinary book responds to the explosion of gay and lesbian creativity on modern-day France. Rather than attempting to formalize a specifically 'gay' or 'lesbian' style or identity, the authors seek to open up new 'homotextualities, ' understood here as ongoing constructions and deconstructions of both homosexuality and its environments. They investigate the work of (among others) Violette Leduc, Tony Duvert, Renaud Camus, and Guy Hocquenghem; the cinema of Josiane Balasko and Cyril Collard; the theoretical writings of Leo Bersani, Luce Irigaray, and Monique Wittig. Employing a range of methods, authors re-evaluate and contest both the literary and theoretical canon and establish new convergences between French and Gay Studies, in particular, queer theory. This book provides the first proper assessment of the usefulness of this approach when dealing with a literary and cultural tradition notoriously discreet about the very concept of a gay writer.

This interdisciplinary book responds to the explosion of gay and lesbian creativity on modern-day France. Rather than attempting to formalize a specifically 'gay' or 'lesbian' style or identity, the authors seek to open up new 'homotextualities, ' understood here as ongoing constructions and deconstructions of both homosexuality and its environments. They investigate the work of (among others) Violette Leduc, Tony Duvert, Renaud Camus, and Guy Hocquenghem; the cinema of Josiane Balasko and Cyril Collard; the theoretical writings of Leo Bersani, Luce Irigaray, and Monique Wittig. Employing a range of methods, authors re-evaluate and contest both the literary and theoretical canon and establish new convergences between French and Gay Studies, in particular, queer theory. This book provides the first proper assessment of the usefulness of this approach when dealing with a literary and cultural tradition notoriously discreet about the very concept of a gay writer.

This fascinating study explores the pleasures and torments of love and sexuality as depicted in the works of six important French women writers: Rachilde, Colette, Leduc, Wittig, Cixous and Duras. Historically, erotic literature has been dominated by male writers. Feminist critics have argued that its central motifs of voyeurism, sadomasochism, incest and violence to women's bodies are governed by the unconscious fantasies and prejudices of a patriarchal sociocultural order.
The contributors question how this sociocultural order has affected the erotic writing of the women writers studied. They explore the opportunities for, and constraints on, women's erotic writing in the early to mid-twentieth century through the works of Rachilde, Colette and Leduc. This is contrasted with the writing of prominent contemporary authors -- Wittig, Cixous and Duras -- to reveal new developments and diversification within the genre. The focus throughout is on how these writers deal with erotic language and rhetoric, their treatment of traditional themes of eroticism, and -- most vital to recent feminist criticism and theory -- their vision of the female body and women's sexual pleasure. The book provides key insights into the development of women's erotic discourse throughout this century and the diversity that characterizes it.

Postcolonial approaches to understanding economies are of increasing academic and political significance as questions about the nature of globalization, transnational flows of capital and workers and the making and re-making of territorial borders assume center stage in debates about contemporary economies and policy. Despite the growing academic and political urgency in understanding how "other" cultures encounter "the west," economics-oriented approaches within social sciences (e.g., Development Economics, Economic Geography, and the discipline of Economics itself) have been slow to engage with the ideas and challenges posed by postcolonial critiques. In turn, postcolonial approaches have been criticized for their simplistic treatment of "the economic" and for not engaging with existing economic analyses of poverty and wealth creation. Utilizing examples drawn from everywhere from India to Latin America, "Postcolonial Economies" breaks new ground in providing a space for nascent debates about postcolonialism and its treatment of "the economic," bringing together scholars in a range of disciplines, including Geography, Economics, Development Studies, History and Women's Studies.

Postcolonial approaches to understanding economies are of increasing academic and political significance as questions about the nature of globalization, transnational flows of capital and workers, and the making and re-making of territorial borders assume center stage in debates about contemporary economies and policy. Despite the growing academic and political urgency in understanding how "other" cultures encounter "the West," economics-oriented approaches within social sciences (e.g., Development Economics, Economic Geography, and the discipline of Economics itself) have been slow to engage with the ideas and challenges posed by postcolonial critiques. In turn, postcolonial approaches have been criticized for their simplistic treatment of "the economic" and for not engaging with existing economic analyses of poverty and wealth creation. Utilizing world-wide examples drawn from India to Latin America, "Postcolonial Economies" breaks new ground in providing a space for nascent debates about postcolonialism and its treatment of "the economic," bringing together scholars in a range of disciplines, including Geography, Economics, Development Studies, History, and Women's Studies.