French Cycling : A Social and Cultural History: 23 (Contemporary French and Francophone Cultures) - Hardcover

Hugh Dauncey

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1846318351 ISBN 13: 9781846318351

Publisher: Liverpool University Press, 2012

Synopsis

French Cycling: A Social and Cultural History aims to provide a balanced and detailed analytical survey of the complex leisure activity, sport, and industry that is cycling in France. Identifying key events, practices, stakeholders and institutions in the history of French Cycling, the volume presents an interdisciplinary analysis of how cycling has been significant in French society and culture since the late Nineteenth century. Cycling as Leisure is considered through reference to the adoption of the bicycle as an instrument of tourism and emancipation by women in the 1880s, for example, or by study of the development in the 1990s of long-distance tourist cycle routes. Cycling as Sport and its attendant dimensions of amateurism/professionalism, national identity, the body and doping, and other issues is investigated through study of the history of the Tour de France, the track-racing organised at the Velodrome d'hiver in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s and other emblematic events. Cycling as Industry and economic activity is considered through an assessment of how cycling firms have contributed to technological innovation at various junctures in France's economic development. Cycling and the Media is investigated through analysis of how cyclesport has contributed to developments in the French press (in early decades) but also to new trends in television and radio coverage of sports events. Based on a very wide range of primary and secondary sources, the volume aims to present in clear language an explanation of the varied significance of cycling in France over the last hundred years.

About this title

Review:

This volume explores the lives and activities of people of African descent in Europe between the 1880s and the beginning of the twenty-first century. It goes beyond the still-dominant Anglo-American or transatlantic focus of diaspora studies to examine the experiences of black and white Africans, Afro-Caribbeans and African Americans who settled or travelled in Germany, France, Portugal, Italy and the Soviet Union, as well as in Britain. At the same time, while studies of Africans in Europe have tended to focus on the relationship between colonial (or former colonial) subjects and their respective metropolitan nation states, the essays in this volume widen the lens to consider the skills, practices and negotiations called for by other kinds of border-crossing: The subjects of these essays include people moving between European states and state jurisdictions or from the former colony of one state to another place in Europe, African-born colonial settlers returning to the metropolis, migrants conversing across ethnic and cultural boundaries among 'Africans', and visitors for whom the face-to-face encounter with European society involves working across the 'colour line' and testing the limits of solidarity. Case studies of family life, community-building and politics and cultural production, drawing on original research, illuminate the transformative impact of those journeys and encounters and the forms of 'transnational practice' that they have generated. The contributors include specialist scholars in social history, art history, anthropology, cultural studies and literature, as well as a novelist and a filmmaker who reflect on their own experiences of these complex histories and the challenges of narrating them. -- Dr Philip Dine The style of writing is clear and accessible to a reader new to the subject, but the multiple dimensions of this work mean that even those readers with specialist knowledge of one kind or another are likely to find much of interest. -- Dr Edward Nye Well conceived, cogently argued and timely, this book will be required reading for anyone with a scholarly interest in the history and sociology of French sport and leisure, and, given cycling's social and cultural centrality, all those who seek to make sense of France and 'Frenchness' since the later 19th century. --Dr Philip Dine

This book is undoubtedly the best English-language introduction to French cycling and the Tour de France. --French History

About the Author:

Hugh Dauncey is Senior Lecturer in French at Newcastle University and the author of French Popular Culture: An Introduction (Arnold, 2003).

About this edition

• Publisher: Liverpool University Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1846318351
• ISBN 13: 9781846318351
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256