Rites of the Republic: Citizens' Theater and the Politics of Culture in Southern France

Abstract

Specificity of place and the emplacement of politics are key themes running through Mark Ingram’s ethnography of civic-minded theater in southern France. This multi-sited study juxtaposes the Theatre Rural d'Animation Culturelle (TRAC), an amateur troupe from the Vaucluse with a strong rural identity, and the Friche, professional theatrical artists who identify with the urban setting of cosmopolitan Marseille. Comparing these groups, Ingram develops a broader perspective both on the local mediation of a national politics of culture and on the shifting political significance of territoriality in the experience of place. Drawing on research spanning two decades, he is well positioned to address how these cultural producers creatively respond to a perceived crisis of post-colonial French identity and to processes of Europeanisation and globalization. The result is a widely accessible ethnography that will appeal to scholars of contemporary France both inside and outside the field of anthropology.