The Republic and the Riots

Reviews / Votes

<<In contrast to the many security-orientated interpretations that dominated political and media discourse on the riots, this is the first English-language study that penetrates to the underlying social, political and even ideological factors that help explain those violent events. Through meticulous fieldwork and an impressive grasp of the history of immigration in France and its social consequences, Moran elucidates how the links between immigration, identity and citizenship have been used and sometimes misused in dominant political discourse, and how the ideology of French republicanism has not kept pace with the evolution of French society. This is an illuminating book that constitutes a much-needed corrective to the stock interpretations of the riots.>> (Professor G.G. Raymond, University of Bristol)
<<In this extremely captivating and well-written book, Matthew Moran asks whether the riots of 2005-2007 represented an outright rejection of French society and its underlying republican values, or constituted a desperate plea for social inclusion by the hundreds of people involved. [...] This highly compelling volume (...) succeeds both in deftly relating the recent French riot to what Moran calls the modern 'blind spot of French republicanism' and in elucidating on variations in the propensity to engage in urban disorder.>> (David Waddington, Modern & Contemporary France April 2012)
<<The book provides an extremely useful insight into the social, political, ideological and religious netherworld of a French society that is experiencing serious fractures on its housing estates.>> (PBo, Bulletin Quotidien Europe 18/9/2012)