Uprooting identity: European Integration, political realignment, and the wine of the Languedoc (1984-2014)

Smith, A. W. M. (2020) Uprooting identity: European Integration, political realignment, and the wine of the Languedoc (1984-2014). Contemporary European History, 29 (4). ISSN 0960-7773

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Abstract

Uprooting productive vines transformed the landscape of the winegrowing Languedoc as part of a coordinated European effort to reduce agricultural overproduction, most notably after 1984. The demographic shifts caused by this transformation upset regional political alliances, coinciding with a Socialist Presidency and electoral gains for the Front National (FN) on the far right. More traditional syndical bodies lost their ability to accent national change, floundering in the face of supra-national reform. This left space for political parties to politicise this gap between agency and power, and the FN retooled regional rhetoric emerging from wine protests on the left in service of local campaigns. Contextualising the election of Robert Ménard in Béziers in 2014, this article looks at how sectoral and economic transformation was passed over in favour of populist language borrowed from the vineyards only decades earlier, in which the uprooting of vines explains the perceived uprooting of identity.

Item Type: Articles
Additional Information: No commercial re-distribution or re-use allowed. Derivative works cannot be distributed. ©Cambridge University Press.
Subjects: D History General and Old World > DC France, Andorra, and Monaco
Divisions: Academic Areas > Institute of Arts and Humanities > History
Related URLs:
Depositing User: Andrew Smith
Date Deposited: 25 Sep 2019 15:43
Last Modified: 24 Nov 2020 14:54
URI: https://eprints.chi.ac.uk/id/eprint/4850

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