Using a series of case studies, starting in 1945 with the fall of the Vichy regime, this book explores French ethnology as an academic discipline and as a practice, in relation to the politics of heritage and the fostering of cultural identities at both a national and regional level. It argues that, in the past 25 years, the French state has sought to define a notion of ethnological heritage which has encouraged, not always successfully, the proliferation of cultural identities based upon such values as locality, sociability, the past as a commodity, and collective values. This has given rise to new cultural expressions of identity that combine traditional and contemporary definitions of what it means to be French. This book challenges this concept and examines its contribution to the dynamics of identities and to the process of economic regeneration.
