Assignment

1. Cultural Differences Concerning Privacy. How are French attitudes towards private space and private behaviors different from those of Americans and/or your home/heritage culture(s)?

2. Frenchness and Diversity. In Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong, N-B ask us to consider the fact that the most obvious characteristic the French share with their geography is diversity. To underline their point, they recall the famous question of President Charles De Gaulle from an interview with Newsweek in 1961: "How can anyone govern a country that has 246 kinds of cheese?" (p. 21) Comment on the paradox that the outside world holds a rather singular image of "Frenchness" while inside the French embrace ethnic identities that connect them to the regions of their origin.

3. The Term Aborigine. How might the term aborigine help understand the customs, beliefs and attitudes of people living in France today? To what degree is the term a useful concept or metaphor for illustrating differences between North American and French mentalities, given that the archaeological discoveries in France and Europe are so much more ancient than in the Americas?

4. Who is José Bové? In what ways does the anecdote of José Bové illustrate how the French come across as anti-American or against globalization? Check out Bové on the Internet. To what extent is he just a simple French farmer from Larzac?