Books.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Overview
"[the book] offers a meticulouos and appropriately dispassionate account of the French events of May 1968. Contributing to a more complete picture of what occurred, the book would be worthwhile reading in courses on comparative experiences of the 1960s." · Journal of Modern History"All and all, this is a terrific book written in a lively narrative. Seidman provides us with a breadth and depth of knowledge and a balanced analysis that make his version of May 1968 usable for scholarly study as well as for the classroom." · H-France Review The events of 1968 have been seen as a decisive turning point in the Western world of even mythical significance. The author takes a critical look at "May 1968" and questions whether the events were in fact as "revolutionary" as French and foreign commentators have indicated. His conclusions are rather more ambivalent: culturally, he argues, the student movement changed little that had not already been challenged and altered in the late fifties and early sixties. The workers' strikes led to fewer working hours and higher wages, but these reforms reflected the secular demands of the French labor movement. "May 1968" was remarkable not because of the actual transformations it wrought but rather by virtue of the revolutionary power that much of the media and most scholars have attributed to it and which turned it into a symbol of a youthful, renewed, and freer society in France and beyond.
Michael Seidman received his Ph.D. from the University of Amsterdam. He is the author of Workers against Work: Labor in Barcelona and Paris during the Popular Fronts, (1991) (Japanese translation, 1998) and of Republic of Egos: A Social History of the Spanish Civil War, (2002) (Spanish translation, 2003. He currently teaches at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington.
CHOICE OUTSTANDING BOOK OF THE YEAR 2005.
Synopsis
The Paris student and worker uprisings of 1968 have been seen by many since as a fundamental societal rupture that allowed widespread changes manifest in later years. Skeptical of such claims, Seidman (U. of North Carolina- Wilmington) instead suggests that the events of 1968 should be seen in the context of short and long term continuities. He describes cultural change and conflict among the university students throughout the 1960s and looks at how students came into greater conflict with police forces. He then examines workers strikes following student challenges to state power, arguing that they were more about expanding the value of labor and less connected to the concerns of the street protestors than many have suggested. Finally, he examines state responses to these challenges, contending that the state had been weakened only momentarily. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Le Debat
Seidman's work is a solid and detailed piece of research based on the most divers sources and especially on new institutional archives that allow a greatly nuanced assessment, even a refutation of many received ideas about the events of May 1968.