CULTURES AND FORMS OF LIVING IN FRANCE, YESTERDAY AND TODAY

Abstract

The comparison between cultures and forms of living, presently and in the past, allows one to better comprehend the changes that are affecting France, where urbanization is increasingly independent of the city itself. Such discussion is justified by the acceleration of the course of history, by the recent, fast and irreversible trend toward globalization and by the increase in social inequalities. Past and present cultures – some of them inscribed in different durées, in divine or social order and in the obedience of established norms; others affected by instability, by insecurity, even by xenophobic threats – provide distinctive answers when we consider the forms of living. Using the scale of the longue durée, we are able to understand cultural differences and, therefore, the different forms of living that prevailed in France up to the fifteenth century and from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, as well as those that characterize the “present time”.