Crise d\u27Identite : The Push to Preserve National Identity in France

In 2010, France\u27s President Nicolas Sarkozy proposed a Maison de l \u27histoire de fa France, a heritage museum, as reporters began calling it, to be opened in Paris in 2015. President Sarkozy\u27s speechwriter on issues of national identity has cast the museum as an answer to France\u27s identity crisis .\u27 The project\u27s aim, as President Sarkozy has articulated it, is to reinforce national identity, warning as well, It is always dangerous to forget your history.t It is exactly this fear, the fear of forgetting France\u27s rich history, which has spurred controversy and upheaval within the French republic. The extent to which President Sarkozy\u27s proposal has struck a nerve in the French population is evidenced by the extensive protest against the Maison, notably from the academic sphere. Several historians signed letters that were published in Le Monde, speaking against this promotion of official history and its propagation as a political tool. One letter points specifically to the creation and promotion of national identity as problematic to academic historical pursuits. The letter states, Si l\u27echelle privilegiee est celle d\u27une France rabougrie, c\u27est, en consequence, moins le resultat d\u27une reflexion pedagogique, savante et critique que de la mise en place d\u27un projet fonde sur la peur de l\u27autre et que Ie pouvoir exprime dans un mouvement de repli sur soi.,,3 For the historians who signed this letter, the national identity to be promoted by this museum would represent less a celebration of French history and more the assertion of a French identity that diminishes the multitude of different histories that compose an increasingly diverse national identity. Addressing exactly this concern, immigrant organizations have also staged protests throughout Paris, denouncing the propagation of an official French history that they argue fails to incorporate their stories, often with roots in countries beyond France, into the mosaic of French national history. The problem with the proposed museum, from their perspectives, is the legitimization of a singular national history, one that implies a definitive version of the history that defines France, and French citizens, in the past and as they exist today

Statistical vs. Identified Lives in Benefit-Cost Analysis

Economic evaluation of projects involving changes in mortality risk conventionally assumes that lives are statistical, i.e., that risks and policy-induced changes in risk are small and similar among a population. In reality, baseline mortality risks and policy-induced changes in risk often differ among individuals although these differences are imperfectly known. We examine the effects of information about heterogeneity of risk on economic evaluation. Although social welfare (defined as aggregate expected utility) is unaffected by information about risk heterogeneity, the economic valuation of changes in risk (the sum of individual compensating or equivalent variations) is sensitive to this information. The effect of information on economic valuation and hence the outcome of a benefit-cost analysis (BCA) depends on: i) whether information is about heterogeneity of the baseline and/or change in risk, ii) whether risk is valued using willingness to pay (WTP) or willingness to accept (WTA) measures, iii) the status quo policy, and iv) whether individuals are risk-averse or risk-neutral in wealth. We show that BCA does not systematically favor identified over statistical lives and suggest some political factors that may explain the apparent public-decision bias toward protecting identified lives.

Cavitation damage characteristics in water and mercury from studies in a cavitating Venturi Technical report no. 17

Cavitating damage characteristics in water and mercury studied in cavitating Ventur