‘National Taste?’ Citizenship Law, State Form, and Everyday Aesthetics in Modern France and Germany, 1920–1940

Taste diaspora: The aesthetic and material practice of belonging

“…The recent emphasis on everyday practices and performances as crucial to strategies for and politics of belonging reveal the role of taste and material culture. For instance, national projects and citizenship have been explored in relation to production and consumption of material objects (Auslander, 1996, 2001; Edensor, 2002; Foster, 1999). In her work on the meaning of furniture in Parisians’ lives from the mid-17th to the early 20th centuries, Auslander (1996, 2001) explores how the creation of a shared aesthetic of the everyday in terms of a ‘national taste’ allowed the inclusion of people in the national project of France.…”

“…For instance, national projects and citizenship have been explored in relation to production and consumption of material objects (Auslander, 1996(Auslander, , 2001Edensor, 2002;Foster, 1999). In her work on the meaning of furniture in Parisians' lives from the mid-17th to the early 20th centuries, Auslander (1996Auslander ( , 2001) explores how the creation of a shared aesthetic of the everyday in terms of a 'national taste' allowed the inclusion of people in the national project of France. She focuses on taste in order to 'grasp the manifestations of the very large and abstract structures and transformations of the world within the small details of life' (Auslander, 1996: 4).…”

Home-Making: Returnees, Squatters, and Planners in Postwar France

“…As Leora Auslander has argued, the physical and cultural environment has long occupied a significant place in French understandings of citizenship, and both Rudolph and Nasiali illuminate the ways that public housing participated in a kind of "civilizing mission," acculturating metropolitan and imperial citizens to the new social contract elaborated by the postwar French state. 3 In the process, their studies disturb and problematize familiar narratives of the technocratic restructuring of the French urban landscape in the modern era.…”