Building Community and Reconstructing Citizenship in the Youth and Culture Houses of Post-War France

Abstract

This article explores the historical significance of Youth and Culture Houses in the cultural reconstruction of post-war France in the wake of war and occupation. Integrating the young into the cultural life of the nation was a project designed to unify the French polity after the divisive years of the late Third Republic and Vichy. The Youth and Culture Houses, a private initiative with government support, emphasized the cultural development of the young within an inclusive, pluralist, secular, and democratic environment premised on the notion that by fashioning the young culturally, the youth of France would participate more fully and more effectively in the national community as adult citizens. However, another element of the Youth and Culture Houses, and the popular education movement more generally, was to homogenize the national community, to produce a standard of cultural normality that would create a common bond of Frenchness.