Intellectuals, Culture and Public Policy in France

An interesting and stimulating read … I shall be recommending elements of this book as higher-level reading for students taking undergraduate modules on ‘Republican values’ and the French education system, and on French popular culture. I am sure that many other colleagues elsewhere in British and US universities will want to do likewise.
Hugh Dauncey
The subtlety of this book lies in its perceptive analyses of those situations in which the intellectuals studied combine expertise and critical attention (…). The author maps out the basis for a renewed reflection on the place of the intellectual in contemporary societies which, more than ever, need public debates and figures who can animate them in a responsible (expert) and vivacious (critical) manner. Through this way of interrogating the past to respond to the challenges of the present, the author breathes refreshing new life into the history of intellectuals.
François Chaubet, Vingtième Siècle, Issue 110 * Vingtième Siècle, Issue 110 *
Ahearne’s contribution to scholarship on this fascinating subject is a model of cross-disciplinary research […].The book is a learned and highly successful enterprise, and one that adds substantially to our understanding of the crucial but ambivalent role of intellectuals in the formation of French cultural policy, and sheds genuine light on the broader question of the meaning of the ‘public sphere’ in a largely privatised age.
Stephen Hopkins, Perspectives on European Politics and Society
Ahearne's book fills an important gap in recent studies of the always fascinating interface between the cultural and the political in modern France.
Keith Reader, Journal of Contemporary European Studies
... a timely and instructive text …, an excellent intervention into the ongoing development of cultural policy studies itself.

Dave O'Brien, Cultural Trends

* Cultural Trends *
Ahearne’s study is to be welcomed for the contributions it makes to our understanding of both French policy-making and of French intellectual history. In the domain of policy-making, Ahearne offers new insights into the frequent use made by successive French governments of public intellectuals to legitimise their actions. As regards intellectual history, he usefully illuminates some of the ways in which French intellectuals have sought to find practical applications for their theoretical ideas.

Jeremy F. Lane, Modern and Contemporary France

* Modern and Contemporary France *
This very valuable study adapts the critical apparatus of what can often appear to be the model driven preoccupations of social policy studies and uses it successfully to illuminate the role of the intellectual engaging with the public policy sphere. In so doing the book elucidates some of the most important cultural and social issues that are the focus of debate in contemporary France.
Gino Raymond, French Studies, vol 68, no 1