ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the differences in French culture from a perspective related to age and place. During the last twenty years, French culture has become an arena where social issues are played out and identities are challenged. In Europe, culture has been employed as a political tool, and the idea of a universal French culture has been challenged by major socio-economic changes. France today is an increasingly fragmented society, with multiple fault-lines and new social divisions. French government has actively sponsored youth participation in the arts, sports and leisure, providing many free activities particularly during the school holidays and actively promoting youth values in order to modernize its own image. Whilst in many ways young people’s attitudes and practices tend to reflect wider changes in society rather than determine them, in some ways they can be seen as harbingers of change, particularly as regards attitudes on sexuality which became much more open and tolerant in the 1980s and 1990s.
