Is the Library a Political Institution? French Libraries Today and the Social Conflict between Democratie and Republique

Public libraries in the outlying suburbs of French cities, which are called banlieues, face many conflicts, occasionally violent. These conflicts take place within the context of important social, cultural, and political transformations that have accelerated during the last fifteen years. Librarians, faced with several competing conceptions of the political role of libraries, seem to waver among democratie (democracy), Republique (French Republic), and aspects of libraries that feature in social conflicts in which the classes populaires (roughly translated as "working classes") are protagonists. The author of this paper shifts from French (his usual language) to English to highlight the place of libraries in the political sphere of contemporary French society.