Ethnologia Europaea

French ethnology today is a very active discipline that deals with the concepts and methods of social anthropology in so far as they are relevant in accounting for the specificity of a complex, industrialized society. The paper summarizes the history of the discipline, its relationships with folklore and museums, and delineates the main fields of contemporary research: the city, culture, symbols and values, kinship. The most influential titles published in the last twenty years appear in the detailed bibliography.

The French government since the early twentieth century has provided assistance to small independent proprietors of wine to form cooperatives. By focusing on the Sigoulès cooperative, located in the southwest of France, this essay shows how wine cooperatives of the Aquitaine institutionalized the capitalist division of labor and its mode of social control. Not only is the significance of capitalist markets and social divisions between wine growers highlighted, but new scientific technologies of wine production are related to social control through the medium of culture. It is concluded that the Sigoulès cooperative, as well as others, serves primarily pragmatic rather than political ends, while enabling small proprietors of wine to compete on a national and international scale.