In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Technology and Culture 44.4 (2003) 812-814



[Access article in PDF]
La modernité au village: Tignes, Savines, Ubaye . . . La submersion de communes rurales au nom de l'intérêt général, 1920-1970. By Virginie Bodon. Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 2002. Pp. 359. €30.

The cover of Virginie Bodon's work—a woman turning from the destructive rush of water at her back—is eventually revealed (p. 301) as the playbill for Jean Giono's 1956 film, L'Eau Vive (Whitewater). Behind the cover is Bodon's study of the intersection of technology and community, in which two major dams are relegated to the role of prime mover. Serre-Ponçon, an embankment dam on the Durance that submerged Savines and Ubaye when it was completed in 1960, is at least identified by type. For its other characteristics, as well as those of Tignes, which blocked the Isère and was the highest arch dam in Europe when completed in 1952, see http://www. structurae. Bodon does note (without explaining) that Serre-Ponçon utilized a "technique imported from the United States" (p. 122), and it is nice to know that the United States was ultimately useful: in 1952, proponents of hydroelectricity had laid misgivings expressed by Savines and Ubaye at the door of "American imperialism" (p. 94).

Serre-Ponçon was originally contemplated in 1856, as an irrigation and flood-control measure that would also power regional industries and bring fresh drinking water to Marseilles. Tignes was conceived in 1919. The intervening [End Page 812] years of economic depression and war retarded construction but strengthened resolve. German control of French coal mines during World War I made hydroelectric power a national security issue; German occupation during World War II made it a matter of national prestige. That Tignes and Serre-Ponçon would bring the political and economic influence enjoyed by "modern" nations was acknowledged even by the villages facing evacuation, destruction, and/or reconstruction.

The three communes varied greatly in their reaction, however. Tignes protested vigorously, Savines settled amicably, and Ubaye simply surrendered to its fate. Bodon studies these reactions both vertically (by time) and horizontally (by gender, social class, and type of protest). Given that Tignes is both village and dam, that "Savines" and "Serre-Ponçon" are used almost interchangeably, and that Tignes was completed before Serre-Ponçon was begun, the presentation can be confusing and the chronologies (pp. 338- 54) would be more helpful if they preceded rather than followed the text.

It seems very French that these hydroelectric projects were also portrayed as elements in "an egalitarian policy aimed at giving even [rural] populations access to progress" (p. 207). Like many policies, this was easier to formulate than to implement, particularly in Tignes—whose citizens fought through the courts and on the streets, demanding compensation not only for real property but also for lost wages, relocation expenses, loss of municipal identity, and psychic trauma. Reporters presented Tignard resistance in existentialist terms, a struggle to preserve a way of life that, in its dual emphasis on individualism and community, was interpreted as quintessentially French.

The sympathy this evoked proved instructive for Electricité de France (EDF), the national utility responsible for construction. With Tignes, there had been little internal discussion about what would happen to the population of the drowned village; with Serre-Ponçon, a governmental commission was formed to consider "the social aspects of construction" (p. 141). To this end, EDF installed an ombudsman in Savines, used the press to glorify modernization and French engineering, and contracted for L'Eau Vive (both to chronicle the building process and "make [the Savinois] proud of the facility that would shatter their mode of life" [p. 136]). Savines cooperated by accepting not only EDF's compensation package, but also its role as municipal sacrifice to national interest, the latter dramatized in a much publicized photograph (p. 313) of the village priest removing the cross and bell from the rubble of his dynamited church (a...

pdf

Share