As we prepared for our Study Abroad, the Center for Global Studies and Engagement warned us of the many cultural differences to come. Bread with every breakfast, coffee out of bowls, our hosts doing the laundry for the entire house; we expected these small cultural differences. Landing in Toulouse-Blagnac, we started to discover new differences, and adapt more… to pigeons in the airport, to crossing the street even with red walk signs, and to sidestepping dog droppings on the Allée Jean Jaurès.
When Dickinson sent us abroad, we were prepared to meld ourselves to all the small differences day to day. What we didn’t anticipate, and discovered more and more after becoming Toulousain, were the huge philosophical differences between American and French society. France values environmentalism over convenience, with paper cups and meticulously separated recycling. La laïcité stands contrary to America’s lax freedom of speech and religion, tackling equality from a different perspective.
One of the most shocking cultural paradigms, which seems to extend to all corners of life in Toulouse, is the division of public and private life. Through laws, technology use, and even in the classroom, we’ve started to shift how we view our privacy different from our public image.
SOCIAL INTERACTIONS
At small liberal arts colleges in the US, students are a lot closer to their professors, almost to the point of friendship. In this relationship shared between students and professors, it is very common to know information relating to all aspects of life, such as family information, personal family problems, aspirations and passions as well. As first-years, the math department welcomes students into their living rooms and to answer the door to trick-or-treating children. At the end of the semester, classes might gather at local brunch spots to share a meal with their professor. When the class is assigned particularly difficult homework, students email the faculty desperately after midnight with questions, and can expect to receive a response within a half hour. Professors are an active part in how students mature and form relationships. They remember our clubs, our weekend plans, our roommates and siblings and hometowns, and the students remember them for life.
At Sciences Po, even with the small class sizes, we’ve never spoken to our professors one on one. We don’t know whether Madame Pelissier has kids, or whether Monsieur Pourcher lives in Toulouse. An email to clarify dissertation guidelines for our International Relations class went unanswered for a week. Whereas in the US, a student-professor relationship presents an opportunity to share our private lives, in France, the professionalism of the classroom seems to divide students and professors more than even strangers on the street.
Celebrities, too, reap the benefits of a more stringent private/public divide in France. Whereas in America we saw Kylie Jenner’s pregnancy from conception, in France, celebrities seem to keep their private lives private. For example, in 2021 in the US, a rumor spread on TikTok that “Call Me By Your Name” actor Armie Hammer had cannibalistic tendencies and a perverted internet footprint. This rumor became public knowledge over a week before journals and magazines picked up the story, thanks to the paparazzi and the culture surrounding sharing the private lives of public figures. In contrast, Stromae and Omar Sy don’t face weekly rumors of drug addiction, affairs, and plastic surgery. Our hosts don’t read French tabloids, whereas People magazine is in every waiting room in America. With the prevalence of social media like TikTok and Buzzfeed, which provide a daily stream of celebrity gossip, there is very little that stays private in the US. France and the US differ extremely in the regulations and norms regarding privacy on the internet.
PUBLIC AND PRIVATE LIVES ONLINE
Every time we unlock our phones, there’s a clear reminder of the strict French regulations on privacy. We can’t open Google, Wikipedia, or Buzzfeed without reading a long disclaimer and accepting the site’s cookies. And not only do we except them once, but every time we access the website. Meanwhile, last year in the United States, there was a scandal related to Apple’s app store: an app for children, Talking Tom, filmed the users without permission and mined data from the devices. What a stark difference that in the US an app can access background information without any notification; but in France, accessing anything on the internet requires cookie permission. This is due to new guidelines of 2019 from the CNIL, The National Commission for Informatics and Freedoms. They recently confirmed that continuing to browse a website after its cookie banner is displayed is not synonymous for valid consent of cookie use in France. Operators that use cookies and trackers must now prove that they have obtained affirmative consent from the user.
Here in France, we are protected by a European law called RGPD (Règlement Général sur la Protection des Données). This translates to General Data Protection Regulation, in which the French, and larger European population are strongly protected from the complexities of data mining of companies. Created in 2016, and put into effect in 2018, there now exists a framework for businesses to follow regarding the processing of personal data. This concept of safety has existed in France for over two decades, from when the internet was in its infancy. Despite these laws seeming to be easily put into effect here, on the other side of the Atlantic, the U.S. is the only OECD country without a Data Protection Agency. If we did have these laws like France, perhaps we would not have experienced Mark Zuckerberg testifying in front of the American government while the Americans feared for their data safety.
Through these laws that are prevalent in everyday life for the French, while they are evidently missing from our overall protection in the United States, we can gain a direct understanding of the divide between private and public life. Before we came to France, we had limited safety on the internet, and we were forced to be comfortable with this. The concept of our private lives being easily mined and processed every time we access the internet has become familiar. But now we are realizing that this is not the case in France, for the value of the French private lives is more prevalent than in the US. Indeed, it is clear that the digital world of France is simply a demonstration of principles that already exist.
GOVERNMENT AND LAWS
As for the government and the laws, the question of public and private life is pretty clear. In France, compared to the U.S, the European Union establishes the policies that must be followed by the governments, and collecting any data and information on the population is strictly controlled. However, the government in France still strives to participate and improve the lives of French people. La “Sécurité sociale” for example is the same concept as the “Social Security Number” in the U.S but here, the government makes more efforts in helping french citizen and non-citizen residents to have access to health care and other types of social services. For example, the first time I went to the doctor here, I was almost shocked to see that I only paid 25 euros for a consultation, unlike the hundred dollars I would have to pay in the United States. As the French Government collects data – for example all the official acts – in order to create a data of criminality or medical records, they in fact invade the privacy of others in search for the overall protection of the French society. What the government does with the tax citizen pay is more than a concern for France citizen and when they don’t think that their privacy or the money is not well used, they don’t hesitate to make it known. At the Capitole, near the central place of the Toulouse city next to the City Hall, every Saturday the population of Toulouse protest because they think that their privacy is not well used with the question of the Health Pass or « Pass Sanitaire ». The government signed laws about allowing only vaccinated people to major public places in the city like the restaurants, cinema, some shops the stadium etc. which raised some concerns about how the government wants to control the population over an app.
At what point do the French sacrifice their privacy to the need of having social protections?
CONCLUSION
It is clear that the relationship between private and public life and information manifests very differently in France than in the United States. More often, it can be observed that French society are big advocates in respecting people and their private lives – which leave French way of life very abstract. This is the explanation for why teachers seem more distanced from their students, or why the ‘juicy details’ on the latest French star are mostly unknown. The same works for the collection of information when using online platforms such as Google or Facebook, as the French government works to protect data. In the United States, this is completely the opposite as people seem to often intertwine both their private and public life together. In the everyday life of United States, people are more often very open and analytical about their public and private life. American people are open books because they know that some amount of privacy will be lost as a member of society. American people still believe in their own right to set their own rules to defining privacy. While we seem to be complacent with our constant minding and processing of our private lives, we also view that obtaining secrecy comes with sacrifice. “No matter what policies are enacted, however, it’s clear that hard choices will have to be made regarding how much we want to give up and how much we want to keep secret.”
In the United States, protests are much more common than strikes. But even when there are protests, they are not national such as in France. There are protests for individual causes, and they usually last no more than a day. A good example is the Women’s March. This is a group that holds protests in many big cities around the US every year. The goal is “to harness the political power of diverse women and their communities to create transformative social change” (Women’s March), but not necessarily to make specific changes in law or government. This is more commonly the purpose of protests in the US because the constitution and the law is much harder to change than in France. Our constitution is almost impossible to amend, while in France, they amend the constitution about every two and a half years. This is a simplified explanation for why protest culture is so different in France, and why the protests make change in France.
However, oddly enough, most of these McDonald’s actually have a small side window where people can order to-go in a drive-thru like feature, but basically replacing the cars with humans. In addition, McDonald’s is not quite everywhere in France as it is in America. The fast-food chain surely exists and is present in large cities, but they are not necessarily in every neighborhood like they usually are in the States. According to Statistica.org, there are only around 1,400 locations in all of France in 2018, which is approximately only 10 percent the amount in the U.S. Moreover, French McDonald’s is not the 24-hour show that is in America: they actually usually close around 1am and open around 8am.
One of the most common memes about American McDonald’s revolves around the theory and fact that their ice cream machine is always broken. Therefore, really the only dessert option rests at a soggy apple McPie. Yet in France, McDonald’s features special items specific to the country such as burgers and sandwiches made with a fresh, warm baguette. You can even finish off your meal with dessert options ranging from five different flavors of macarons to mini tiramisu to the southwestern French specialty, canelé. With menu options like these, I would surely be open to French McDonald’s dining experience.
the right to keep and bear arms is protected by the Second Amendment of the Constitution and as a further level of protection, most state constitutions guarantee this right. Given the fact that gun ownership is so ingrained into the foundation of the United States, it is no surprise that this issue is divisive. In terms of possession and ownership of a firearm, the laws vary state by state. Generally accepted laws include the prohibition of firearm sales to convicted felons, domestic abusers, fugitives, addicts of an illegal substance, those who are deemed mentally unstable, veterans who have been dishonorably discharged, and those who have renounced U.S. citizenship. Regarding the regulation of both open and concealed carry of a firearm, laws have changed dramatically since the early 2000’s. In most states, a license is required to carry a handgun and is permitted to qualified applicants, however eleven states still allow concealed carry of a firearm without a permit. This is called “Constitutional carry”. Twenty-six states allow open-carry of handguns without a permit and four states plus Washington D.C. have banned open-carry of handguns.
nt between two people starts to get too heated, when someone looks alone and disturbed in a public place, or when she’s alone with someone following her, Sara’s first thought is to be cautious and aware of her surroundings because those people might have guns. One day she was explaining this feeling to the mother of her French host family and she was shocked that Sara instinctively thought in this manner. They discussed how Sara’s response is totally different than the reaction of a French person. For them, the idea of an average citizen having a gun doesn’t even cross their mind as a possibility, while for an American it’s a likely and dangerous possibility that influences both our sense of security and our thought process.
Her first instinct is to get herself as far as possible from them for fear of whatever they are dealing with. In the US, normal police carry only a handgun, and in her experience, there are no military police stationed in airports unless there has been a bomb threat. However, as she spends more time in France, the phenomenon of heavily armed military police is becoming more normal and less alarming. The interesting and somewhat ironic twist to this is that while she is American and Americans in general carry more firearms, she seems to be less used to seeing men carrying large guns than her French counterparts. So while the French are equal parts fascinated and alarmed by American civilian gun laws, one could also say that she too was very surprised by guns in France.
