Penser l'extrême droite en milieu rural

Un récit de deux France?

Abstract

The present article addresses the electoral success of Marine Le Pen and the Front National in rural areas. This phenomenon is regularly interpreted as the expression of an emergent territorial cleavage between urban and peripheral areas. However, the analysis of the normative and empirical bases of this supposed spatial conflict reveals much more complex sociocultural dynamics. Based on qualitative fieldwork in the Vosges department in eastern France, I explore the links between collective narratives of deprivation, the propagation of rumours and the radical right vote in order to show that the rise of the Front National in a number of rural municipalities largely eschews a binary tale of two Frances.