« Villes tentaculaires » et banlieue parisienne a l’epoque de l’industrialisation au XIXe siècle
“Tentacular Cities” and Parisian Suburbs at the Time of Industrialization in the 19th Century

Summary/Abstract: This article aims to analyze the social, even societal, and anthropological changes that occurred in the second half of the nineteenth century in a France that became entirely bourgeois and capitalist under the impact of industrialization and its associated phenomena. Once the haussmannian breakthroughs were completed, Paris changed its face, as well as its demographic composition. Industrialization in the second half of the nineteenth century exploded with its attendant anthropological changes in demography, urbanization, and the labor market. Thus it is that Paris is suddenly populated by so many uprooted souls who are unable to find their way back in this new world of "tentacular cities", and in this new reality of a Parisian suburb that has barely been created, but which already functions like the famous Zola’s Assommoir. Besides, where better than in art, which is the mirror of human being, and especially in literature, which is the most descriptive art of them all, and at the same time, the treasure chest of the memory of humanity as a whole, can sociologists, anthropologists, and historians, find the best material to study? The syntagma Villes tentaculaires is used in all three of the above disciplines, but it is in fact the title of a book of poetry. The same goes for L'Assommoir, which describes the vices of this or that society at a certain moment in history, but which is the title of a great novel by Zola.

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