Through a history of the uses of the concept of identity in France, it is possible to identify an essentialist definition that is typical of both common sense and of some of the social science literature, and another, constructivist meaning that has imposed itself on the social sciences against the concept of culture, thereby establishing the current approach to the construction of identities. It seems as if the heuristic advantages of the latter formula have drained themselves, since they tend to privilege the analysis of discourse at the expense of practice, conferring an excessively plastic view of the social. Hoping to re-introduce institutions and social structure into the analysis, I propose an alternative vocabulary of identifications, social images and belonging. I then proceed to a case study of the construction of social image, that of Burgundy in the 3rd Republic, so as to make evident the set of structural and institutional evolutions that are indispensable to the success of a discursive change concerning territories.
Construction of identities; Social image; Wine market; France; Inter-war period
