Philip Whalen

This dissertation provides the first examination of Gaston Roupnel's scholarly contributions to the French human and social sciences during the early twentieth century. Following a biographical overview of his life and professional career, it compares his works to those of early Annales historians, contemporary human geographers, and social morphologists in order to examine how they addressed and responded to shared conceptual and methodological problems. It further argues that Gaston Roupnel's collected works constitute a pioneering 'histoire totale' of a French historical region---the Burgundian Dijonnais. More broadly, it links Roupnel's scholarship about Burgundian history and culture to contemporary discourse concerning the heritage and identity of "True France."

The modernization of Burgundy during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries drew on the coordinated efforts of numerous industrial and cultural sectors. Among these innovative developments, new tourism industries played a prominent role in providing new opportunities for the consumption of local products while redefining existing conceptions of Burgundian landscapes. This entailed collaboration of a variety of cultural intermediaries ranging from local boosters to politicians and from merchants to academics. Geographers contributed by incorporating symbolic, subjective, and performative practices into the existing regional concepts of terroir and genres-de-vie. The result was newly scripted roles for tourists and locals to participate in gastronomic activities that, by virtue of the experience, altered participants’ experience of time, space, and themselves. Rapidly institutionalized in Burgundy, these developments illustrate how contemporary commercial interests influenced geographic notions of place in the French provinces.