The American invasion of Morocco 1942

At the dawn of November 8, 1942, the Casablanca population is awakened by the roar of the sirens of the city, followed by a violent cannonade. The war, in its most brutal reality and its most cruel dimension, then arrives at the gates of Casablanca. The US Navy bombing, in fact, the French navy, moored in the harbor, which has received the order from the Vichy government to resist the American landing in Morocco. The shelling is intense, sometimes bombs miss their target and explode in neighborhoods around the port (including the old medina) and even beyond, making the first civilian victims of Operation Torch. During the three days that last battle of Casablanca, civilians, distressed by the turn of events, indeed lurk in their homes. The city loses its legendary agitation and feverish atmosphere. Casablanca however, avoids the worst, since the massive bombardment of the city, scheduled on November 11 by the Americans, was finally canceled after the announcement of the cease-fire ordered by the Resident General. Casablanca's population still has dozens of dead and wounded. A few weeks later, on the night of December 30 to 31, 1942, another bomb hit the city. It is this time a German air raid, led by eighteen aircraft from Toulouse, which aims at the port infrastructures, where fuel and American material accumulate. Hampered by US air defenses, the devices actually launch their bombs indiscriminately, affecting residential areas. And four bombs fall on the new medina, making 110 victims. This air raid on Casablanca is the only lead the Germans during the war. It is true that it costs them a lot for poor results, since during the return they lose 2/3 of their bombers, largely because of a lack of fuel!
Americanization of CASABLANCA 
After the American landing, population observes impressed, deployment force of the US Army in the various ports of the Kingdom, and against which the French power pales! A young French soldier Raymond Lescastreyres wrote at the time: "We are in awe of their equipment (...) what surprises us most is the sophistication of the equipment they are fitted. In comparison, ours is light years behind. »
For many months, then Casablanca offers an amazing face: tens of thousands of tons of material is temporarily stored in the city, before being transferred to the front of Tunisia (November 1942-May 1943) and to military camps where are equipped with new French units under Anfa agreements. Casablanca is transformed into real military warehouse in heaven opened its docks, just outside the harbor and even on its vast square Administrative (present Place Mohammed V), which hosts an assembly line for war vehicles!
The streets of coastal towns teeming with American uniforms. In cafés, in cinemas, in every public place, impossible not to notice these GI's colorful. And some fun sometimes down the streets of Casablanca ... A horse and gallop! Many people, young and adults, who discover or rediscover the chewing gum, chocolate bars, Coca Cola, American cigarettes. Small shops specialize in products inventory of the US military. Abraham Serfaty specify "the US presence in Morocco also brought me access to the vast literature of this country. In the stands, I was at rock bottom prices paperbacks sold by US soldiers and discovered and Hemingway, Steinbeck and many others. "
Meanwhile, new cultural ideals are spreading, as Americanization, which is reflected in the lifestyles and architecture of bourgeois dwelling. This is also the time when Hollywood is interested in Casablanca and made a film of the same name starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman!
The American influence in Morocco so inspired songwriter Lhoussine Slaoui, which composes a popular tune "Beautiful guy with blue eyes," whose lyrics are very significant, "Oh! Oh! How times have changed! The Americans came, people have become more assertive and women themselves comfortable (...) Even the old put veils and chew gum. The wives took pretext to leave their homes. The beautiful blue-eyed guy arrived with lots of gifts (...) They distribute candy, cigars and even dollars (...) Even the little girls learned the American. You hear nothing but OK, OK, Come On, Bye Bye! »
QUESTION OF THE INDEPENDENCE OF MOROCCO
The new global context resulting from the war fosters demand for independence within the Moroccan society and especially nationalists, hitherto subdued in claiming that no reforms within the Protectorate since the mid-1930s. Indeed, the defeat of France in 1940 and the divisions between French after this event shook the myth of the invulnerability of the occupying power. The American landing in Morocco made it even more sensitive weakening of France. To this are added the public echoes the interview Anfa start of 1943 between the Sultan Sidi Mohammed ben Youssef and US President Roosevelt and the leakage of these interviews, suggesting that many things are going become possible that were not before ...Relying, inter alia, the loyal attitude of the Sultan and the sacrifices of his people to support the war in France, Moroccan nationalist parties end up rejecting the principle of the reforms in the Protectorate and claim the Morocco's independence. The Manifesto of the nationalist Istiqlal Party, published on 11 January 1944, and says the principle of recognition of independence as a precondition for any agreement with France. Its success is such that it concerned the administration of the Protectorate. It is not yet ready to hear these claims and awkwardly responds with repression: demonstrations dispersed by force, arrests and convictions of the signatories. Street roars of loud noise will continue therefore to amplify ... Encouraged by this, by external factors, at the end of the war, such as the United Nations Charter, which proclaims the right of peoples to self-determination and the establishment of the Arab League in Egypt, which encourages the movement of emancipation of the Arab peoples. Therefore, the question of the independence of Morocco will gradually permeate the lives of all the inhabitants of the country. 
THE END OF THE WAR
For now, the Allied victory on May 8, 1945, is seen as a relief for the whole population in Morocco: Although dietary restrictions remain, the anguish of bereavement in thousands of Moroccan and French families finally disappears . In the days and weeks that follow, French and Moroccans reserve a triumphant welcome to the soldiers of the Army of Africa, parents, children or friends, Moroccan and French brothers in arms, who fought side by side for the liberation of Europe. Fleeting moments of sincere communion between two people, who are generally united remained in the race, beyond the continuing tensions. On 15 May 1945, at a reception given by the Sultan Sidi Mohammed ben Youssef, General Resident, Puaux makes a fitting tribute "to the Moroccan people who, animated by his endurance and discipline skills, was able to meet the call is its sovereign (...) to help the Allies of its resources and the value of his children. "The Second World War has resulted in a surge of the Moroccan people gave support to the cause of France and the Allies, whose daily was strongly marked. Elan full of hope back to ...

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Morocco during World War II

During World War II, Morocco is a true haven for refugees of all origins, fleeing a Europe subjected to the yoke of Nazism and fascism. It becomes a place of steps for those who want to flee to America, in neutral countries or continue the fight by winning England. For these people, life in Morocco looks softer than in occupied Europe. Despite the shortage and rationing, the food is better than in France, which is facing a real organized looting by Germany. In addition, there is no curfew or police terror imposed by the Nazis. The German presence in Morocco, in addition to two consulates in Tangiers and Ceuta, limited to German-Italian military commissions responsible for verifying compliance with the terms of the armistice of June 1940.
This task is first provided by the only Italian Armistice Commission, assisted by the inspection of the German control for Africa (KIA), until spring 1941. Epoque from which Germany decides to impose its exclusive military control over Morocco. General Schulteiss is the head of the inspection of the German control, which is divided into two committees: one for the Navy and Air Force, based in Casablanca, one for the Army, serving in Fedala (Mohammedia ). In Casablanca, the German soldiers, discreet enough, live in the area of Anfa. Also added some elements of the Gestapo (German secret police) and members of the Nazi secret service. During the first years of the war, Casablanca turns, moreover, in real nest of spies of the belligerent countries!
 THE ANTISEMITIC MEASURES
 Although spared by the German occupation, Morocco must align with the authoritarian and anti-Semitic policies of the Vichy regime, from July 1940 to November 1942. Thus, The protectorate established discriminatory laws made by the French State in 1940 and 1941, which exclude Jews from teaching, public service and away from the major sectors of the economy. In Casablanca, for example, 26 out of 30 Jewish lawyers are disbarred and 13 doctors over 16 are removed from the order. Meanwhile, 10,000 Algerian Jews living in Morocco, are deprived of their French nationality and relegated to the status of "indigenous".
In August 1941, the newly installed Israelites in the "European quarters" of Moroccan cities since 1939, are forced, in theory, to leave. In Casablanca, a decision of the Pasha, in 1937, forbade them the new medina, they have no choice but to squeeze into the Mellah (Jewish quarter of the Old Medina) or leave the city.
These discriminatory measures also hit the Israelite children. Abraham Serfaty, while the benches Lycée Lyautey of Casablanca, later recalled: "if there were no arrests, however, we eûmes right to prohibited and exclusions. So my sister had she leave the School, the numerus clausus which struck me as having spared revenge. "At night, some teachers defy these unjust actions and ensure ongoing illegal to these young victims of anti-Semitism! It was not until 1943 that all Jewish students find schools of their class and their classmates.
Finally, a few hundred French and foreign Jews, mainly from Central Europe, were interned in "guarded residence camps" real labor camps, divided on Moroccan territory, as in El Jadida, Leuh Ain Beni Mellal, Bou Arfa, Tadla, Mrirt, Tazmamert, Agdz and Ghbila. They stand alongside other French and Moroccan prisoners, Socialists, Communists and Freemasons. However, these do not concern internments Moroccan Jews and do not have a systematic and massive character for others. No Jew in the Kingdom of Morocco is deported to concentration camps and Nazi death in Europe, thus escaping the worst genocide in history, known as the Holocaust, resulting in the death of more than 5 million Jews. If the Israelites from Morocco were able to avoid the tragic fate of their coreligionists in Europe, they owe largely to the protection of the Sultan Sidi Mohammed ben Youssef and accommodation of the anti-Semitic policy, that had to concede the authorities Protectorate loyal to Vichy. Vichy, whose authority gradually fades in Morocco after the landing of the Americans, in November 1942, and with it all discriminatory measures against Jews. Nearly 250,000 Moroccan Jews therefore globally through the years 1940 to 1942 "free of persecution, most of them ignoring the existence of forced labor camps that were set up in Morocco by the Plan Vichy. (...) The Moroccan Jews had suffered a number of measures such as the inventory of the property, but they were never concerned with the saving protection late King Mohammed V, while French and foreign Jews had been secretly imprisoned by the authorities of the Protectorate. "(Serge Berdugo, Secretary General of the Council of Jewish Communities of Morocco, on the 60th anniversary of the Holocaust, 30 January 2005).
THE DETENTION OF SPANISH AND ITALIAN
Another category of population suffers under Vichy, discriminatory measures: the hundreds of Spanish Republican refugees in Morocco since 1939, after the victory of Franco and fascism in Spain, after a terrible civil war. Many of these refugees are settled in Casablanca (eg they represent 15% of the population of the district of Mâarif). This community, whose political ideals of the left or the extreme left are hated by Vichy, is under the supervision of the authorities of the Protectorate. Spaniards are even arrested and interned in camps like those of Azemmour or Oued Zem. Freemasons and the few resistant Gaullists, engaged the first time are also tracked by the French authorities, sometimes with the assistance of the Gestapo and the German secret service. After the American landing in Morocco, in November 1942, the Protectorate, which happened in the Allied camp, releases the Spanish Republicans, the Freemasons and the French Resistance.
It is the turn of the Italian population being suspected ... Fascist Italy of Mussolini being an ally of Nazi Germany. In Casablanca, for example, Italians are enclosed in a camp in Maarif: wooden barracks son with barbed wire, for those men who are sometimes treated fascist ... By their own neighbors!

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The Moroccan-American relations during the second World War

        The American presence in Morocco during the Second World War was in part a function of continuing economic interest in Morocco, in part a result of the wartime political and diplomatic relationship with France, and in part a function of the military course and direction of the war. In one way or another these were factors, motives, means, and objectives of American policy in Morocco.  

        The American landing, however, had a considerable impact among the Moroccans, Muslims and Jews; the presence of soldiers with modern equipment, the numerous shipments of basic products, the flow of dollars, etc. in other words, the display of American power obviously worked toward reducing French prestige. The deterioration of the French image and the increasing American impact can be discerned at various levels.[1]

        When the United States declared war against the Axis powers in 1941, France was not very enthusiastic, especially the French residency in morocco, to transform economic agreements with a neutral power into political or military commitment. Whenever a possible landing was mentioned, it was discouraged by the French. Charles Noguès, Resident General of French Morocco, told Robert Murphy that the native population “could not be trusted” and would use any landing as opportunity to attack the French and the expeditionary forces as well, only chaos and ruin would be the result. He added: “if Morocco becomes a battlefield, it will be lost to France”[2]  

        Newspapers, such as La Voix Nationale warmly greeted the Americans, stating that they had been hoping for the arrival of people who devoted themselves to liberate France and the world. Most important their insistence on the fact that the Moroccans were determined to fight beside the Allied forces without neglecting their own objective which was the recovery of Morocco’s independence.[3]

        The same admiration for the American economic and military superiority could be perceived in some Judeo-Arabic folk songs, which also expressed the confidence in the Allies’ victory over the Germans and the Italians. Another famous Moroccan singer, Houcine Slaoui, also focused on other significant aspects such as the social and psychological impact of the American presence in Morocco.[4]

        The Anfa conference and Sultan’s direct talks with President Franklin Roosevelt also played a major role in the radicalization of the nationalist movement. Roosevelt promises for help and cooperation, the nationalist’s pro-American sympathies, the creation of a “Roosevelt Club” by some eminent personalities from Rabat and Salé, could only worry the French and incite them to take action against American interference in Moroccan affairs.[5]

        Based on the above mentioned events, the American landing made a deep social and psychological impact on different aspects of the Moroccan population, Muslims and Jews, due to the military power and economic and cultural differences between the two countries, and political influence -whether direct or indirect- on the reformist phase of the nationalist movement and its period of radicalization.   

        

        

---

[1] Mohammad Kenbib “The American Impact on Moroccan Nationalism (1930-1945)” in Bookin-Weiner, Jerome B. and El Manor, Mohammed (eds) The Atlantic Connection: 200 Years of Moroccan-American Relations 1786–1986. Edino Press, 1990, p. 179.

[2] Robert Murphy, Diplomat among Warriors Garden City, New York, 1964, p. 112.

[3] Mohammed Kenbib, op. cit., p. 179.

[4] Ibid., p. 179.

[5] Mohammed Kenbib, op. cit., p. 180.

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Culturalism and structuralism

Culturalism 

In the collective mythology of cultural studies, Richard Hoggart (1957), Raymond

Williams (1965, 1979, 1981, 1983) and Edward Thompson (1963) are held to be early

figureheads representing the moment of ‘culturalism’. This perspective is later contrasted

with ‘structuralism’. Indeed, culturalism is a post hoc term that owes its sense precisely to

a contrast with structuralism.

Culture is ordinary, culturalism stresses the ‘ordinariness’ of culture and the active, creative capacity of people to construct shared meaningful practices. Empirical work, which is emphasized within the culturalist tradition, explores the way that active human beings create cultural meanings.

There is a focus on lived experience and the adoption of a broadly anthropological definition of culture which describes it as an everyday lived process not confined to ‘high’ art. Culturalism, particularly for Williams and Thompson, is a form of historical cultural

materialism that traces the unfolding of meaning over time. Here culture is to be explored

within the context of its material conditions of production and reception. There is an

explicit partisanship in exploring the class basis of culture that aims to give ‘voice’ to the

subordinated and to examine the place of culture in class power. However, this form of

‘left culturalism’ is also somewhat nationalistic, or at least nation-centred, in its approach.

There is little sense of either the globalizing character of contemporary culture or the

place of race within national and class cultures.

Structuralism

Culturalism takes meaning to be its central category and casts it as the product of active

human agents. By contrast, structuralism speaks of signifying practices that generate meaning as an outcome of structures or predictable regularities that lie outside of any given person. Structuralism searches for the constraining patterns of culture and social life which lie outside of any given person. Individual acts are explained as the product of social structures. As such, structuralism is anti-humanist in its decentring of human agents from the heart of enquiry. Instead it favours a form of analysis in which phenomena have meaning only in relation to other phenomena within a systematic structure of which no particular person is the source. A structuralist understanding of culture is concerned with the ‘systems of relations’ of an underlying structure (usually language) and the grammar that makes meaning possible.

Deep structures of language

Structuralism in cultural studies takes signification or meaning production to be the effect

of deep structures of language that are manifested in specific cultural phenomena or human speakers. However, meaning is the outcome not of the intentions of actors per se but of the language itself. Thus, structuralism is concerned with how cultural meaning is generated, understanding culture to be analogous to (or structured like) a language.

The work of Ferdinand de Saussure (1960) was critical in the development of structuralism. He argued that meaning is generated through a system of structured differences in language. That is, significance is the outcome of the rules and conventions that organize language (langue) rather than the specific uses and utterances which individuals deploy in everyday life (parole).

According to Saussure, meaning is produced through a process of selection and combination of signs along two axes, namely:

1 the syntagmatic (linear – e.g. a sentence);

2 the paradigmatic (a field of signs – e.g. synonyms).

The organization of signs along these axes forms a signifying system. Signs, constituted by

signifiers (medium) and signifieds (meaning), do not make sense by virtue of reference to

entities in an independent object world; rather, they generate meaning by reference to each

other. Meaning is a social convention organized through the relations between signs.

In short, Saussure, and structuralism in general, are concerned more with the structures

of language which allow linguistic performance to be possible than with actual performance in its infinite variations. Structuralism proceeds through the analysis of

binaries: for example the contrast between langue and parole or between pairs of signs

so that ‘black’ only has meaning in relation to ‘white’, and vice versa.

Culture as ‘like a language’

Structuralism extends its reach from ‘words’ to the language of cultural signs in general.

Thus human relations, material objects and images are all analysed through the structures

of signs. In Lévi-Strauss (see Leach, 1974), we find structuralist principles at work when

he describes kinship systems as ‘like a language’ – that is, family relations are held to be

structured by the internal organization of binaries. For example, kinship patterns are

structured around the incest taboo that divides people into the marriageable and the

prohibited.

Typical of Lévi-Strauss’s structuralism is his approach to food, which, he declares, is

not so much good to eat, as good to think with. That is, food is a signifier of symbolic

meanings. Cultural conventions tell us what constitutes food and what does not, the circumstances of their eating and the meanings attached to them. Lévi-Strauss tends

towards the structuralist trope of binaries: the raw and the cooked, the edible and the

inedible, nature and culture, each of which has meaning only in relation to its opposite.

Cooking transforms nature into culture and the raw into the cooked.

The edible and the inedible are marked not by questions of nutrition but by cultural

meanings. An example of this would be the Jewish prohibition against pork and the

necessity to prepare food in culturally specific ways (kosher food). Here, binary oppositions of the edible–inedible mark another binary, insiders and outsiders, and hence the boundaries of the culture or social order. Later, Barthes (see Chapter 3) was to extend the structuralist account of culture to the practices of popular culture and their naturalized

meanings or myths. He was to argue that the meanings of texts are to be grasped not in

terms of the intentions of specific human beings but as a set of signifying practices.

In sum:

• Culturalism focuses on meaning production by human actors in a historical context.
• Structuralism points to culture as an expression of deep structures of language

that lie outside of the intentions of actors and constrain them.

• Culturalism stresses history.
• Structuralism is synchronic in approach, analysing the structures of relations in a

snapshot of a particular moment. As such, it asserts the specificity of culture and

its irreducibility to any other phenomena.

• Culturalism focuses on interpretation as a way of understanding meaning.
• Structuralism has asserted the possibility of a science of signs and thus of objective knowledge.

Structuralism is best approached as a method of analysis rather than an all-embracing philosophy. However, the notion of stability of meaning, upon which the binaries of structuralism and its pretensions to surety of knowledge are based, is the subject of attack by poststructuralism.That is, poststructuralism deconstructs the very notion of the stable structures of language.

Poststructuralism (and postmodernism)

The term poststructuralism implies ‘after structuralism’, embodying notions of both critique and absorption. That is, poststructuralism absorbs aspects of structural linguistics

while subjecting it to a critique that, it is claimed, surpasses structuralism. In short, poststructuralism rejects the idea of an underlying stable structure that founds meaning

through fixed binary pairs (black–white; good–bad). Rather, meaning is unstable, being

always deferred and in process. Meaning cannot be confined to single words, sentences

or particular texts but is the outcome of relationships between texts, that is, intertextuality.

Like its predecessor, poststructuralism is anti-humanist in its decentring of the unified,

coherent human subject as the origin of stable meanings.

Derrida: the instability of language

The primary philosophical sources of poststructuralism are Derrida (1976) and Foucault

(1984d) (see Chapter 3). Since they give rise to different emphases, poststructuralism

cannot be regarded as a unified body of work. Derrida’s focus is on language and the

deconstruction of an immediacy, or identity, between words and meanings.

Derrida accepts Saussure’s argument that meaning is generated by relations of difference

between signifiers rather than by reference to an independent object world. However,

for Derrida, the consequence of this play of signifiers is that meaning can never be fixed.

Words carry many meanings, including the echoes or traces of other meanings from

other related words in other contexts. For example, if we look up the meaning of a word

in a dictionary, we are referred to other words in an infinite process of deferral. Meaning

slides down a chain of signifiers abolishing a stable signified. Thus, Derrida introduces

the notion of différance, ‘difference and deferral’. Here the production of meaning in the

process of signification is continually deferred and supplemented.

Derrida proceeds to deconstruct the ‘stable’ binaries upon which structuralism, and

indeed western philosophy in general, relies. He argues for the ‘undecidability’ of binary

oppositions. In particular, deconstruction involves the dismantling of hierarchical conceptual oppositions such as speech/writing, reality/appearance, nature/culture, reason/

madness, etc., which exclude and devalue the ‘inferior’ part of the binary.

For Derrida, ‘we think only in signs’ and there is no original meaning circulating outside

of ‘representation’. It is in this sense that there is nothing outside of texts or nothing

but texts (by which it is not meant that there is no independent material world). That is,

the meanings of texts are constitutive of practices.

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Education in the United States

Educational systems in the US are decentralized, most decisions on programs and funding are taken by local authorities: the school boards. Educational programs (Curriculla) are generally established by each US State. The federal government, through the Department of Education of the United States (equivalent to the Ministry of Education in France), is mainly involved in education funding. Private schools develop their free program in the public system, only 22 States shall establish a list of recommended books. In most states, freedom of choice is total. The legislatures of each state shall establish a minimum set of common knowledge in the programs.
Classes are taught in English in all 50 states, in Spanish in the territory of Puerto Rico. There is no constitutional official language in the United States, but 29 of the 50 states have adopted English as the sole official language (Spanish is a second language in the territory of Puerto Rico, Hawaiian in State of Hawaii and Chamorro in the territory of Guam); French is a language to "facilities" in several parishes of Louisiana. Each school district or school district has the choice of language of instruction, but English is the choice in all 50 states, including Hawaii and Louisiana. Puerto Ricans chose Spanish. Some 90% of US students are enrolled in public.

Main Features

Pre-School, Nursery School or Head Start (preschool): from 3 to 5 years.

Elementary School and Grade School (elementary school, primary school)

Kidgarden (kindergarten): 5-6

1st Grade: 6-7

2nd Grade: 7-8

3rd Grade: 8-9

4th Grade: 9-10

5th Grade: 10-11

Middle School or Junior High School (junior high)

6th Grade: 11-12 (sometimes this class is provided by elementary schools or elementary school in English.)

7th Grade: 12-13

8th Grade: 13-14

High school (High School)

9th Grade (called Freshman year (first year)): 14-15 (sometimes this class is provided by the middle schools)

10th Grade (called Sophomore year (second year)): 15-16

11th Grade (called Junior year (secondary)): 16-17

12th Grade (called Senior year (graduate)): 17-18

College7 or University

Undergraduate (university undergraduate)

College or University (Faculty)

4-year cycle leading to a Bachelor of Arts (BA), a Bachelor of Science (BS) or other qualifications as a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) for example.

Community college (university community)

Lower division (lower division), 2-year cycle leading to a diploma of Associate of Arts (AA).

Upper division (upper division), 2-year cycle leading to a BA, BS or diplomas as a Bachelor of Technology (BT) for example.

Postgraduate (postgraduate)

Cycle 1 to 3 years leading to a master: Master of Arts (MA), Master of Science (MS) or other degrees such as Master of Education (MEd) or Master of Fine Arts (MFA).

Postgraduate in "nationales8 universities"

3-year cycle or more leading to a doctorate: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Doctor of Arts, Doctor of Theology, Doctor of Medicine or Juris Doctor [law degree]; PhD can also be obtained after at least two years of study after a master.

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U.K history and culture: Magna Carta

Issued in 1215, the Magna Carta is one of the most famous documents in English history. It is often considered the cornerstone of freedom, democracy and English law, and it has left in the world a sustainable universal influence. The original Magna Carta brought a practical solution to the political crisis of the reign of King John; it laid the legal principles of the sixty three original articles which are still valid. What makes the critical importance of the charter is that it imposed for the first time royal authority detailed written restrictions on taxation, feudal rights and justice, and has reaffirmed the power of customary practice to limit injustice and arbitrariness Royal. Essentially, it is the Magna Carta, which established the principle that the king is not above the law but must govern by respecting it.
The Magna Carta is not a single original document on which King John affixed his seal before his barons at Runnymede in 1215. The agreement was concluded orally confirmed oath and put in writing later in the form of royal charter by the king's scribes. from Many copies of the charter were shipped across the country in June 1215, but only four of these originals are kept: two at the British Library, one in the archives of the
Lincoln Cathedral and in those of Salisbury Cathedral. The enactment of the Magna Carta is one of the most famous episodes of history England. The four surviving examples are symbols of the British way of life and
icons of freedom and democracy, with sustainable universal impact.

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Introduction to gender studies

Gender Studies is a field of interdisciplinary studies, relatively new. They appeared in North America in the years 1970-1980. They bring together all the issues relating to gender differences, sexuality, behavior in disciplines as diverse as literature, language, history, politics, sociology, anthropology, cinema, communication (study media), law, medicine, and the list continues. For example, in politics, we will consider feminism. In sociology, we will study the influence of male / female in social interactions. Here for example, a question that has its place in the so-called gender studies.

Distinguish the sex (genetics) and gender (social construction)
Such studies are based on the assumption that sex and gender are dissociated. Sex is a biological fact. But gender is not an expression of the genetic makeup of an individual: it is a social construction. Specifically, the sex of an individual is determined by its genetic code. Kind, however, is built influenced by its environment: the education he received, the interactions he has had during its development, etc ...Such studies were not intended to "deny biological reality" and the critics proclaim. They are simply to distinguish this biological reality of all social constructions of all theories (which for once are many theories) that come grafted to, then seeking an undeniable legitimacy - because you said that's nature!

The importance of gender in society
Gender is an element of individual identity. And it is important to understand, important to teach it. Because gender is not neutral, but it remains ubiquitous in our daily lives.
The feminine carries the weight of a weave of male domination. The woman has long been the property of men around him: Father's property and then the husband, son's responsibility. Still remember that women have the right to work without the permission of their husbands since 1965. It was there not long ago.
The female gender still has a negative connotation. There are many examples throughout the place these gender stereotypes still occupy in the social space. If women can wear pants without it do raise any eyebrows, it is not the same for men and skirt. The skirt is a women's clothing.

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