Collective Terms: Race, Culture, and Community in a State-Planned City in France

(Berghahn Books) This book provides an ethnographic account of life in a Parisian banlieue and examines how the residents of this multi-ethnic city come together to build, define, and put into practice their collective life. The author also examines how the French state has used urban planning to shore up national priorities for social integration. Epstein has lived and worked in France as a filmmaker and anthropologist since the early 1990s. She is assistant director for academic affairs at New York University in France.