National Identity and National Boundary Patterns in France and the United States

American scholars working on France have long been interested in exploring France's national identity and cultural specificity. Stanley Hoffman's classic In Search of France is one of the most important benchmarks in this literature.' More recently, social scientists have renewed their interest in these issues, exploring collective definitions of the French nation and its internal diversity,2 French national identity as expressed through nationalism,3 the changing relationship between the local and the national,4 the identity crisis that followed the Americanization of France, increased Muslim immigration and integration, and the multiplication of transnational identities, symbolized, for example, by the European Economic Union.5 France's