Contemporary Acadia is often construed from the point of view of rupture and summed up by the binary division of tradition and modernity. This Manichean and static interpretation ultimately sets the supposedly regressive Catholicism of the first half of the twentieth century against the progressive liberalism of the 1960s. But is social change not a lengthy process? Is it far-fetched to assume that religion, omnipresent at the beginning of the twentieth century, was not monolithic and that the ideological foundations of Acadian mobilization were able to blossom within? Building on meticulous and detailed studies of student and Catholic Action movements in Acadia, which are ironically not well known, and taking into account their importance, Philippe Volpé invites the reader to ponder these very questions.
From the Association catholique de la jeunesse acadienne, to student unions of the 1960s, to the Jeunesse étudiante catholique, the author presents the players and movements that contributed to the development of the small Acadian society for half a century. Between youth and adult life, Catholic Action and National Action, the social and the political, universalism and nationalism, the college campus and civil society, Acadia and French Canada, this work transports us to the edge of these worlds, to tensions and debates on history, ideas, and programs. In short, it introduces the primordial intentions that have motivated the societal stakeholders in Acadia during the first half of the twentieth century. The result is an original account, which proposes an astonishing rereading of the parameters that help us understand contemporary Acadia.
Published in French.
