Conference Abstracts
24. Hamdoun, Mohamed; University Paris 13:
"E-twinning: From town-to-town twinning to global twinning"
The movement of town-twinning agreements was emerged
just after the Second World War. It was based on the utopian view
that war could be avoided if official diplomacy was either replaced
or sustained by direct contacts between the peoples themselves.
It was further motivated by the experience of the
leagues of the national committees in inter-war period: Those committees
mustered popular support for an abstract idea but in no way organised
better understanding between peoples. This reflection was the basis
of the most Franco-German twinning agreements after the war. Another
aspect of the international context was the East-West division of
the Cold War, which communist and left-wing municipalities in the
West tried to circumvent by reaching agreements with East European
cities.
And lastly from the seventies onwards the same municipalities
tried to break their isolation by reaching agreement with municipalities
of similar complexion in the West. This took place within the context
of a growing acceptance of European construction and its possible
benefits for de-industrialised areas.
Cities in less developed countries (LDCs) tried as
well to establish such twinning with municipalities in the West
and elsewhere. As a result in local government, developments are
increasingly influenced not only by the national level but also
by global change and by decisions made at the supranational and
international levels. Vice versa, towns and cities are becoming
global players. Internet as a medium has largely improved this city
networking. In our paper, we tend to anlyse this new phenomenon
and to see how Internet has turned city-to-city twinning, often
called e-twinning, into global twinning, taking into consideration
examples from (LDCs) and two antagonistic forces: the local and
the global.
Keywords: twinning, e-twinning, city, cooperation,
municipalities, urban, (inter) cultural, local, global.
Back
|
