THE OTHER HOUSE.

From the early 1960s to the mid-1980s, a revaluation of the French countryside as a site of leisure and as a place to imagine France's rural past fueled an unprecedented boom in the ownership of peasant houses by urban dwellers for use as secondary residences. The rural résidence secondaire became a mass phenomenon and a paradoxical hallmark of the radical modernization of French society that had taken place during the years of rapid economic expansion dubbed the trente glorieuses. This article lays out the economic and social developments that made mass ownership of secondary houses possible and that stimulated the emergence of a market for old, often dilapidated, houses in rural areas. It also explores the affective needs and consumer desires that made fixing up a rundown peasant house or farm building compelling for so many city dwellers and a lasting feature of French postwar culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]