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Florence Gould Foundation

Translated with the support of The Florence Gould Foundation

Essays

Kaesong, Caught between Two Koreas

by Antoine Bondaz, 19 June

In February 2016, South Korea decided to close the inter-Korean Kaesong Industrial Complex in protest against North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile tests. Previously, it had not framed (...)
Reviews

The Forgotten of the National Story

About: Michelle Zancarini-Fournel, Les luttes et les rêves. Une histoire populaire de la France de 1685 à nos jours, La Découverte.

by Déborah Cohen, 15 June

The popular history of France told by Michelle Zancarini-Fournel is the history of often hidden individual figures and political struggles. By filling our “memory gaps,” Zancarini-Fournel also (...)
Essays

The Brexit Anomaly

The European Age of the British

by Laurent Warlouzet, 12 June

Given the United Kingdom’s impending split from the European Union, Laurent Warlouzet shows how their complex relationship is the fruit of strategic co-operations, resulting from the vagaries of (...)
Reviews

The Republic and the Witch

About: Vincent Robert, La Petite-Fille de la sorcière. Enquête sur la culture magique des campagnes au temps de George Sand, Les Belles Lettres.

by Vincent Bourdeau, 8 June

In order to fix a society, it is not necessary to wield the “civilising” stick of republicanism. The novels of George Sand, far from being mere rustic tales, propose a clandestine way of doing (...)
Reviews

Populism is a Form of Anti-Pluralism

About: Jan-Werner Müller, Qu’est-ce que le populisme ? Définir enfin la menace, Premier Parallèle (published in English: What is Populism?, University of Pennsylvania Press).

by Hervé Berville, 5 June

The omnipresence of the term ‘populism’ only serves to underline its semantic and ideological ambiguity. According to J.-W. Müller, populists claim that they and they alone represent the popular (...)
Reviews

The End of Modern Economic Growth as We Know It

About: Robert J. Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth : The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War, Princeton University Press.

by Jean-Pierre Dormois, 1 June

Economic progress is behind us in the West, warns Robert J. Gordon in a 750 pages-tome which revisits the economic history of the U.S. in the last century and a half. Measuring the impact on (...)
Reviews

Will We Soon Be Extinct?

About: Charles Frankel, Extinctions. Du dinosaure à l’homme, Seuil

by Matthieu Calame, 29 May

Paleontologists distinguish five periods of mass disappearance of animal species. Are we now entering the sixth period—that of human extinction? Either way, the question brings us back to the (...)
Reviews

The Partisan Justice

About: Sergio Luzzatto, Partigia. Primo Levi, la Résistance et la mémoire (Primo Levi’s Resistance: Rebels and Collaborators in Occupied Italy), Gallimard.

by Alya Aglan, 25 May

From a “minor event”, the execution of two traitors from the Aosta Valley in 1943, Sergio Luzzatto offers us an extensive depiction of the history and memory of the Resistance against a backdrop of (...)
Reviews

Robespierre, An Indecisive Revolutionary

About: Jean-Clément Martin, Robespierre. La fabrication d’un monstre, Perrin, 2016

by Annie Jourdan, 18 May

Was the “Terror” Robespierre’s fault? His name alone has symbolised revolutionary tragedies for two centuries now. Nonetheless, it is a whole different protagonist, once cautious, discreet and (...)
Essays

Decolonizing Philosophy

On the protests in South African universities

by Ernst Wolff, 15 May

Behind the violent debates that have shaken up South African universities, it is the whole legacy of colonialism and of the apartheid era that is at stake. This allows Ernst Wolff to question the (...)
Reviews

Going Wild

About: William Cronon, Nature et Récits. Essais d’histoire environnementale, Éditions Dehors

by Matthieu Calame, 11 May

By studying key concepts of such as frontier, wilderness and rewilding in the United States, William Cronon shows that human history unfolds within a geographical framework, using natural (...)
Reviews

The Idea of the Ghetto

About: Mitchell Duneier, Ghetto : The Invention of a Place, The History of an Idea, Farrar, Strauss & Giroud.

by Nicolas Duvoux, 4 May

The black ghetto has garnered much attention from researchers and American society alike. Revisiting the intellectual trajectory of many of its key thinkers, ethnographer Mitchell Duneier (...)
Reviews

Pornography Under the Lens

About: Florian Vörös (ed.), Cultures pornographiques. Anthologie des porn studies, Éditions Amsterdam.

by Béatrice Damian-Gaillard, 1 May

Alongside the usual reductive condemnations, studies on pornography have increased in the academic world. Florian Vörös examines the field’s key texts, which reveal the diversity of productions and (...)
Reviews

Penal Policy and Racial Prejudice in the United States

About: Elizabeth Hinton, From The War On Poverty To The War On Crime : The Making Of Mass Incarceration in America, Harvard University Press

by Manon Veaudor, 27 April

After the war on poverty, the United States declared a war on crime. This history of penal policy since 1960 looks at the intellectual and political roots of the punitive treatment often reserved (...)
Essays

The Jew with the Gold Coin

by Ewa Tartakowsky, 24 April

In Poland, one can purchase a strange good luck charm to become rich: the picture of a Jew holding a gold coin. What is the significance of this popular re-appropriation of the figure of the Jew (...)
Reviews

Rising Above Racism

About: Michèle Lamont et al., Getting Respect. Responding to Stigma and Discrimination in the United States, Brazil & Israel, Princeton University Press

by François Dubet, 17 April

What responses does racial stigma awaken in its victims? Researching in Brazil, the United States and Israel, a group of sociologists sheds new light on the experience of discrimination and (...)
Reviews

Class-based Healthcare

About: Maud Gelly, Baptiste Giraud, Laure Pitti, “Quand la santé décuple les inégalités”, Agone, N°58, 2016

by Nadège Vezinat, 13 April

Far from lessening inequality between social groups in France, the organisation of the healthcare system and the practices of healthcare professionals actually serve to increase disparity. The (...)
Essays

Indian Populism

by Sylvie Guichard, 10 April

Since Narenda Modi, the strongman of Hindu nationalism, was elected prime minister, discrimination against minorities has increased in India and freedom of expression no longer seems guaranteed. (...)
Reviews

The Birth of ’Race’

About: Claude-Olivier Doron, L’Homme altéré. Race et Dégénérescence, Champ Vallon.

by Vincent Vilmain, 6 April

Retracing the genealogy of the idea of human ‘races’, Claude-Olivier Doron returns to the role of the Enlightenment, and particularly Buffon, in the emergence of monogenistic racial thought. He (...)
Essays

Laughter in Islam

by Mohamed Ben Mansour, 20 March

The texts are clear: far from proscribing joking and joviality, Muslim culture gives significant place to laughter, whether by madmen, social parasites, and Bedouins or by the two main figures of (...)
Reviews

The Importance of Being a Dog

About: Alice Crary, Inside Ethics. On the Demands of Moral Thought, Harvard University Press.

by Vincent Boyer, 16 March

Do animals have a moral life in the same way as humans do? The philosopher Alice Crary argues that they are visible bearers of moral qualities, as literature suggests. But can values be the (...)
Essays

The Thwarted Flows of Bengal

Reflections on the India-Bangladesh Border

by Samuel Berthet, 27 February

The border between Bangladesh and India has created an artificial rift within a space connected by intense circulations. Thrown into illegality, the many migrants who continue to circulate (...)
Reviews

Women in Motion

About: Lauren Elkin, Flâneuse. Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London, Chatto & Windus.

by Adèle Cassigneul, 9 February

Neither passante nor pedestrian, the flâneuse has been left out of history books. Yet, according to Lauren Elkin, flânerie is connected to emancipation, and to revolt. Is urban space then a (...)
Essays

The Right to Live in the City

Homelessness and the Challenges of Address Registration

by Marie Loison-Leruste, 28 November 2016

Sociologist Marie Loison-Leruste shows how address registration is for homeless persons the key to gaining access to rights. She suggests that, beyond reflecting on the question of non-take-up, (...)
Essays

Who Benefits from the Crime?

by Bilel Benbouzid, 31 October 2016

Can an algorithm predict crime? For several years, United States police forces have used software that is said to detect the locations of future crimes and offences. Of the many companies working (...)
Essays

The Trapper: a Hollywood Ghost

On Alejandro González Iñárritu’s The Revenant

by Gilles Havard, 24 October 2016

We should not be misled by the The Revenant’s hyperrealism: Iñárritu’s film is a brilliant filmmaker’s ego trip more than it is an accurate depiction of the trapper’s role in conquering the American (...)
Reviews

The Weight of Memory

About: Catherine Coquio, Le Mal de vérité ou l’utopie de la mémoire, Armand Colin.

by Éric Méchoulan, 13 October 2016

In a multidisciplinary book, Catherine Coquio shows that behind the contemporary cult for memory and truth lies a crisis that is preventing us from moving (...)
Essays

A Splendid Isolation

Protest Policing in France

by Olivier Fillieule & Fabien Jobard, 10 October 2016

Whereas in France police forces deemed guilty of brutality have called for a demonstration against “anti-cop hatred,” in Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland, the interaction between the police and (...)
Essays

Judging Homosexuality, Granting Asylum

by Carolina Kobelinsky, 3 October 2016

Asylum applications on the grounds of sexual orientation, although uncommon, raise questions that are relevant to any asylum claim: according to what criteria and what level of persecution are (...)
Essays

In Defense of Materialism

This text is a commentary on the article by Geoffrey Hodgson entitled “Conceptualizing Capitalism: How the Misuse of Key Concepts Impedes our Understanding of Modern Economies”, which was published on 7 May 2015 in Books and Ideas.

by Clément Carbonnier, 27 September 2016

Can we define capitalism? By acknowledging the role played by economic and philosophical idea in its development, is there not a risk of ignoring the importance of material and technical (...)
Reviews

The Kamasutra and its Audiences

About: Wendy Doniger, The Mare’s Trap: Nature and Culture in the Kamasutra, Speaking Tiger.

by Denis Matringe, 15 September 2016

The Kamasutra, written in the third century, is not only an erotic work: it is also a treatise on the art of living for comfortable city-dwellers, whatever their caste or sexuality—and whether (...)
Reviews

Wealth for All?

About: Philippe Askenazy, Tous rentiers! Pour une autre répartition des richesses Odile Jacob.

by Jérôme Gautié, 8 September 2016

At a time when the French government has reignited the debate over a universal minimum income, Philippe Askenazy reconsiders the question of wealth redistribution. He maintains that intervention (...)
Essays

Arthur C. Danto or the Duality of Worlds

by Laure Bordonaba, 5 September 2016

What distinguishes a blank canvas from an empty frame? A simple object from a readymade? What is this mysterious gap that art digs as it separates from life? Such are the questions posed by (...)
Reviews

What is the Use of Starchitects?

About: Guillaume Ethier, Architecture iconique. Les leçons de Toronto, Presses de l’Université du Québec.

by Christophe Camus, 1 September 2016

Based on the example of Toronto, the sociologist Guillaume Ethier reflects on the cultural and urban effects involved in contemporary architectural realizations referred to as “iconic.” This (...)
Essais & débats

The “Refugee Crises” of the 16th and 17th Century

by Isabelle Poutrin, 29 August 2016

In the early modern period, Spain and Portugal carried out dramatic mass expulsions that affected more than half a million people of Jewish or Muslim faith. Revisiting the fate of these (...)
Reviews

Bourdieu, a Lecture on the Method

About: Pierre Bourdieu, Sociologie générale, vol. 1. Cours au Collège de France 1981-1983, Paris, 2015.

by Thibault Le Texier, 11 July 2016

The first two years of Bourdieu’s teaching at the Collège de France were less a general introduction to his concepts than a long immersion in his method, at the intersection of reflexivity, (...)
Reviews

Augustus: The Eternal Emperor

About: Frédéric Hurlet, Auguste. Les ambiguïtés du pouvoir, Armand Colin.

by Sarah Rey, 7 July 2016

Augustus, the founder of the Roman Empire in 27 BC, was a thoroughly ambiguous man: At once a republican and an autocrat, a conqueror and a peacemaker, he was the inventor of a tradition who (...)
Reviews

Coding the Body

Sport as a Social Practice

by Igor Martinache, 30 June 2016

In contrast to general theories that claim to explain sports practices, a recent book sheds light on the forms of socialization and the institutions that make sports an eminently social (...)
Essays

Is There an Icelandic Democratic Exception?

by Lionel Cordier, 27 June 2016

Seven years have passed since the start of the economic and political crisis in Iceland in 2008. Attempts at reforming the country’s constitution, the heterodox positions it has taken in matters (...)
Reviews

An Ethnography of Evictions in the United States

About: Matthew Desmond, Evicted. Poverty and Profit in the American City, Allen Lane.

by Nicolas Duvoux, 23 June 2016

In the United States, tenant evictions have become a mass phenomenon. The sociologist Matthew Desmond traces the fate of eight Milwaukee families in the grips of an extraordinarily violent (...)

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