Books & Ideas is the English-language mirror website of La Vie des Idées, a free online journal which has gained a large readership and established itself in France as a major place for intellectual debate since 2007.
Review History
At the beginning of the eleventh century, the collapse of the Umayyad caliphate coincided with political fragmentation. It was in this unusual context, soon to be exacerbated by Christian incursions from the north and Berber incursions from the south, that this part of the Muslim world experienced a flourishing culture.
How did African-Americans attempt to overturn the relations of racial domination in the United States? From the post-war period onwards, by creating cultural and educational institutions specific to their community, which are still useful today in the fight against discrimination.
Educating children by respecting their spontaneous interests: Such is the promise of alternative pedagogies. Subjecting these promises to sociological critique, Ghislain Leroy shows that they are not necessarily emancipatory and may even contribute to the reproduction of social inequalities.
While Chinese immigrants and their descendants have long been portrayed as a “model minority”, Ya-Han Chuang shows how this qualifier papers over the representations that are imposed on members of this minority in France – who are now fighting back against racism.
About: Jérémie Foa, Tous ceux qui tombent. Visages de la Saint-Barthélemy, La Découverte
About: Denis Colombi, Pourquoi sommes-nous capitalistes (malgré nous) ? Dans la fabrique de l’homo œconomicus, Payot
About: Clément Viktorovitch, Le pouvoir rhétorique, apprendre à convaincre et à décrypter les discours, Seuil
Jane Mansbridge has made a major contribution to political theory. She has spent her life combining empirical research with a theoretical approach, and has played a vital role in developing the critique of rational choice and the study of democracy as a permanent process continually in flux.
Rorty made conversation a philosophical genre in its own right, which led him to reject any distinctions he considered futile: between analytic and continental philosophy, between the Enlightenment and postmodernity, between philosophy and literature.
In 1947, Princess Elizabeth promised to serve ‘the great imperial family’, as part of the attempt to remake post-war Britain as a global power. The British Empire collapsed; but this language of service and Commonwealth allowed the Queen to take up the postcolonial concerns of the 21st century.
Food is now a conspicuous topic, from culinary blogs to magazines, diet books, TV shows and contests. Yet unbeknownst to many, it often holds an underground, clandestine place in some of social science’s major works. This dossier assesses the current importance of such scholarly endeavors, known as “food studies” in the United States.
Books & Ideas is slowing down for the summer and will resume its publication schedule on August 26. In the meantime, we present to you a weekly selection of articles published over the last year.
Historians, sociologists, and social scientists in general have long tried to “think big” and “global.” The rise of Asia in the world economy has stimulated anew this attraction for the macro-level. Books and Ideas proposes to look at some of the most innovative ways this work has been done recently, in the history of ideas, of trade and cultural exchanges, economic convergences and decolonization.
Fred Block & Margaret Somers, two key members of an international network of scholars appealing to Karl Polanyi’s masterpiece of 1944, forcefully argue that it constitutes a critical resource for understanding not only the nature and origins of the market economy but also its recurrent crises, including the current one.
Although now considered a pseudo-science, phrenology was tremendously successful in its Victorian heyday. Tracing the intellectual and scientific journey of George Combe, the ’science’s most prominent promoter in Great Britain, this paper addresses the phrenologists’ little-known contribution to the ’social question’ debate of the day, and the ambiguities of their social gospel.
In an innovative study that returns Albert Camus’ early works to their rightful place in the canon, Laurent Bove suggests we should view Camus as a philosopher of immanence and of acquiescence to the joy of the world. This reading is enlightening as far as Camus’ thoughts on history are concerned, but tends to gloss over the ruptures that run though his work, which is driven with multiple tensions.
L’État peut-il changer le comportement des individus ? Il s’y efforce, mais les changements les plus remarquables sont le plus souvent des effets non intentionnels.
Comment se fait le théâtre à la fin du Moyen Âge, et que fait-il à la cité qui l’organise ? Par son caractère exceptionnel autant que la richesse de la documentation, le Mystère des trois doms représenté à Romans-sur-Isère en 1509 révèle sa dimension collective – religieuse, sociale et civique.
Passerelle entre l’Empire romain tardif et le haut Moyen Âge, charnière entre l’Orient romain et les royaumes de l’Ouest, Ravenne a été davantage qu’une capitale : une entité politique au croisement de plusieurs mondes.
À propos de : Frédéric Keck, Préparer l’imprévisible. Lévy-Bruhl et les sciences de la vigilance, Puf
À propos de : David Edmonds, Parfit : A Philosopher and His Mission to Save Morality, Princeton University Press
À propos de : Pablo Gilabert, Human Dignity and Social Justice, Oxford University Press