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.
Both as a religion and as a civilisation, Islam is currently beset by a cacophony and a worrying erosion of plurality by its apologists as well as its detractors. The “clash of ignorances” is much more real than the so-called “clash of civilisations”.
Quotas in India contribute to the emancipation of lower castes while producing perverse effects that are difficult to control. Rohini Somanathan questions the right balance between targeted positive discrimination policies and public policies with a universal vocation.
A recent book traces the rich history of Assyriology, from pioneers such as Oppert and Grotefend, through the major institutions that have contributed to its development, to today’s research projects. This is a portrait of a surprisingly contemporary science.
By analysing a generalised process of “logistisation”, Mathieu Quet shows that the circulation of people and goods is at the heart of our societies. But has logistics also captured language and the living world?
About: Benoît Pelopidas, Repenser les choix nucléaires. La séduction de l’impossible, Presses de Sciences Po
About: Frédéric Fruteau de Laclos, La connaissance des autres, Éditions du Cerf
About: Mohamad Amer Meziane, Des empires sous la terre. Histoire écologique et raciale de la sécularisation, La Découverte
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.
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.
As populism is rising on a global level, Books & Ideas offers a series on media politics in East Asian countries, to be published over the next two weeks. Though situations are extremely diverse, they can teach us a lot on the relationship between the state and journalists in authoritarian contexts. What role is left for the media to play in non-democracies?
The economic crisis that has plagued a great part of the world since 2008 remains baffling as ever, all questions and no answers. Why not start by listing the former, and then imagine what the latter could look like?
From the margins to which he was confined, Georges Devereux (1908-1985) formulated some of the most original scientific work of his century. In the wake of Freud, whose legacy he firmly defended, Devereux initiated the transcultural practice of psychiatry. François Laplantine, one of his former disciples, reconsiders the legacy of ethnopsychoanalysis’ founder.
By asserting that structuralism is a fruitful approach to kinship relations or the difference between the sexes, Françoise Héritier radically renewed anthropological methodology. Her life’s work has also shown us that scientific commitment goes hand-in-hand with societal involvement.
Rediscovering an activist thinker who was at the origins of eco-feminism, but remains unknown. Her work inspired an extremely heterogeneous movement, but has her ambition to concretely transform the social, economic and political organisation of society been pursued?
L’exposition L’Invention de la Renaissance nous fait pénétrer dans le monde intellectuel et matériel des humanistes au travail, depuis leurs sources d’inspiration antiques jusqu’à leur lieu de retraite. Elle témoigne aussi de la manière dont les manuscrits ont voyagé vers la France au XVe siècle.
En raison du bouleversement climatique, l’effondrement forestier guette. Or il est urgent de définir des politiques ambitieuses fondées sur une forêt diversifiée, garante de la formation des sols et du cycle de l’eau. Alors, parlons croissance – mais croissance des arbres !
Dans une ville de province de l’Algérie coloniale, juifs et musulmans coexistent dans un climat de plus en plus tendu. C’est alors qu’un provocateur proche de l’extrême droite déclenche de sanglantes émeutes.
À propos de : Adrienne Mayor, Feu grégeois, bombes à scorpions et cochons enflammés. La guerre non conventionnelle dans l’Antiquité, Nouveau Monde éditions
À propos de : Thibault Ducloux, Illuminations carcérales : comment la vie en prison produit du religieux, Labor et Fides
À propos de : Tarun Khanna et Michael Szonyi (éd.), Making Meritocracy. Lessons from China and India, from Antiquity to the Present, Oxford University Press