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.
The media industry has undergone dramatic changes in its technologies and business models. To help us understand the effects of these changes on democracy, Books and Ideas takes the discussion away from simplistic dichotomies between the Internet and the so-called “traditional” press.
Books & Ideas is slowing down for the summer and will be offering weekly selections of reviews and essays published over the last year. This week’s selection focuses on digital tools, their relationship to political power and capitalism.
After four years of monetary crisis in Europe, with serious political and social consequences for some countries, as well as a general mistrust of Europe’s political and economic models, new analyses bring light on what happened in 2009 and on how to improve the current situation. Books&Ideas presents them in a selection of essays and reviews on Europe, its money, its construction, and its politics.
Though poorly known in France, the work of the anthropologist Mary Douglas is nonetheless essential for understanding the elementary forms of social organization and daily life. By shedding light on her academic career and personal life, this portrait rehabilitates the thought of a major intellectual.
Umberto Eco is best known to the general public for his novels and critical works in which he developed his theory of reception. Who realizes, however, that this aspect of his work is only one part of a general semiology organized around a philosophy of signs?
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.
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