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.
How can we explain the variations between judicial decisions in criminal matters? Using the method of natural experiment, economist Arnaud Philippe sets out to identify the factors that influence decisions and determine criminal sanctions. At the risk of forgetting sociology?
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.
Employees are the primary inventors, but they are often deprived of their rights by legal strategies that capture their expertise. In response, new forms of resistance are emerging, based on open access.
Developed land is a major but neglected share of property holdings. In a new book, Alain Trannoy and Etienne Wasmer analyze this form of property, identifying its causes in ways that will generate discussion about its distribution—and possible taxation.
About: Hugues Draelants & Sonia Revaz, L’évidence des faits. La politique des preuves en éducation, Puf
About: Yannick Fer, Sociologie du pentecôtisme, Karthala
About: Vincent Citot, Histoire mondiale de la philosophie, Une histoire comparée des cycles de la vie intellectuelle dans huit civilisations, Puf
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.
Five leading scholars of Big Tech studies share their views on the hopes and dangers of the on-going Digital Revolution. Their answers reveal the pressing need for more political, social and economic theorizing of these dynamics.
During the Christmas season, Books and Ideas offers a selection of reviews and essays that tackle the subject of cities and the issues they raise as complex centers of urban life: how could we live better in them? How to reduce the inequalities they create? Can they become more sustainable? The following texts cast a new light on all of these questions.
The current world-wide demand for “real” democracy as embodied in the Indignados (15-M) movement and the Occupy Wall Street movement reiterates long-lasting frustrations as regards representative government and the incompleteness of democratic experiences throughout the world. This dossier gathers interviews and essays by renowned scholars on the conception of democracy as an on-going experience and not as a finished model.
André Gorz’s multiform thought is entirely centred on liberation: from work, which prevents individuals from thriving; from consumption, which grows ever higher; and from the social system, which reduces individuals to mere pawns in a “megamachine”.
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.
Thanks to his work on Greco-Roman antiquity, his intellectual curiosity, his pronounced taste for interdisciplinarity, his sense of humor, and the freedom that informs all his research, Paul Veyne is a twentieth-century historian whose work cannot be avoided. A loose cannon at the heart of the academic establishment, a deep thinker and a dilettante, Veyne invites us, through his work, to a festival of thought.
« La scène des clubs berlinois a-t-elle un problème d’antisémitisme ? » s’interrogeait un journaliste du Spiegel en décembre 2023. Cet article explore les dessous d’un clivage au sein de la scène techno berlinoise autour du conflit israélo-palestinien.
Comment peut-on créer des algorithmes qui soient aussi justes qu’efficaces ? David Robinson propose des pistes de réflexion et tire les conséquences d’une expérience collective.
Pour transformer le quotidien, il est nécessaire non seulement de défaire les rapports de classe, de sexe et de race, mais aussi de renouer avec la matière et la ruralité. L’entre-subsistance permet de fissurer le système capitaliste et patriarcal.
À propos de : Aurélien d’Avout, La France en éclats. Écrire la débâcle de 1940, d’Aragon à Claude Simon, Les impressions nouvelles
À propos de : Laurie A. Paul, Ces expériences qui nous transforment, Eliott
À propos de : Félicien Faury, Des électeurs ordinaires. Enquête sur la normalisation de l’extrême droite, Seuil