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.
Can mysticism be a philosophical tool? Yes, provided one understands it philosophically as an experience that leads to morality and universal love.
Sandra Ristovska examines how images shape judicial reasoning and the new uncertainties introduced by AI and deepfakes. These technologies amplify longstanding problems of evidence, interpretation, and inequality before the law.
The French government’s approach to religious pluralism cannot be easily summarized, given its diversity and complexity, as well as its dependence on the contingencies of politics.
To mark the 80th anniversary of the end of the war in East Asia, a nuanced assessment of the American occupation of Japan (1945–1952) and its lasting impact on contemporary Japanese society is now available in French for the first time.
About: Dominique Lagorgette, Pute. Histoire d’un mot et d’un stigmate, La Découverte
About: Pierre Serna, La Révolution oubliée. Orléans, 1789-1820, CNRS Éditions
About: David Copello, Les droits humains armés. Guérillas, dictatures et démocratie en Argentine, Presses universitaires de Rennes
The female silhouette – understood as the body’s visible form and socially perceived appearance – has long been shaped by social norms. In the age of social media, these norms are intensifying, prompting, in response, the rise of so-called “body-positive” movements.
A rumour is circulating in some African countries: the French state is organising penis thefts to offset declining fertility. The rumour, spread by Russian propaganda, has become fake news.
The American sociologist Harrison White made a vital contribution to the development of social network analysis. Besides his work in this field, his theoretical synthesis and his understanding of social formations have influenced a variety of fields such as the sociology of art and economic sociology.
How can we define democracy today? What role does or should the people play in the democratic process ? Through its summer selection, Books&Ideas offers to rediscover a group of four interviews and reviews, published in 2015 and 2016, which have tackled these questions through the prism of history, philosophy and political sciences.
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.
Twenty years after the publication of Viviana Zelizer’s “The Social Meaning of Money”, this special issue brings together scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds to examine the genesis of the book, its impact in shaping the analysis of economic value, and its enduring intellectual influence on both sides of the Atlantic.
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.
Books & Ideas is going on holiday for the summer, and will resume its publication schedule in September. In the meantime, we present you with a weekly roundup of our most recent essays and reviews. Our second summer selection features portraits of prominent intellectual figures: Albert Camus, René Dumont, Ronald Dworkin, Joan W. Scott and Max Weber.
For more than thirty years, Joan Scott has been informing and transforming both our history and the way we write history, while encouraging us to question categories and change our modes of thinking. From class struggle to sex differentiation, sexual emancipation and race, she proposes a critical analysis of Republican rhetoric to undermine naturalized forms of inequality.
Depuis 1871, le prix du pétrole a connu des envolées multiples : l’histoire de ces fluctuations des cours met en lumière les fragilités additionnées d’une dépendance ordinaire.
L’essayiste Joseph Andras propose de “relever” l’idéal socialiste, mis à terre par les dérives révolutionnaires, en s’appuyant sur les grandes figures qui l’ont élaboré et défendu contre les abus du fanatisme.
Contraintes par des budgets de plus en plus austères, l’action écologique locale des pouvoirs publiques n’est souvent que faux-semblant. Ce sont pourtant les communes qui sont, en la matière, en première ligne.
À propos de : Alex Blanchette, Porkopolis : La vie standardisée à l’ère des fermes-usines, Editions Amsterdam
À propos de : Elara Bertho, Conakry, une utopie panafricaine. Récits et contre-récits 1958-1984, CNRS Éditions
À propos de : Laure Bereni, Managing Corporate Virtue. The Politics of Workplace Diversity in New York and Paris, Oxford University Press
