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.
What is the nature of the distinctive rationality that underpins Cleisthenes’ reform, which many see as the birth of Greek democracy? What social mechanisms, civic experiences, and forms of vernacular knowledge made this new system of political organization possible?
The love for newness did not begin with modern consumer society. It has long been capitalism’s primary engine and has been central to how it imagines the market. At present, its environmental impact is disastrous.
Can morality be grounded in the sense of sympathy? According to Adam Smith, sympathy with the sentiments of others is precisely what allows for self-command, a cardinal virtue that enables us to act from a sense of duty.
About: Patrick Boucheron, Peste Noire, Seuil
About: Richard Schittly, Les Oubliés d’Action directe. De l’ultra-gauche au terrorisme, La Manufacture des livres
About: Pascal Engel, Foucault et les normes du savoir, Eliott éditions
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.
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.
In the U.S., in France as well with Hugues Lagrange’s book on “the denial of cultures”, culture has again become the focus of poverty studies. Our dossier on “culture of poverty” reviews this new trend and examines a notion that has paradoxically been given a new lease of life by the economic downturn, half a century after Oscar Lewis controversially introduced it.
In this virtual roundtable published in partnership with Public Books, four participants from France, Germany and the US re-visit the inequalities debate sparked by Thomas Piketty’s Capital, comparing perceptions of income, economic equality and political economy.
How do scientific discoveries and progress come about? Against an idealist and triumphalist conception of the history of science, Simon Schaffer’s oeuvre examines science in the making, in close proximity to its practices and actors. Far from diminishing its prestige, this approach restores science to the central place it occupied in Old Regime societies.
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.
A highly respected figure in African studies, Jack Goody has become a distinctive voice in the torrent of academic critiques of western ethnocentrism. His work, spanning more than sixty years, has been based on a single ambition: comparison, for the sake of more accurately locating European history within Eurasian and world history.
L’art naît de contrainte et meurt de liberté : il semble que le cinéma iranien, sous contrôle et censure, illustre ce fameux adage.
La panthéonisation de Marc Bloch est l’occasion de relier son parcours de citoyen avec les pistes scientifiques qu’il a ouvertes vers le comparatisme, l’interdisciplinarité ou encore l’étude des mentalités. Derrière l’hommage, il s’agit de l’inscrire dans son temps, ainsi que dans son monde social.
Les livres et magazines pour la jeunesse sont bourrés de clichés qui, au sein du récit, favorisent les garçons au détriment des filles. Au-delà du cas français, il faut réfléchir au coût social d’un tel déséquilibre.
À propos de : Christophe Bouton, Sur les traces du temps, Minuit
À propos de : Allison Carnegie et Richard Clark, Global Governance Under Fire. How International Organizations Resist the Populist Wave, Princeton University Press
À propos de : Patrick Boucheron, Peste Noire, Seuil
