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.
In this collection of essays, Jean-Claude Schmitt continues his examination of medieval images. Considering the topic from a semantic, historical, and artistic perspective, he explores how the medieval West thought about images and, at times, through images.
In their recent research about Israeli politics, Noam Gidron and his coauthors explore the country’s affective polarization, the support for the judicial overhaul, Likud’s populism, and the relations between them.
Digitally distributed television series are one of the key forms of contemporary entertainment. By analyzing this distinctive form of consumption, it is possible to explain these consumers’ relationship to time, narratives, and decision-making.
Drawing on a socio-historical study of the construction of astronomical observatories on the island of Hawai‘i, Pascal Marichalar shows that scientific policies can no longer be considered separately from their ecological and social impacts.
About: Justine Lacroix, Les valeurs de l’Europe. Un enjeu démocratique, Collège de France éditions
Olivier Mahéo, De Rosa Parks au Black Power : Une histoire Populaire des mouvements noirs, 1945-1970, Presses Universitaires de Rennes
À propos de : Vincent Tiberj, La droitisation française. Mythe et réalités (France’s rightward turn: myths and realities), Puf
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.
Ukraine’s water networks have been mobilized since the start of the war in 2014. Infrastructure workers are some of the last to leave settlements attacked by the Russian army. Water systems and people are resisting but are reaching the limits of their capacity to adapt to violence and disruptions.
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.
Summer is here. Books&Ideas is off on holiday. We will be back with new publications starting August 29th. In the meantime, here is a selection of essays, interviews and reviews published over the past year.
In this virtual roundtable published in partnership with Public Books, six contributors from France, Russia and the US address the issue of contemporary Russia and its often tense relations with the West.
Richard Hoggart (1918-2014), a poor child who went onto become a university professor, was the epitome of a successful scholarship student. The trajectory of this “exemplary counter-example” sheds light on the mechanisms of social reproduction when they prove inoperative and the distance that can be traveled from one’s native milieu.
One of Albert O. Hirschman’s contributions to economic theory is a richer understanding of the concept of the “rational actor,” which, he demonstrated, possesses the deliberative capacities that democratic market societies require. This following is a profile of an economist who was also a dissident and an activist.
According to Nancy Fraser, the renewal of socialism requires a conflation of activism and political theory; indeed, emancipation can only exist on the basis of equal participation in all spheres of life, and can only be understood in terms of social struggles, which today appear in multiple forms.
La silhouette féminine est depuis longtemps l’objet de normes sociales. À l’heure des réseaux sociaux, ces normes s’intensifient et provoquent en réaction des mouvements « body-positifs ».
La liberté que nous invoquons résulte-t-elle du rejet d’un idéal plus exigeant ? Soutenant l’idée que l’indépendance face au pouvoir a cédé la place à une liberté conçue comme simple absence d’entraves, Quentin Skinner identifie une mutation à la racine du discours libéral.
Abbès Zouache est connu pour avoir développé une anthropologie de la guerre dans le Proche-Orient médiéval. Dans cet essai personnel, fondé sur son expérience entre Moyen-Orient et Europe, il propose une réflexion sur la croisade comme phénomène mémoriel, en Occident comme dans les pays arabes.
À propos de : Georgina Adam, L’essor des musées privés dans le monde, BeauxArts éditions
À propos de : Patrice Canivez, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. La politique face à l’histoire, Puf
Frédéric Jacquin, Mourir de la peste. Anthropologie d’une épidémie (1720-1722), Champ Vallon
