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.
The rise of surveillance technologies is redefining the approach to security amid economic pressures. Wherever it is implemented, this surveillance, boosted by new technologies, raises the question of abuses that threaten civil liberties.
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.
How can we move beyond the double deadlock of state socialism and market capitalism? For Lea Ypi, returning to Kant and the Enlightenment offers a perspective to provide a new ground to freedom as social responsibility, and to open up towards a cosmopolitan horizon against the authoritarianism of profit.
From Salomé to Lolita, representations of “temptresses” haunt male fantasies. They entail a woman who has said “yes” before she has even been asked anything. And women who “fire up” men’s desire must pay the price.
How do children construct their racial identity? Based on a groundbreaking study of children from so-called “mixed” couples, Solène Brun explores the processes of racialization within family structures.
About: Sandra Hoibian, La mosaïque française. Comment (re)faire société aujourd’hui, Flammarion
About: Jean-Claude Schmitt, Les Images médiévales. La figure et le corps, Gallimard
About: Bertrand Cochard, Vide à la demande. Critique des séries, L’Échappée
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.
Is there still room for hope at the White House?
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 presents a second summer selection, in which contemporary historians tell us about the future of history as a discipline, about how they research and write history, and the way history affects their bodies and minds.
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.
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.
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.
Comment dépasser la double impasse du socialisme d’État et du capitalisme de marché ? Pour Lea Ypi, revenir à Kant et aux Lumières constitue une perspective afin de refonder la liberté comme responsabilité sociale, et pour ouvrir un horizon cosmopolite contre l’autoritarisme du profit.
Surmontant la disparité des corpus documentaires, un ouvrage collectif analyse les points communs entre prisons, bagnes, casernes, hospices, asiles et couvents. Autant d’institutions où le punitif imprègne la routine institutionnelle.
À rebours des replis contemporains, le Maghreb fut, dans les années 1960-1970, un foyer majeur des solidarités révolutionnaires sur le continent africain. De ses capitales surgirent des réseaux politiques, artistiques et intellectuels porteurs d’un élan radical.
À propos de Adam Hochman, The Race Illusion. On the Reality of Racialization and the Myth of Race, Oxford University Press, 2025
À propos de : Lucas Chancel, Énergie et inégalités, Seuil
À propos de : Agnès Grivaux, Capitalisme et déraison. Essai sur la première Théorie critique, Classiques Garnier
