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 binds people together and turns them into a society? In an ambitious book, the sociologist Serge Paugam wrestles with this question, while bringing sociology into conversation with psychology.
The EU aims for net climate neutrality by 2050, utilizing the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) as its main tool. But the climate crisis demands more than market mechanisms. It requires comprehensive planning and legal frameworks that prioritize public over private interests.
In a book that is part history of ideas, part political essay, Camille Dejardin argues that John Stuart Mill’s oeuvre is useful for understanding contemporary issues, notably the ecological crisis and related economic change. Yet she does so while advancing some half-truths.
Is the law doing enough to protect the environment? Through an analysis of the concept of environmental crime, Grégory Salle shows that legal provisions are limited by a social vision that favors the technical and capitalist exploitation of nature.
About: Thierry Hoquet, Le nouvel esprit biologique, Puf
About: Marie Gaille, En soutien à la vie. Éthique du care et médecine, Vrin
About: Zrinka Stahuljak, Les Fixeurs au Moyen Âge. Histoire et littérature connectées, Seuil
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.
Over the past few months, Books and Ideas has been running a series of interviews with leading contemporary scholars, who took the time to discuss their particular topics of research with us. For the Christmas season, we have put together a selection of seven discussions with intellectuals across the humanities and sciences: sociology, history, comparative literature, neuro-biology, anthropology and political science.
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.
Summer is here; Books&Ideas is off on holiday. We will be back with new publications starting August 30. In the meantime, here is a selection of essays, interviews and reviews published over the past year.
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.
Ronald Dworkin’s innovative and politically ambitious work has become essential reading in political and legal theory. Taking issue with classical political liberalism, he argues that liberty and equality are not mutually exclusive, and are indeed inseparable. And against traditional interpretations of law, he argues that law must be understood by comparing it to a collective novel, a mixture of creativity and interpretation.
Intellectuel russe influent et figure clé du néo-eurasisme, Alexandre Douguine prône une alliance entre la Russie et les anciennes républiques soviétiques contre l’Occident. Son aura, bien que limitée politiquement, a marqué des courants conservateurs et nationalistes en Russie et certains cercles proches du pouvoir.
En retraçant la complexe ascension du néolibéralisme nord-américain au cours des quarante dernières années, la sociologue australienne Melinda Cooper contribue à en désamorcer l’aspect faussement inéluctable, voire à préparer son déclin possible.
S’inscrivant dans l’entreprise de longue haleine d’une « politique de la littérature », Jacques Rancière révèle la portée révolutionnaire des intrigues faussement inoffensives dont Tchekhov a nourri ses nombreux récits.
À propos de : Christophe Bouriau, Kant écologiste, Puf
À propos de : Frédéric Monferrand, La nature du capital. Politique et ontologie chez le jeune Marx, Éditions Amsterdam
À propos de : Jérémie Foa, Survivre. Une histoire des guerres de Religion, Seuil
