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.
During the Middle Ages, women didn’t just listen to music. They sang, composed, copied, and transmitted it. Behind the silence of the sources, there exits, from cloisters to courts, a form of musical life that remains largely unknown. A new book brings to life these flourishing musical practices.
Jeanne Tsai and Batja Mesquita show how emotions are shaped by cultural logics that orient our relationships and judgments. Their conversation raises a broader question: what does it mean to understand others in culturally plural societies?
Has the idea of value lost value? By considering the concept in its plurality, Éric Dacheux and Daniel Goujoun make a case for an economy that is social, ecological, and deliberative.
Céline Marty offers an in-depth interpretation and contextualization of André Gorz’s philosophical oeuvre. Through a careful examination of his vision of a society of subjects that are truly autonomous—in work as in life—she sheds light on the coherence and radicalness of this highly original form of ecosocialism.
About: Sophie Cras et Charlotte Guichard, Vendre son art. De la renaissance à nos jours, Seuil
About: Sacha Todorov, De la City à la ZAD. Une brève histoire des carnavals militants, Classiques Garnier
About: Isabelle Dasque, Le pouvoir des femmes de diplomates, XIXe-XXIe siècles, Nouveau Monde 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.
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.
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.
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. Economic inequalities have been at the forefront of intellectual debate this year with the publication of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Our third selection of articles brings an international perspective on the issue, with a sociological and historical outlook.
Thanks to his work on Greco-Roman antiquity, his intellectual curiosity, his pronounced taste for interdisciplinarity, his sense of humor, and the freedom that informs all his research, Paul Veyne is a twentieth-century historian whose work cannot be avoided. A loose cannon at the heart of the academic establishment, a deep thinker and a dilettante, Veyne invites us, through his work, to a festival of thought.
From the margins to which he was confined, Georges Devereux (1908-1985) formulated some of the most original scientific work of his century. In the wake of Freud, whose legacy he firmly defended, Devereux initiated the transcultural practice of psychiatry. François Laplantine, one of his former disciples, reconsiders the legacy of ethnopsychoanalysis’ founder.
Miguel Abensour profoundly renewed thinking about democracy. His political philosophy paid close attention to the desire for emancipation and was based on an original conception of utopia breaking with the mythology of the ‘ideal city’ or of a ‘good society’.
Plantes et animaux souffrent lourdement pendant les épisodes caniculaires. C’est pourtant la biodiversité, si elle est bien gérée, qui peut réduire la chaleur dans les villes.
Au Moyen Âge, la justice ecclésiastique transforme rumeurs, témoignages et renommée publique en instruments de jugement. La fama permet ainsi de situer le point de croisement de la pratique sociale et de la procédure judiciaire.
À partir de terrains inédits, un ouvrage collectif documente la robustesse de la thèse de la Reproduction, 55 ans après sa parution. Ce faisant, il livre une histoire de la sociologie de l’éducation française depuis les années 1960.
À propos de : Karel Yon, Pierre Rouxel, Maxime Quijoux, Amin Allal, Mohamed Slim Ben Youssef, Anne Bory, Sidy Cissokho & Guillaume Gourgues, Decathlon ou les tactiques de la vertu, Presses de Sciences Po
Claudia Feld et Marina Franco, Crimes contre l’humanité à l’ESMA. Anatomie d’un centre de détention clandestin en Argentine (1976-1983), Anamosa
À propos de : Jonathan Thomas, Le Disque politique en France 1929-1939, Presses Universitaires de Rennes
