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 are the emancipatory prospects for women excluded from salaried work? By analyzing working-class Maghrebin women’s attitudes towards work, family, and heterosexuality, Fatma Çingi Kocadost shows the limits of individual emancipation through work.
Black women—whether from the Caribbean, Africa, or of African descent—have conceptualized and embodied French citizenship. Their often hidden trajectories and struggles illustrate an alternative history of the nation, shaped by colonialism, when seen through the lenses of race, class, and gender.
How does justice vanquish force? Simone Weil’s thought unifies politics and religion while proposing a radical conception of power, understood not as domination but as retreat, in a world in which violence gives way to obedience.
About: Vanina Mozziconacci, Apprendre à philosopher en féministe, La Dispute
About: Étienne Anheim et Paul Pasquali, Bourdieu et Panofsky. Essai d’archéologie intellectuelle, Les Éditions de Minuit
About: Bernard Manin, Montesquieu, Hermann
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.
We seem to struggle to take the measure of the Covid-19 pandemic. Its onset was sudden, its effects are uncertain and its long term consequences are still unpredictable. Books & Ideas gathers a selection of texts exploring the various facets of epidemics.
The June protests which shook Brazil in 2013 stunned the world. This dossier, published by Books&Ideas, discusses the main issues at the core of these protests, analyzing them in the light of previous mobilizations and explaining why they are essential to the understanding of contemporary Brazil.
How to combat growing inequalities and injustice in a given country? Recent research suggests that solutions lie in better understanding and controlling access to education and working conditions but also in regulating tax havens and the salaries of executives.
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’.
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.
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.
En transformant l’épopée homérique en récit de culpabilité, de traumatisme et de rédemption, Christopher Nolan ne se contente pas d’adapter L’Odyssée. Il la soumet à une grille morale, psychologique et politique qui dénature souvent le monde grec qu’il prétend restituer.
Le sommeil a changé depuis la révolution industrielle : les contraintes de tous ordres, liés aux impératifs de production, lui nuisent fortement. Notre capacité physiologique d’adaptation, pour grande qu’elle soit, reste cependant limitée.
Un travail collectif propose une cartographie des enjeux, des modalités et des dynamiques de sortie des sociétés capitalistes. Ce volume prend sens à partir de la conjoncture ouverte par la crise financière de 2007-2009, où les propositions visant à dépasser le capitalisme ont trouvé un nouvel écho.
A propos de : Clément Thibaud, 1815 : Fin de l’âge des révolutions ?, Puf
À propos de : Olivier Ritz, Une histoire littéraire de la Révolution française, Gallimard
À propos de : Dominique Boullier, Déshumanités numériques, Armand Colin
