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.
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.
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.
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.
In a stimulating and well-informed essay, Sandra Hoibian refutes the idea that French society is becoming fragmented and suggests ways to measure a vague concept: social cohesion.
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
About: Pascal Marichalar, La Montagne aux étoiles, La Découverte
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.
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 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.
Food is now a conspicuous topic, from culinary blogs to magazines, diet books, TV shows and contests. Yet unbeknownst to many, it often holds an underground, clandestine place in some of social science’s major works. This dossier assesses the current importance of such scholarly endeavors, known as “food studies” in the United States.
How do scientific discoveries and progress come about? Against an idealist and triumphalist conception of the history of science, Simon Schaffer’s oeuvre examines science in the making, in close proximity to its practices and actors. Far from diminishing its prestige, this approach restores science to the central place it occupied in Old Regime societies.
André Gorz’s multiform thought is entirely centred on liberation: from work, which prevents individuals from thriving; from consumption, which grows ever higher; and from the social system, which reduces individuals to mere pawns in a “megamachine”.
Now a well-known Chinese lawyer of the democratic dissidence in China, Zhang Sizhi was once a young nationalist, a high-ranking official in the court of Beijing and a victim of anti-rightist repression. In his memoirs, he provides a detailed and fascinating description of the profession and China in the second half of the 20th century.
Le rejet de la croissance économique est-il nécessaire à la lutte contre le réchauffement climatique ? Guillaume Delafosse propose une alternative post-croissante au « croissantisme » et au « décroissantisme » autour de quelques exemples de politiques publiques.
Sans l’apport de la psychologie, la philosophie ne peut pas comprendre la déraison à laquelle a mené la pensée du progrès et des Lumières. L’école de Francfort en a fait le constat dès les années 1930.
Une étude croisée des réalités soviétiques et états-uniennes permet de saisir l’impact de l’arme nucléaire sur leurs sociétés respectives et sur ces villes de l’atome sans « chômage, ni pauvreté, ni criminalité ».
À propos de : Antoine Lilti, L’illusion d’un monde commun. Tahiti et la découverte de l’Europe, Flammarion
À propos de : Ana Lucia Araujo, Klara Boyer-Rossol, Myriam Cottias (dir.), Esclavages. Représentations visuelles et cultures matérielles, CNRS éditions
À propos de : Fabrice Argounès, Méridiens. Mesurer, partager, dominer le monde, CNRS Éditions
