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.
School is mandatory and fully justified in being so. Educational authority in no way impairs freedom, provided it focuses on developing students’ multiple capacities.
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.
Not only in Texas, where a professor was ordered to remove Plato from his syllabus, but throughout the United States, ideological dictatorship has begun. It amounts to nothing less than an attack on universities, the freedom of speech, and thought. How is it possible to resist in the face of this onslaught?
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.
About : Christine van Geen, Allumeuse. Genèse d’un mythe, Seuil
About: Solène Brun, Derrière le mythe métis. Enquête sur les couples mixtes et leurs descendants en France, La Découverte
About: Sandra Hoibian, La mosaïque française. Comment (re)faire société aujourd’hui, Flammarion
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.
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.
The economic crisis that has plagued a great part of the world since 2008 remains baffling as ever, all questions and no answers. Why not start by listing the former, and then imagine what the latter could look like?
Protectionism, a solution? Really? The economic crisis may not have turned the tide against liberalization, but we certainly cannot look at protectionism the same as we used to.
Leading 19th century statesman, political economist, architect of the 1860 commercial treaty between France and the United Kingdom, and campaigner for peace between European nations, Michel Chevalier had also been a dominant voice in the Romantic socialism of Saint-Simonianism: the eclectic nature of his thought would lend itself to a particular vision of Europe, forerunner of today’s European Union.
“Do we have the right to make bets on the future of mankind?” Forty-one years after being the first ecologist candidate in a presidential campaign and publishing his manifesto book, René Dumont’s intuitions and warnings have lost little of their relevance.
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”.
Souvent considérés comme les oubliés de l’histoire, les Kurdes sont pourtant au coeur des transformations du Moyen-Orient contemporain. Hamit Bozarslan dresse un panorama de la question kurde depuis le Rojava en Syrie jusqu’à la répression sanglante en Iran, en passant par l’avenir du Kurdistan irakien et la question de la fin de la lutte armée dans la Turquie d’Erdogan.
Dans une étude compréhensive et multiscalaire des inégalités sociales, ethnoraciales et de genre face au VIH dans la capitale fédérale étatsunienne, Sanyu A. Mojola décrit une métropole où se combinent ségrégation résidentielle, consommations de drogues, violences et incarcération de masse, aux effets sanitaires durables.
1967 : lutte pour les civil rights, guerre du Vietnam, Sergent Pepper des Beatles, Velvet Underground, début des Doors … Au même moment, Bob Dylan enregistre des morceaux qui renouvellent le langage culturel américain.
À propos de : Pascal Richet, Des savants et des dieux. I. De la divination babylonienne au miracle grec, l’émergence de la science, Les Belles Lettres
À propos de : Elsa Génard et Mathilde Rossigneux-Méheust (dir.), Routines punitives. Les sanctions du quotidien, XIXe-XXe siècle, CNRS Éditions
À propos de : Paraska Tolan-Szkilnik, Maghreb noir. Rabat, Alger et Tunis dans les luttes panafricaines, Ròt-Bò-Krik
