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.
Review Philosophy
Vygotsky is a major educational theorist credited with showing how the mind of the child is formed. In this book, Pascal Sévérac explains what Vygotsky’s theory owes to Spinoza’s.
How did African-Americans attempt to overturn the relations of racial domination in the United States? From the post-war period onwards, by creating cultural and educational institutions specific to their community, which are still useful today in the fight against discrimination.
Delphine Dulong analyses the role of the French Prime Minister, who does not so much embody a clearly-defined institution as a relational structure: a diarchy with the President, incessant interministerial work, parliamentary obligations. Is the job a powerful position, or that of an underling?
Jean Vioulac is one of a number of authors who have written a historical-philosophical saga of humanity as a way of reflecting on the coming catastrophe. It is not certain, however, that his saga will lead to anything other than a new catastrophic discourse with no prospect of a solution.
About: Carole Gayet-Viaud, La civilité urbaine. Les formes élémentaires de la coexistence démocratique, Economica
About: Thibault Le Texier, La main visible des marchés. Une histoire critique du marketing, la Découverte
About: Emmanuelle Tixier du Mesnil, Savoir et pouvoir en al-Andalus au XIe siècle, 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.
In this virtual roundtable published in partnership with Public Books, four participants from France, Germany and the US re-visit the inequalities debate sparked by Thomas Piketty’s Capital, comparing perceptions of income, economic equality and political economy.
Summer is here. Books&Ideas is off on holiday. We will be back with new publications starting August 29th. In the meantime, here is a selection of essays, interviews and reviews published over the past year.
Five leading scholars of Big Tech studies share their views on the hopes and dangers of the on-going Digital Revolution. Their answers reveal the pressing need for more political, social and economic theorizing of these dynamics.
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.
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.
En quoi l’eau peut-elle être conçue comme un bien commun ? En partant de la faculté de l’eau à mettre en rapport des individus et des territoires, cet essai caractérise différentes formes de communalité formées par et autour de l’eau.
Contre le néo-industrialisme vert et l’inefficacité des politiques climatiques, un sociologue et un économiste prônent une planification écologique à grande échelle, sur une base sociale et démocratique.
Papes, rois et autres conciles : le Moyen Âge serait « réformateur ». Alors que les discours contemporains sont saturés de « réformes », un livre collectif s’interroge sur le sens et la rareté du mot en Occident entre le XIIIe et le XVe siècle.
À propos de : John Dewey, Nature humaine et conduite, Gallimard
À propos de : Laurent Nespoulous, Pierre-François Souyri, Le Japon. Des chasseurs-cueilleurs à Heian, 36000 à l’an mille, Belin
À propos de : Bram Büscher et Robert Fletcher, Le vivant et la révolution, Actes Sud