Translated with the support of The Florence Gould Foundation
Gyan Prakash’s most recent book takes us on a journey through Bombay’s history, focusing on the myths and fables that have shaped how the city is represented. His ambitious project fails, however, to explain Bombay’s transition from a cosmopolitan city to one torn apart by ethnic conflict.
In Florence and Baghdad, Hans Belting writes a new history of the human gaze based on its symbolic value in relation to the image. His starting point is the cultural transfer between the East and the West, leading to the invention of perspective in the 16th century. The author examines two different forms of cultures of the gaze and lays the groundwork for a global art history.
When we think about revolutions, don’t economic interests tend to be left out of the equation? For the last two decades political and cultural questions have made social justice appear a secondary concern. According to historian Charles Walton, the problem of redistribution, already apparent in 18th century revolutions, is also central to Egyptian revolutionaries.
Andreas Glaeser’s Political Epistemics is an account of the rise and fall of the East German Socialism as a field of consciousness. Relying on extensive archival research and interviews (including Stasi officers, secret informants & political dissidents), Glaeser offers a “theory of understandings” to provide a new angle on the question of how worldviews become institutionalized.
The trial of the Gang of Four, which included Mao Zedong’s wife, took place after the end of the Cultural Revolution, during the winter of 1980-81. In the West, it is usually seen as a show trial; in China it constitutes the founding act of defence, throwing light on the particular way in which contemporary Chinese lawyers focus on technique and impartiality.
In his analysis of the literature on peace initiatives from the Middle Ages to the current day, B. Arcidiacono documents the different notions of peace that have guided the human race in its attempts to end conflict between nations.
When Barack Obama was inaugurated in January 2009, most Americans saw him as a president committed to bringing significant change. But his progressive ambitions soon ran up against indifference and even hostility in the electorate and in some of the political class. How could such an intelligent president find it so hard to get his message across?
In his new work, François Singly continues to explore the transformations of marital bonds. This time, he approaches it from another angle—that of the “process of uncoupling” experienced by women who have recently separated from their partner. More than just a sociological study of the gender relations at play in a separation, this investigation explores the engagement and disengagement of the self within the ties of marriage.
Those I love create me, said the author of Le Fou d’Elsa. Aragon’s first great love was for André Breton: the letters he wrote to his mentor between 1918 and 1931 testify to the torments of a moral, artistic and political education.
Luuk van Middelaar puts forward an alternative history of the European construction by analysing the various types of discourse on Europe, the influence of international events and overdue research on democratic legitimacy.
“The last shall be first.” In the Middle Ages, having political power was understood as providing a service: effectively forestalling revolt. In the twelfth century, certain experiences in religious communities ran counter to the hierarchy that was felt to be natural. Should this be seen as something that was displaying democratic potential?
Whilst staff working conditions in the supermarket industry have often been criticised by the media and social scientists alike, supermarket distribution nevertheless remains a sector largely untouched by mass worker mobilisation. In her work, Marlène Benquet shares her account of an unlikely supermarket strike, following the events as they unfolded.
Through the remarkable story of the journey of 264 Japanese miniatures, a world-renowned ceramicist retraces the rise and fall of his family, the Ephrussi, rich Jewish bankers with a dynasty which spread across Europe from Odessa and Paris to Vienna. His book is an example of how history can lie at the heart of literature.
As Italy celebrated the 150th anniversary of its unification, revisionist historians radically challenged the standard history of unification and its consequences. This offensive, backed by certain politicians, spared none of the important moments of Italian history. Might this be the sign of a more far-reaching crisis in the national narrative?
What does a human life look like to a bank teller? The banking system’s rules of variable geometry mean that the morality of money is not the same for everyone. Money cuts across social boundaries and strengthens them at the same time, forcing those who are less well off to endure the humiliating end-of-month struggle in the name of “autonomy.”
On March 2012, 25 EU Member States signed a new treaty to increase coordination between economic policies within the Union, something Germany in particular was keen on. Will this allow them to deal more efficiently with the financial crisis? According to Renaud Dehousse, there are reasons to doubt it.
French programs of “positive discrimination” are supposed to help open elite education to socially disadvantaged students. While challenging the idea that diversity is truly promoted in the United States, a comparative study of current trends in Paris and Chicago show the opacity of the selection criteria in Paris, and the existence of a clear geographical segregation.
A recent book and two documentaries shed new light on the repression of the demonstration by Algerians in Paris on 17 October 1961. By looking at these events in their long-term context, they show that the repression was not some sort of blunder. It was a “colonial massacre” perpetrated by the Paris police acting under the orders of their Prefect (Commissioner), the infamous Maurice Papon.
Louis Dumont is very well known for his anthropological work on India, but rather less for his political thought. Vincent Descombes emphasizes the substantial originality of that thought, which defined the political on the basis of comparative studies and in that way dispelled some of the equivocations of modern and contemporary philosophy.
Though the Soviet system’s ambitions were initially universalistic, the system of social protection that it established quickly proved discriminatory and insufficiently generous. In a recent book, Dorena Caroli uses social protection as a prism for considering the Soviet state’s broader dysfunctions.
Democracies must be able to promote economic innovation. In France, however, the media and the judicial system are not independent from the state and public policies are not evaluated. The economist Philippe Aghion proposes measures to stimulate the economy through democratic oversight. The lawyer William Bourdon explains why it is crucial that democracies implement more deterring sanctions.
The curator of the recent La fabrique des images exhibit at the Quai Branly Museum in Paris, anthropologist Philippe Descola offers a new approach of pictorial representations on the five continents and shows the four great worldviews they manifest: naturalism, totemism, animism, and analogism.
The Greek crisis is above all a crisis of the Greek state and its legitimacy. One must look back to the nineteenth century to understand its people’s defiance of bureaucrats and the role of international powers in Greek politics. In this interview, Anastassios Anastassiadis offers an historian’s perspective on Greece’s current difficulties.
Philippe Askenazy paints a very negative picture of 40 years of employment policy in France. He does not just criticise, but strives to draw recommendations for the future and find the path towards a growth policy for France.
The explosion of executive pay in recent decades in all Western countries has been the object of considerable criticism. But it has also given rise to an important debate among economists. A recent study by CEPREMAP sums up the various explanations of this phenomenon and suggests some ways in which executive pay could be reformed.
In France, Islamic institutions follow the Republic’s rules, respect the legal and political system, but suffer from the fact that the principle of religious equality is contradicted by popular resistance to their presence in French society. To overcome this inconsistency, the American ethnographer John Bowen calls for a reinvention of the 1905 law on religious buildings and the adoption of “reasonable accommodations.”
It is neither simple nor cheap for French people to find housing, especially if they are young. This fuels social inequalities and recent programs, with their emphasis on homeownership, have made things worse. For sociologist Fanny Bugeja, making it possible for everyone to have, but not necessarily to own, a home should be a national priority.
If we want to adjust to the world the crisis has thrust us in, we will have to stop blaming unemployment on the “French Model.” For economist Philippe Askenazy, we need to shift from a vision of unemployment in terms of job losses, job flows, and business incentives, to the question: “Where does one need jobs in a modern society like France?”
A citizen, if informed, is active and attentive. In a transparent democracy, public authorities are truly accountable to their voters and citizens trust their leaders. In this interview, Dominique Cardon therefore advocates opening and making public data available online and encourages us to bet on their upright citizen use.
The indignados movement signals people’s current dissatisfaction as regards political representation. Though pessimistic as to the political outlets of that mobilization, French political scientist Loïc Blondiaux calls for a democratization of democracy and offers to combine experimental democratic forms to complement elections.
According to Justine Lacroix, European institutions will never be able to provide a political forum for the kind of complex and lively democratic debate that takes place within European nation-states. However, the extension and universalisation of identical rights for all European citizens is what constitutes the European Union’s main contribution to democracy, and could, if Europe manages to resist the temptation of closing in on itself, provide a model or example for the rest of the world.