Institut français

This collective book, which studies feminisms through the prism of intersectionality and gender, recalls the dynamism of struggles from the Revolution through to current debates, for instance around single-sex spaces and means of action.

Poverty and great social inequality are being created at this very moment in the routines of small children. Talking, eating, socializing, taking care of oneself, keeping oneself clean, dressing, obeying, and learning: children’s sociological future is determined by the adoption of even the most trivial of habits.

Is the project of deliberative democracy unrealistic? Against the cynical assimilation of democracy to a set of voting procedures aimed at satisfying the interests of the greatest number, Charles Girard argues that deliberation is a relevant ideal for a society of equals.

Al Capone’s city is regaining a reputation for crime—and is setting it to music. This latter is known as “drill,” a new form of rap that claims to document street life and violent criminality.

Can Nazi barbarianism resurface in our modern world? Yes, according to Johann Chapoutot, in the pleasant guise of management, as one of its key promoters started out as a Nazi technocrat

Despite the many measures designed to promote inclusiveness, it is a struggle for disabled people to exercise their rights. In the face of these vulnerable rights, individuals protest and seek solutions to escape the feeling that they are treated as second-class citizens.

Through a phenomenology of plant life, the philosopher Florence Burgat reminds us that plants are defined above all by what they do not have: Lacking an intentional consciousness or a lived world, how could they lead the secret life that certain popular books ascribe to them?

Transhumanism is usually thought of as emerging out of Silicon Valley and the GAFA—but might it be French in origin? This theory, which connects the utopia of artificial intelligence and of man-machine hybridisation to pre-war eugenicist biology, is open to debate.

What if, after his interest in “infamous men,” Foucault had turned his attention to the history of ecological marginalities, examining hermits, noble savages and other men of the forest? Philippe Artières writes a counter-factual fiction using real archives.

To understand the Anthropocene, historian Sylvain Piron invites us to explore the Middle Ages. Disconcerting in how it multiplies avenues of research, his book’s strength and originality lies in the critical mobilization of the economy of the Scholastics

Literature and cinema have long played with the idea of the end of the world. As Jean-Paul Engélibert explains, these narratives, which imagine the forms of life or society that will emerge from the apocalypse, must be seen primarily as a critique of the present.

At the frontiers of epidemiology and social history, Delphine Berdah compares the very different health policies implemented in France and the United Kingdom in the fight against tuberculosis and foot-and-mouth disease.

In a wide-ranging essay on the construction of race in Enlightenment art, Anne Lafont tracks down the responsibility of images in the naturalization of racial difference and the justification of colonialism.

Critical of capitalism and nationalism, the work of Thorstein Veblen focuses mainly on the analysis of institutions: their strengths, their weaknesses, and the way they manage to stabilize and build up in spite of their failures.

For a long time, the origin of the term État-providence in French was ascribed to late Second Empire liberals who apparently coined it in a negative sense. In reality, though, the notion reaches further back to the generation of 1848, where it emerged as a response to working-class demands. Understood in this way, the expression regains its legitimacy.

Discrimination against the Burakumin people has infiltrated Japanese society for centuries and still exists today, proving particularly difficult to stamp out as the ways in which members of this minority group are marginalised change from one era to the next.

Can a state exclude people in the name of the common good? What gives legitimacy to definitions of borders and belonging? In this work of political theory, B. Boudou argues for a pragmatic, democratic and shifting approach to borders: only shared interests can define a community.

Mingling all kinds of historical approaches—economic, social, entrepreneurial and societal mentality—J.-C. Daumas dedicates a fresco to the immaterial perception of consumer goods.

Nowadays, criticism of Europe has become the outlet for democratic disarray. While disintegration threatens the European Union, what are the forces opposing it, and what are they going after exactly?

Counterfeit medicines are supposed to number in the hundreds of millions and to wreak havoc on people’s lives. How to interpret the fact that NGOs, governments and activist movements oppose the fight against this scourge?

Russia has seen a huge increase in commemorations of the Soviet victory. Some of these parades are organized by civilians, while others are more official. But all of them reveal a rise in a nationalism that Putin would like to epitomise.

Could craftwork, which is too often denigrated, be a model not only for intellectual life, but also for reforming contemporary forms of work? This is the position of a young lawyer and philosopher who took a professional detour by learning the carpenter’s trade.

Scholars are not just thinking machines. They laugh; they are anxious, angry, or afraid; they become friends with their colleagues. Researchers experience many emotions but these are mainly ignored, as though they had nothing to do with the process that produces knowledge.

What effects do works of art have on consciousness and society? Ecological art asks this question in a new and urgent way, by calling upon us to befriend endangered nature.

How do we account for the “voluntary servitude” that reigns in auditing firms? A survey of their employees shows the cause can be found in the spirit of competition and the cult of elitism.

Artists make a name for themselves thanks to their works. But what name? During the Renaissance, artists are usually designated by their first name or by a patronym. But to become famous, painters have often endeavoured to invent the names with which they wanted to achieve fame.

In her exploration of the world of wealth management, Brooke Harrington dives into the heart of capital globalization. As pillars in the structure of international finance, wealth managers help increase the capital of the wealthy by circumventing government regulations.

What justifies majority decision making in democracies? Can we consider that the majority is more likely to be right? Didier Mineur reflects on the philosophical foundations of a rule that has become so self-evident in our societies.

In this intellectual portrait of the enfant terrible of the Frankfurt School, S. Müller-Doohm presents us with an indefatigable polemicist whose various stands have marked the last fifty years. This first ever biography of Habermas also takes us through post-war German history.

European lobbies are said to be constantly seeking to influence political decisions. A detailed study of the European Association of Craft, Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises, reveals the range of their activities.

Daniel Cohen addresses the changes in our globalised world with an anxiety rarely seen among economists. The rise of homo digitalis, social networks and the robotisation of our economies call for us to seek ways to take collective control of the upheavals currently underway.

In the 20^th century, being labelled as “schizophrenic” was tantamount to a life sentence. A study based on patient records shows that schizophrenics suffered not only from their illness but also from ideological prejudice and the classificatory obsession of their time.

Modern man produces increasing quantities of waste. But his relationship with refuse has changed. What does this waste—that we attempt to conceal or distance ourselves from—reveal about our societies? Do we control the waste we seek to manage or does it elude us?

Counterfactual history is a matter of ‘what ifs’. What if the Allies had lost the Second World War? What if there had been no transatlantic slave trade? Two French historians analyse the intellectual merits of this use of the past, long established in the Anglo-American world.