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.
Against the trend towards experts having exclusive control over technological development — justified on the grounds of the public’s alleged incompetence — Adeline Barbin argues that citizens should be given greater power so as to ensure that techniques are consistent with democratic values.
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.
We would rather not see or even think about our waste, but it has a lot to tell us about our habits, our lives, and more importantly, about what we are doing to our world today.
Marx misunderstood Proudhon: he criticized him for neglecting the relations of production, when in fact the French anarchist was interested in the political subjugation that, in his view, private property inevitably causes.
About: Dimitri Tilloi d’Ambrosi, Le Régime romain, Presses universitaires de France
Reviewed: Georgina Adam, The Rise and Rise of the Art Private Museum, Lund Humphries
About: Raphaël Morera, Une histoire au fil de l’eau. Paris et son environnement, XVIe-XVIIIe siècle, Éditions de l’EHESS
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.
Books & Ideas is going on holiday for the summer, and will resume its publication schedule in September. In the meantime, we present to you a weekly roundup of our most recent essays and reviews. Our first summer selection features compelling interviews on subjects as varied as food and media studies, African-American history, quantum physics, Russian political culture, and Muslim-Jewish relations.
As populism is rising on a global level, Books & Ideas offers a series on media politics in East Asian countries, to be published over the next two weeks. Though situations are extremely diverse, they can teach us a lot on the relationship between the state and journalists in authoritarian contexts. What role is left for the media to play in non-democracies?
In our second winter selection of reviews and essays, Books & Ideas takes a look back at a few important articles published over the last year on the current developments and trends affecting public spaces for expression and debate : from the traditional media to the world wide web, these different spaces are all under pressure from ongoing changes. Rules and practices are evolving, as the traditional public space is being radically enlarged.
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.
Fred Block & Margaret Somers, two key members of an international network of scholars appealing to Karl Polanyi’s masterpiece of 1944, forcefully argue that it constitutes a critical resource for understanding not only the nature and origins of the market economy but also its recurrent crises, including the current one.
For more than thirty years, Joan Scott has been informing and transforming both our history and the way we write history, while encouraging us to question categories and change our modes of thinking. From class struggle to sex differentiation, sexual emancipation and race, she proposes a critical analysis of Republican rhetoric to undermine naturalized forms of inequality.
Face à la défaite de 1940, Marc Bloch mettait en accusation le système d’enseignement. Notre temps appelle à relire son diagnostic.
Les ouvriers peinent à se faire élire dans les communes où ils sont pourtant majoritaires. Julian Mischi, à partir de l’étude de trois villes, s’interroge sur cette marginalisation.
Le populisme continue à alimenter la veine éditoriale. L’originalité du livre de l’historien Marc Lazar tient à la focale mise sur la France : elle en serait le berceau.
À propos de : Frédéric Ramel, Espace mondial, Presses de Sciences Po
À propos de : Alexia Blin, À l’assaut de l’abondance. Socialisme et consommation du XIXe siècle à nos jours, Puf
À propos de : Markus Hinterleitner, Blaming bureaucracy. Reckoning with a problematic political activity, Oxford University Press ; Julie Gervais, Claire Lemercier & Willy Pelletier, La haine des fonctionnaires, Éditions Amsterdam
