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.
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.
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.
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.
Ancient Roman diets were based on health concerns as well as moral and political considerations. Frugality and pleasure were not mutually exclusive. Eating was about more than filling one’s stomach.
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
About: Muriel Mille, Le travail de la fiction. Dans les coulisses d’une série télévisée, Presses Universitaires de Vincennes
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.
At a time when Europe is equated with sovereign debt and political powerlessness, one should not forget that the foundations for a European citizenship have already been laid. Its potential for democracy needs to be interrogated, as do the cultural resources that it can rely on.
How to renew the currently dwindling support for democratic governance? To the minds of theorists and historians, whether advocating going back to classical political traditions like Republicanism or drawing lots, or experimenting new approaches, increased political participation may be the best path to follow.
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.
“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.
According to Nancy Fraser, the renewal of socialism requires a conflation of activism and political theory; indeed, emancipation can only exist on the basis of equal participation in all spheres of life, and can only be understood in terms of social struggles, which today appear in multiple forms.
Michel Crozier’s work was shaped by the conviction that organizational phenomena create society. He helped pioneer the tools for analyzing groups established to carry out a common project according to a specific system of action and rules of the game.
Célèbre pour sa critique du dualisme cartésien et pour son style plein d’esprit, le philosophe anglais Gilbert Ryle incarne le triomphe planétaire, mais oublié, de la philosophie du langage ordinaire d’Oxford de l’après-guerre aux années 1960.
Comment devient-on sociologue ? Comment construit-on une œuvre ? Quel type d’écriture invente-t-on pour cela ? Jean-Claude Passeron raconte son itinéraire, de la philosophie aux sciences sociales.
Beaucoup en France ont adopté la vision du monde que Poutine s’efforce de répandre. Qu’ils viennent de la gauche ou de la droite, ils condamnent l’interventionnisme occidental et justifient l’impérialisme russe.
À propos de : Ludivine Eloy, Dans le vert des cartes. Agriculture et environnement au Brésil, Presses universitaires de Rennes
À propos de : Yves Sassier, Le Prince et la loi en Occident (VIe siècle av. J.-C.-début XVe siècle), Presses universitaires de France
À propos de : Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi & John Tolan (dir.), Le Mahomet des historiens, Éditions du Cerf
