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.
A collective work traces the emotional and psychological journeys of Holocaust survivors in the immediate postwar period. It examines both the practices of caregivers and the strategies survivors employed to reintegrate into society.
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.
Backed by Raymond Aron and Manès Sperber, the French publishing house Calmann-Lévy championed anti-communism and the fight against totalitarianism from the end of World War II.
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.
About: Claire Larroque, Philosophie du déchet, Presses universitaires de France
About: Catherine Malabou, Il n’y a pas eu de Révolution, Payot & Rivages
About: Dimitri Tilloi d’Ambrosi, Le Régime romain, Presses universitaires de France
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.
In the U.S., in France as well with Hugues Lagrange’s book on “the denial of cultures”, culture has again become the focus of poverty studies. Our dossier on “culture of poverty” reviews this new trend and examines a notion that has paradoxically been given a new lease of life by the economic downturn, half a century after Oscar Lewis controversially introduced it.
Food is now a conspicuous topic, from culinary blogs to magazines, diet books, TV shows and contests. Yet unbeknownst to many, it often holds an underground, clandestine place in some of social science’s major works. This dossier assesses the current importance of such scholarly endeavors, known as “food studies” in the United States.
This dossier examines the recently reopened debate on regional integration in Asia. What are the obstacles to the construction of an Asian Union? How is the issue tackled in Japan, China or Australia?
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.
By asserting that structuralism is a fruitful approach to kinship relations or the difference between the sexes, Françoise Héritier radically renewed anthropological methodology. Her life’s work has also shown us that scientific commitment goes hand-in-hand with societal involvement.
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.
Selon la première ministre japonaise, les Japonais doivent travailler toujours plus. Ce discours productiviste doit être replacé dans l’histoire longue du conservatisme japonais et de son rapport avec le libéralisme.
Doit-on encore lire Leibniz ? Sa métaphysique peut-elle nous apprendre quelque chose sur notre monde, ou est-elle devenue caduque, enfermée dans un système philosophique d’une autre époque ?
Un siècle d’aviation en Europe nous fait voler de Blériot au Concorde, de l’Aéropostale à EADS. Aujourd’hui, Airbus est le premier constructeur civil au monde, ce qui n’empêche pas de poser la question de l’avenir.
À propos de : Stéphane Tonnelat, Sauver les terres agricoles, Seuil
À propos de : Arnaud Fossier, Les Cathares, ennemis de l’intérieur, La Fabrique
À propos de : Herman G. van de Werfhorst, « Is Meritocracy not so bad after all ? Educational Expansion and Intergenerational Mobility in 40 Countries », American Sociological Review
