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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Reviewed: Georgina Adam, The Rise and Rise of the Art Private Museum, Lund Humphries
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.
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?
Summer is here. Books&Ideas is off on holiday. We will be back with new publications starting August 29th. In the meantime, here is a selection of essays, interviews and reviews published over the past year.
The current world-wide demand for “real” democracy as embodied in the Indignados (15-M) movement and the Occupy Wall Street movement reiterates long-lasting frustrations as regards representative government and the incompleteness of democratic experiences throughout the world. This dossier gathers interviews and essays by renowned scholars on the conception of democracy as an on-going experience and not as a finished model.
Umberto Eco is best known to the general public for his novels and critical works in which he developed his theory of reception. Who realizes, however, that this aspect of his work is only one part of a general semiology organized around a philosophy of signs?
Ronald Coase (1910-2013), the 1991 Nobel Laureate in Economics, is famous for his oft-quoted and just as often misunderstood “theorem.” His seminal works on transaction costs, property rights, and regulation continue to stimulate a rich reflection in economics and beyond.
Face à la défaite de 1940, Marc Bloch mettait en accusation le système d’enseignement. Notre temps appelle à relire son diagnostic.
À partir d’une ethnographie de la mobilisation contre le centre commercial EuropaCity, Stéphane Tonnelat éclaire les formes contemporaines de l’engagement écologiste. L’ouvrage déplie les raisons de s’opposer à l’artificialisation des terres et analyse les ressorts ordinaires de ces luttes.
Le débat sur l’existence des « cathares » divise. Hérétiques dualistes organisés en contre-Église ou fruit d’une construction médiévale reprise et amplifiée au XIXe siècle pour des raisons identitaires ? Le choix s’impose désormais, qui empêche toute synthèse de compromis.
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
À propos de : Julian Mischi, Des élus en campagne : Luttes municipales dans les bourgs industriels (XXe-XXIe siècles), Presses de Sciences Po
À propos de : Marc Lazar, Pour l’amour du peuple. Histoire du populisme en France, XIXe-XXe siècles, Gallimard
