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.
Our understanding of nature differs from that of the Greeks and Romans. From the “month of the ox” to “the forest goddess,” the ancients never thought to separate humans from the flora and fauna around them.
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.
As 2025 marks the fiftieth anniversary of Hannah Arendt’s death, a new book offers a fresh perspective on a little-known yet pivotal period in the philosopher’s life and work.
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.
About: Gwendal Châton, Calmann-Lévy, éditeur engagé. Défendre l’antitotalitarisme dans la guerre froide des idées, Calmann-Lévy
About: Adeline Barbin, La démocratie des techniques, Hermann
About: Claire Larroque, Philosophie du déchet, 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.
How do images respond to political events and how do they shape them ? What is the political power of images ? Should images of violence be shown in the media ? Through its winter selection, Books&Ideas offers to rediscover a group of four essays and reviews, all published in 2015, which have tackled these questions through the prism of history, philosophy, aesthetics and political sciences.
The June protests which shook Brazil in 2013 stunned the world. This dossier, published by Books&Ideas, discusses the main issues at the core of these protests, analyzing them in the light of previous mobilizations and explaining why they are essential to the understanding of contemporary Brazil.
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.
Kenzaburō Ōe, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, is a controversial figure in Japan. And rightly so, for there are a great many contradictions in both his fictional and theoretical work. He is a fierce opponent of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy, and yet continues to celebrate the heroism of the soldier who finds glory through sacrifice.
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.
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.
Quelles traces de la vie de Georges Perec portent les archives publiques ? Comment éclairent-elles l’histoire populaire de Belleville autant que la trajectoire de l’écrivain ? Une exposition sur l’enfance de l’auteur explore ces pistes, aux archives de Paris.
L’Union européenne est-elle un État ? Sylvain Kahn montre qu’elle incarne, contre l’imaginaire de l’État-nation, une nouvelle forme de souveraineté supranationale.
Un recueil consacré à la pensée féministe polonaise montre la richesse du mouvement, des années 1900 au tournant queer en passant par la période socialiste. Cette histoire méconnue ouvre la voie à une généalogie et une comparaison des sororités européennes.
À propos de : Nicolas Soulas, Familles et individus à l’épreuve. Les Payan, de la révocation de l’Édit de Nantes à l’âge des révolutions, Presses Universitaires de Rennes
À propos de : Olivier Beauvallet et Yves Ternon, Robert H. Jackson. Faire campagne pour la justice, Michalon
À propos de : Gabriel Entin, En quête de République. Une histoire de la communauté politique en Amérique hispanique, Presses universitaires de Rennes
