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.
What is the nature of the distinctive rationality that underpins Cleisthenes’ reform, which many see as the birth of Greek democracy? What social mechanisms, civic experiences, and forms of vernacular knowledge made this new system of political organization possible?
The love for newness did not begin with modern consumer society. It has long been capitalism’s primary engine and has been central to how it imagines the market. At present, its environmental impact is disastrous.
Can morality be grounded in the sense of sympathy? According to Adam Smith, sympathy with the sentiments of others is precisely what allows for self-command, a cardinal virtue that enables us to act from a sense of duty.
About: Patrick Boucheron, Peste Noire, Seuil
About: Richard Schittly, Les Oubliés d’Action directe. De l’ultra-gauche au terrorisme, La Manufacture des livres
About: Pascal Engel, Foucault et les normes du savoir, Eliott éditions
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.
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.
How do images shape our worldview ? What do their study bring to our understanding of society ? Through interviews, essays and reviews this dossier shows how the close study of still or moving images has become central to the social sciences. From anthropology to history or literature, taking into account the overwhelming presence of visual representation yields unexpected and original information about human, social and political relationships.
Summer is here; Books&Ideas is off on holiday. We will be back with new publications starting August 30. In the meantime, here is a selection of essays, interviews and reviews published over the past year.
After four years of monetary crisis in Europe, with serious political and social consequences for some countries, as well as a general mistrust of Europe’s political and economic models, new analyses bring light on what happened in 2009 and on how to improve the current situation. Books&Ideas presents them in a selection of essays and reviews on Europe, its money, its construction, and its politics.
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.
Although now considered a pseudo-science, phrenology was tremendously successful in its Victorian heyday. Tracing the intellectual and scientific journey of George Combe, the ’science’s most prominent promoter in Great Britain, this paper addresses the phrenologists’ little-known contribution to the ’social question’ debate of the day, and the ambiguities of their social gospel.
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.
L’art naît de contrainte et meurt de liberté : il semble que le cinéma iranien, sous contrôle et censure, illustre ce fameux adage.
Parcourant un vaste corpus littéraire, Anne de Guigné restitue l’économie telle que la saisissaient les grands écrivains de chaque époque, en révèle les contradictions et les impensés, et pressent que le raisonnement littéraire peut constituer un instrument complémentaire de l’enquête économique.
La panthéonisation de Marc Bloch est l’occasion de relier son parcours de citoyen avec les pistes scientifiques qu’il a ouvertes vers le comparatisme, l’interdisciplinarité ou encore l’étude des mentalités. Derrière l’hommage, il s’agit de l’inscrire dans son temps, ainsi que dans son monde social.
À propos de : Julie Fette, Gender by the Book. 21st-Century French Children’s Literature, Routledge
À propos de : Christophe Bouton, Sur les traces du temps, Minuit
À propos de : Allison Carnegie et Richard Clark, Global Governance Under Fire. How International Organizations Resist the Populist Wave, Princeton University Press
