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.
A selection of five essays and reviews recently published in Books&Ideas discusses the legacy and renewal of social class studies in France, Great-Britain and India.
Books & Ideas is going on holiday for the summer, and will resume its publication schedule in September. In the meantime, we present you with a weekly roundup of our most recent essays and reviews. Economic inequalities have been at the forefront of intellectual debate this year with the publication of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Our third selection of articles brings an international perspective on the issue, with a sociological and historical outlook.
Books & Ideas is slowing down for the summer. In the meantime, here is a selection of essays, reviews and interviews published over the past year, exploring the relationship between music and politics.
Books & Ideas is going on holiday for the summer, and will resume its publication schedule in September. In the meantime, we present you with a weekly roundup of our most recent essays and reviews. Our second summer selection features portraits of prominent intellectual figures: Albert Camus, René Dumont, Ronald Dworkin, Joan W. Scott and Max Weber.
Miguel Abensour profoundly renewed thinking about democracy. His political philosophy paid close attention to the desire for emancipation and was based on an original conception of utopia breaking with the mythology of the ‘ideal city’ or of a ‘good society’.
Rediscovering an activist thinker who was at the origins of eco-feminism, but remains unknown. Her work inspired an extremely heterogeneous movement, but has her ambition to concretely transform the social, economic and political organisation of society been pursued?
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.
Avec plus de 300 millions de membres à la croyance plus ou moins intense, l’orthodoxie est structurée en trois patriarcats et de nombreuses Églises souvent nationales, ce qui en fait une force hétérogène et pourtant essentielle pour comprendre la politique de l’Europe de l’Est et de la Russie.
Comment représenter un phénomène qui relie des processus aussi différents que le climat, les océans, l’agriculture, l’urbanisation ou les flux de ressources à l’échelle mondiale ? La réponse tient en une forme séculaire : l’atlas.
À propos de : Jim Gabaret, L’Art des IA, Presses universitaires de France
À propos de : Jean-Claude Passeron, Un itinéraire de sociologue. Trames, chaînes, bifurcations, Éditions de l’EHESS
À propos de : Wiktor Stoczkowski, Penser comme Poutine. Une menace pour nos démocraties, Éditions du Cerf
