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.
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.
In their recent research about Israeli politics, Noam Gidron and his coauthors explore the country’s affective polarization, the support for the judicial overhaul, Likud’s populism, and the relations between them.
From Salomé to Lolita, representations of “temptresses” haunt male fantasies. They entail a woman who has said “yes” before she has even been asked anything. And women who “fire up” men’s desire must pay the price.
How do children construct their racial identity? Based on a groundbreaking study of children from so-called “mixed” couples, Solène Brun explores the processes of racialization within family structures.
About: Sandra Hoibian, La mosaïque française. Comment (re)faire société aujourd’hui, Flammarion
About: Jean-Claude Schmitt, Les Images médiévales. La figure et le corps, Gallimard
About: Bertrand Cochard, Vide à la demande. Critique des séries, L’Échappée
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 to renew the currently dwindling support for democratic governance? To the minds of theorists and historians, whether advocating going back to classical political traditions like Republicanism or drawing lots, or experimenting new approaches, increased political participation may be the best path to follow.
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.
Books & Ideas is slowing down for the summer and will be offering weekly selections of reviews and essays published over the last year. This week’s selection questions the social construction of racial identities, and the history of domination.
For more than thirty years, Joan Scott has been informing and transforming both our history and the way we write history, while encouraging us to question categories and change our modes of thinking. From class struggle to sex differentiation, sexual emancipation and race, she proposes a critical analysis of Republican rhetoric to undermine naturalized forms of inequality.
Thanks to his work on Greco-Roman antiquity, his intellectual curiosity, his pronounced taste for interdisciplinarity, his sense of humor, and the freedom that informs all his research, Paul Veyne is a twentieth-century historian whose work cannot be avoided. A loose cannon at the heart of the academic establishment, a deep thinker and a dilettante, Veyne invites us, through his work, to a festival of thought.
Les élus municipaux sont-ils à l’image des populations qu’ils représentent ? Quelle place prennent les catégories populaires, les femmes et les personnes racisées ? À partir d’une enquête statistique en Seine-Saint-Denis, cet essai montre l’évolution du personnel politique local.
L’État est-il l’acteur principal de la transition énergétique ? Faut-il, pour sortir du pétrole et du charbon, une politique ambitieuse de redistribution ? Questions discutées, qui supposent pour être bien comprises de ressaisir l’histoire longue de l’énergie.
Sans l’apport de la psychologie, la philosophie ne peut pas comprendre la déraison à laquelle a mené la pensée du progrès et des Lumières. L’école de Francfort en a fait le constat dès les années 1930.
À propos de : Kate Brown, Plutopia, une histoire des premières villes atomiques, Actes Sud
À propos de : Antoine Lilti, L’illusion d’un monde commun. Tahiti et la découverte de l’Europe, Flammarion
À propos de : Ana Lucia Araujo, Klara Boyer-Rossol, Myriam Cottias (dir.), Esclavages. Représentations visuelles et cultures matérielles, CNRS éditions
