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.
Charles Serfaty presents an economic history of France that is both accessible to as many readers as possible and incorporates the contributions of recent academic research.
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 can we move beyond abstract architecture, where buildings are constructed without their audiences? Peter Ferretto’s method is based on observation, engagement, and the osmosis between teaching, practice, research, and social impact.
As a professor of education, Bianca Baldridge highlights the importance of extracurricular training for young people from American minorities, and the lack of social recognition enjoyed by trainers.
Few ancient authors had a discourse on slavery. Even so, many spoke about it, often indirectly or between the lines, either to criticize or justify it.
About : Emmanuel Renault, Abolir l’exploitation, La Découverte
About: Jérémie Foa, Survivre. Une histoire des guerres de Religion, Seuil
About: Franck Leibovici et Julien Seroussi, muzungu à la cpi (des œuvres-outils), École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts
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.
Michel Crozier’s work was shaped by the conviction that organizational phenomena create society. He helped pioneer the tools for analyzing groups established to carry out a common project according to a specific system of action and rules of the game.
The EU aims for net climate neutrality by 2050, utilizing the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) as its main tool. But the climate crisis demands more than market mechanisms. It requires comprehensive planning and legal frameworks that prioritize public over private interests.
How can we define democracy today? What role does or should the people play in the democratic process ? Through its summer selection, Books&Ideas offers to rediscover a group of four interviews and reviews, published in 2015 and 2016, which have tackled these questions through the prism of history, philosophy and political sciences.
Is there still room for hope at the White House?
How to combat growing inequalities and injustice in a given country? Recent research suggests that solutions lie in better understanding and controlling access to education and working conditions but also in regulating tax havens and the salaries of executives.
A great historian of the English working class, a major intellectual figure in debates surrounding Marxism in the years 1960-1970, and an anti-nuclear activist who initiated an environmentalist critique of capitalism—such were the many faces of Edward Palmer Thompson, whose work deeply permeates the different social sciences to this day.
A highly respected figure in African studies, Jack Goody has become a distinctive voice in the torrent of academic critiques of western ethnocentrism. His work, spanning more than sixty years, has been based on a single ambition: comparison, for the sake of more accurately locating European history within Eurasian and world history.
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?
Quel agenda se cache derrière le nouvel acronyme « DOGE-UN » porté par la nouvelle administration Trump ? Si l’on peut difficilement nier la nécessité de réformer l’ONU, le projet trumpiste repose sur des diagnostics fallacieux.
Épaulées par Raymond Aron et Manès Sperber, les éditions Calmann-Lévy ont porté dès la fin de la guerre l’anti-communisme et la lutte contre le totalitarisme.
Quelle forme de rationalité singulière identifier derrière la réforme de Clisthène qui marque pour beaucoup l’acte de naissance de la démocratie grecque ? Quels dispositifs sociaux, quelles expériences citoyennes, quels savoirs vernaculaires ont permis cette nouvelle organisation politique ?
À propos de : Denis Crouzet, Paris criminel. 1572, Les Belles Lettres
À propos de : Pierre Bourgois, Le néoconservatisme américain. La démocratie pour étendard, Puf
À propos de : Sacha Todorov, De la City à la ZAD. Une brève histoire des carnavals militants, Classiques Garnier
