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.
Backed by Raymond Aron and Manès Sperber, the French publishing house Calmann-Lévy championed anti-communism and the fight against totalitarianism from the end of World War II.
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.
Against the trend towards experts having exclusive control over technological development — justified on the grounds of the public’s alleged incompetence — Adeline Barbin argues that citizens should be given greater power so as to ensure that techniques are consistent with democratic values.
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.
About: Catherine Malabou, Il n’y a pas eu de Révolution, Payot & Rivages
About: Dimitri Tilloi d’Ambrosi, Le Régime romain, Presses universitaires de France
Reviewed: Georgina Adam, The Rise and Rise of the Art Private Museum, Lund Humphries
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.
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.
During the Christmas season, Books and Ideas offers a selection of reviews and essays that tackle the subject of cities and the issues they raise as complex centers of urban life: how could we live better in them? How to reduce the inequalities they create? Can they become more sustainable? The following texts cast a new light on all of these questions.
Food is now a conspicuous topic, from culinary blogs to magazines, diet books, TV shows and contests. Yet unbeknownst to many, it often holds an underground, clandestine place in some of social science’s major works. This dossier assesses the current importance of such scholarly endeavors, known as “food studies” in the United States.
Now a well-known Chinese lawyer of the democratic dissidence in China, Zhang Sizhi was once a young nationalist, a high-ranking official in the court of Beijing and a victim of anti-rightist repression. In his memoirs, he provides a detailed and fascinating description of the profession and China in the second half of the 20th century.
Rorty made conversation a philosophical genre in its own right, which led him to reject any distinctions he considered futile: between analytic and continental philosophy, between the Enlightenment and postmodernity, between philosophy and literature.
By asserting that structuralism is a fruitful approach to kinship relations or the difference between the sexes, Françoise Héritier radically renewed anthropological methodology. Her life’s work has also shown us that scientific commitment goes hand-in-hand with societal involvement.
Face à la défaite de 1940, Marc Bloch mettait en accusation le système d’enseignement. Notre temps appelle à relire son diagnostic.
Un siècle d’aviation en Europe nous fait voler de Blériot au Concorde, de l’Aéropostale à EADS. Aujourd’hui, Airbus est le premier constructeur civil au monde, ce qui n’empêche pas de poser la question de l’avenir.
À partir d’une ethnographie de la mobilisation contre le centre commercial EuropaCity, Stéphane Tonnelat éclaire les formes contemporaines de l’engagement écologiste. L’ouvrage déplie les raisons de s’opposer à l’artificialisation des terres et analyse les ressorts ordinaires de ces luttes.
À propos de : Arnaud Fossier, Les Cathares, ennemis de l’intérieur, La Fabrique
À propos de : Herman G. van de Werfhorst, « Is Meritocracy not so bad after all ? Educational Expansion and Intergenerational Mobility in 40 Countries », American Sociological Review
À propos de : Julian Mischi, Des élus en campagne : Luttes municipales dans les bourgs industriels (XXe-XXIe siècles), Presses de Sciences Po
