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.
Julia Cagé and Thomas Piketty’s economic history of political conflict in France is a defense of bipartition: The Left-Right divide, which is the foundation of our democracy, has enabled social progress. We must therefore work to restore it.
As multilateral cooperation is increasingly under attack, Katerina Linos challenges certain misperceptions about the role of international institutions, particularly the European Union, and emphasizes their capacity for action in times of multiple crises.
In his academic reading of Julia Cagé and Thomas Piketty’s book, Michel Offerlé provides a critical analysis of the selected indicators, followed by a comparison with works of electoral sociology and electoral history.
Long the subject of myth, Pius XII’s attitude towards the Holocaust and Jewish persecution can now be evaluated with the help of the archives. Nina Valbousquet makes a convincing case: the issue was not impartiality, but tepidness.
About: François Azouvi, Du héros à la victime : la métamorphose contemporaine du sacré, Gallimard
About: Eric Fabri, Pourquoi la propriété privée (The Whys and Wherefores of Private Property), Le Bord de l’Eau
About: Constance Rimlinger, Féministes des champs. Du retour à la terre à l’écologie queer, Presses universitaires de France
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.
Over the past few months, Books and Ideas has been running a series of interviews with leading contemporary scholars, who took the time to discuss their particular topics of research with us. For the Christmas season, we have put together a selection of seven discussions with intellectuals across the humanities and sciences: sociology, history, comparative literature, neuro-biology, anthropology and political science.
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 our global consumerism, looks back in its history and analyses its legal framework.
As protests against racism break out all over the world following the murder of George Floyd, Books & Ideas gathers a selection of texts examining the history of these multifaceted discriminations and of the struggles for racial justice.
André Gorz’s multiform thought is entirely centred on liberation: from work, which prevents individuals from thriving; from consumption, which grows ever higher; and from the social system, which reduces individuals to mere pawns in a “megamachine”.
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.
Leading 19th century statesman, political economist, architect of the 1860 commercial treaty between France and the United Kingdom, and campaigner for peace between European nations, Michel Chevalier had also been a dominant voice in the Romantic socialism of Saint-Simonianism: the eclectic nature of his thought would lend itself to a particular vision of Europe, forerunner of today’s European Union.
L’adoption du mode de scrutin proportionnel apparaît aujourd’hui, selon deux politistes, comme une condition nécessaire pour redonner à la démocratie française la capacité de renouer avec des gouvernements représentatifs, stables et opérationnels.
Que nous apprennent les sciences sociales sur ce que sont – et ne sont pas – les guerres civiles ? Fort de décennies d’enquêtes au cœur de la violence, Gilles Dorronsoro propose une théorie générale des guerres civiles et démontre l’utilité sociale de l’enquête de terrain.
Le harem a nourri l’imaginaire occidental jusqu’à aujourd’hui, véhiculant le cliché d’un monde despotique et misogyne. L’imposante documentation réunie par J. Dakhlia offre une vision plus nuancée.
À propos de : Amandine Catala, The Dynamics of Epistemic Injustice. Situating Epistemic Power and Agency, Oxford University Press
À propos de : Fabien Clouette, Des vies océaniques. Quand des animaux et des humains se rencontrent, Seuil
