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.
After 1945, the geopolitical use of sport found a place in the alliances of the Cold War. Ideology and diplomacy slipped into every aspect of the practice of sports.
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.
How should we characterize the regime of Tunisian President Kais Saied since his 2021 power grab? To get a sense of what is happening “inside the country,” an edited volume provides an informed and engaged interpretation of the situation.
Throughout the nineteenth century, ecological currents in the agricultural world promoted organic farming and the defense of small producers. The story of these “ecological farmers” sheds light on the forward-looking contract forged between agriculture and society.
About: Lucie Malbos, Les Peuples du Nord. De Fróði à Harald l’Impitoyable, Ier-XIe siècle, Belin
About: Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, More and More and More: An All-Consuming History of Energy, Penguin Books
About: Nina Valbousquet, Les Âmes tièdes. Le Vatican face à la Shoah, La Découverte
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.
The June protests which shook Brazil in 2013 stunned the world. This dossier, published by Books&Ideas, discusses the main issues at the core of these protests, analyzing them in the light of previous mobilizations and explaining why they are essential to the understanding of contemporary Brazil.
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 focuses on China today, its uses of digital technologies to govern, and the political theories developed by its intellectuals.
How do images respond to political events and how do they shape them ? What is the political power of images ? Should images of violence be shown in the media ? Through its winter selection, Books&Ideas offers to rediscover a group of four essays and reviews, all published in 2015, which have tackled these questions through the prism of history, philosophy, aesthetics and political sciences.
Among the recipients of the 2009 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics was Elinor Ostrom, for her analysis of economic governance, especially in relation to the commons. While this choice took many in the profession by surprise, her life-long quest for an understanding of successful common property resource management holds important lessons for our future.
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.
Chef de file de l’avant-garde musicale au second XXe siècle, Pierre Boulez est né le 25 mars 1925. De 1976 à 1995, il a occupé une chaire au Collège de France. Jonathan Goldman, qui a participé à l’édition de ses cours, évoque ces deux décennies d’enseignement et leur place dans le legs boulézien.
De l’aristocratie déclinante aux classes populaires, Pérez Galdós a dépeint les inégalités sociales qui marquent l’Espagne du XIXe siècle. Ce « Balzac espagnol » fascine le Nobel de littérature d’origine péruvienne.
Peut-on fonder la morale sur le sentiment de sympathie ? Selon Adam Smith, c’est bien elle, la sympathie pour les affects d’autrui, qui rend possible la maîtrise de soi, vertu capitale qui nous permet d’agir par devoir.
Juliette Rennes, Métiers de rue. Observer le travail et le genre à Paris en 1900, EHESS
À propos de : Pascal Engel, Foucault et les normes du savoir, Eliott éditions
À propos de : Maurice Cassier, Il y a des alternatives. Une autre histoire des médicaments, XIXe-XXIe siècle, Seuil
