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.
This fascinating political sociology study looks at the lifestyles and subjective perceptions of average National Rally voters in the South of France. It sheds light on the racist motivations behind people’s support for the party.
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.
By scapegoating international organisations, Trump’s attacks are undermining multilateralism and the liberal order that emerged in 1945. This American disengagement is reopening the debate on a possible alternative leadership role for the EU.
How did French Jews view Nazism? Beginning in 1933, they organized and prepared for war with a lucid yet often resigned outlook on Hitler’s Germany.
Christianity is based on an egalitarian indifference to sexual difference, but in practice treats women very unequally. God the father has replaced the pagan idea of the Earth Mother, who celebrates humanity’s shared belonging to Gaia.
About: Florence Hulak, L’histoire libérale de la modernité. Race, nation, classe, Puf
About: Stéphanie Soubrier, Races guerrières. Enquête sur une catégorie impériale (1850-1918), CNRS Editions
About: Jérôme Gaillardet, La Terre habitable ou l’épopée de la zone critique (The Habitable Earth or the Epic of the Critical Zone), La Découverte
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.
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.
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.
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 going on holiday for the summer, and will resume its publication schedule in September. In the meantime, we present you with a weekly roundup of our most recent essays and reviews. Our second summer selection features portraits of prominent intellectual figures: Albert Camus, René Dumont, Ronald Dworkin, Joan W. Scott and Max Weber.
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.
In an innovative study that returns Albert Camus’ early works to their rightful place in the canon, Laurent Bove suggests we should view Camus as a philosopher of immanence and of acquiescence to the joy of the world. This reading is enlightening as far as Camus’ thoughts on history are concerned, but tends to gloss over the ruptures that run though his work, which is driven with multiple tensions.
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.
L’autrice sud-coréenne, prix Nobel de littérature en 2024, raconte dans l’un de ses romans la décision implacable d’une jeune femme qui rompt avec la viande et le sexe. Ce faisant, la littérature fait sécession avec une société emportée par sa vitesse et ses oublis.
L’usage intensif des énergies carbone a permis la prospérité, particulièrement depuis 1945, et avec elle une relative pacification des relations internationales. La décarbonation impose donc, selon P. Charbonnier, d’inventer une autre géopolitique.
La “double vie” de la grande romancière victorienne George Eliot conjugue le champ littéraire et l’expérience matrimoniale. Ses œuvres forment le creuset d’une réflexion sur l’amour, les normes sociales et la liberté.
À propos de : Geneviève Verdo, Des peuples en mal d’union. Aux origines de l’Argentine, Flammarion
À propos de : P. B. Cherlin, John Dewey’s Metaphysical Theory, Palgrave, MacMillan
À propos de : Fatma Çingi Kocadost, La promesse qu’on nous a faite, Éditions EHESS
