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.
Primitive societies, Lévy-Bruhl explains, are on the lookout for signs of catastrophes, though they are unpredictable. Since we, too, are in a constant state of alert, this insight should inspire us.
In their recent research about Israeli politics, Noam Gidron and his coauthors explore the country’s affective polarization, the support for the judicial overhaul, Likud’s populism, and the relations between them.
Can Nietzsche be considered a social thinker? Straddling social critique and critique of the social, French and German interpretive traditions that embrace Nietzsche make it necessary to revise the hasty conclusions of Marxists and anti-postmodernists.
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.
About: Julia Cagé & Thomas Piketty, A History of Political Conflict : Elections and Social Inequalities in France, 1789-2022, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
About: Nina Valbousquet, Les âmes tièdes. Le Vatican face à la Shoah, La Découverte
About: François Azouvi, Du héros à la victime : la métamorphose contemporaine du sacré, Gallimard
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.
Twenty years after the publication of Viviana Zelizer’s “The Social Meaning of Money”, this special issue brings together scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds to examine the genesis of the book, its impact in shaping the analysis of economic value, and its enduring intellectual influence on both sides of the Atlantic.
A selection of five essays and reviews recently published in Books&Ideas discusses the legacy and renewal of social class studies in France, Great-Britain and India.
As populism is rising on a global level, Books & Ideas offers a series on media politics in East Asian countries, to be published over the next two weeks. Though situations are extremely diverse, they can teach us a lot on the relationship between the state and journalists in authoritarian contexts. What role is left for the media to play in non-democracies?
Rediscovering an activist thinker who was at the origins of eco-feminism, but remains unknown. Her work inspired an extremely heterogeneous movement, but has her ambition to concretely transform the social, economic and political organisation of society been pursued?
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.
Jane Mansbridge has made a major contribution to political theory. She has spent her life combining empirical research with a theoretical approach, and has played a vital role in developing the critique of rational choice and the study of democracy as a permanent process continually in flux.
À l’heure de l’administration Trump II, l’Europe doit se tourner vers l’autonomie stratégique pour compenser le déclin de la relation transatlantique. Cela implique de financer les capacités militaires et l’indépendance économique de l’Europe par la dette communautaire.
Derrière les milliers de certificats d’exilés arméniens passés par Marseille se cachent les traces d’un génocide et des chemins innombrables empruntés par ses survivants. Dans les marges, les ratures et les silences des formulaires administratifs se lisent la fin d’un monde et la survie.
Dans la Chine de Xi Jinping où toute dissidence semble impossible, des publications hétérodoxes ont continué à s’exprimer sur des supports divers, même s’il reste difficile de saisir les logiques de la censure et des sanctions auxquelles les auteurs se sont exposés : une anthologie en esquisse le panorama.
À propos de : Mélanie Plouviez, L’injustice en héritage, La Découverte
À propos de : Pierre Nevejans, Diplomaties plurielles au XVIᵉ siècle. Florence et la France à la fin des guerres d’Italie, Classiques Garnier
À propos de : Johann Michel, Lire les images. Herméneutique de l’art, Puf
