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.
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.
While we have entered the age of generative AI, it is worth having a look at how computers can help literature scholars and intellectual historians to explain the life of concepts, aesthetics and genres.
The “ardor of pillagers” refers to the momentum driving the depletion of life, which is outlined by Hicham-Stéphane Afeissa in his new book, drawing on the entire field of ecological thought.
Ecological politics have struggled to ward off environmental disaster. To impose itself as a transformative force, Jean-Baptiste Comby shows that ecological politics must become the strategic tool and compass of a genuine class struggle.
About: Maud Gelly, Les Politiques du tri. D’une épidémie à l’autre (SIDA, COVID), Le Croquant
About: Laura Tatoueix, Défaire son fruit. Une histoire sociale de l’avortement en France à l’époque moderne, éditions de l’EHESS
About: Isabelle Jonveaux, Une culture de la satiété. Enquête sociologique sur le jeûne comme expérience spirituelle, Presses Universitaires de Rennes
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.
How can we define democracy today? What role does or should the people play in the democratic process ? Through its summer selection, Books&Ideas offers to rediscover a group of four interviews and reviews, published in 2015 and 2016, which have tackled these questions through the prism of history, philosophy and political sciences.
In this virtual roundtable published in partnership with Public Books, four participants from France, Germany and the US re-visit the inequalities debate sparked by Thomas Piketty’s Capital, comparing perceptions of income, economic equality and political economy.
Miguel Abensour profoundly renewed thinking about democracy. His political philosophy paid close attention to the desire for emancipation and was based on an original conception of utopia breaking with the mythology of the ‘ideal city’ or of a ‘good society’.
From the margins to which he was confined, Georges Devereux (1908-1985) formulated some of the most original scientific work of his century. In the wake of Freud, whose legacy he firmly defended, Devereux initiated the transcultural practice of psychiatry. François Laplantine, one of his former disciples, reconsiders the legacy of ethnopsychoanalysis’ founder.
Though poorly known in France, the work of the anthropologist Mary Douglas is nonetheless essential for understanding the elementary forms of social organization and daily life. By shedding light on her academic career and personal life, this portrait rehabilitates the thought of a major intellectual.
Alors que la coopération multilatérale est de plus en plus remise en cause, Katerina Linos déconstruit certaines idées reçues sur le rôle des institutions internationales — en particulier européennes — et montre leur capacité d’action dans un contexte de crises multiples.
Statut social, ordre, qualité, vertu, les critères pour définir la noblesse sous l’Ancien Régime ne manquent pas. Pourtant, en se penchant sur ce groupe social, force est de constater sa diversité, l’évolution de ses contours et de la définition qui en est faite par les contemporains au fil du temps.
Étudier la réception de la philosophie russellienne, ce n’est pas seulement comprendre comment s’est constituée la philosophie analytique : c’est aussi s’interroger sur la manière dont la logique peut être universelle, à travers ses appropriations culturelles.
À propos de : Clémence Cardon-Quint, L’argent de l’école. Histoire du budget de l’Éducation nationale depuis 1945, Presses de Sciences Po
À propos de : Tony Molho, La gentillesse des autres. Un enfant juif dans la Grèce occupée, EHESS
À propos de : Juan Sebastián Carbonell, Un taylorisme augmenté. Critique de l’intelligence artificielle, Éditions Amsterdam
