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.
Can the defense of human rights be reconciled with guerilla warfare? David Copello offers an in-depth reinterpretation of the history of these complex struggles that have shaken Argentine society to its core.
Jeanne Tsai and Batja Mesquita show how emotions are shaped by cultural logics that orient our relationships and judgments. Their conversation raises a broader question: what does it mean to understand others in culturally plural societies?
At a time when Chinese capitalism is in search of an ethic, entrepreneurs are reinventing the old Confucian merchant.
What effects have economic rationalization had on public services? Nadège Vezinat presents a nuanced picture of how institutional dynamics weaken the welfare state’s bureaucracy, agents, and the rights of beneficiaries.
About: Arnaud Orain, Le Monde confisqué. Essai sur le capitalisme de la finitude, Flammarion
About: Anne Ibos-Augé, Les femmes et la musique au Moyen Âge, éditions du Cerf
About: Éric Dacheux et Daniel Goujon, Théorie délibérative des valeurs, Presses universitaires de Provence
The female silhouette – understood as the body’s visible form and socially perceived appearance – has long been shaped by social norms. In the age of social media, these norms are intensifying, prompting, in response, the rise of so-called “body-positive” movements.
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.
Books & Ideas is slowing down for the summer and will resume its publication schedule on August 26. In the meantime, we present to you a weekly selection of essays and reviews published over the past year.
Our Books and Ideas dossier on the American presidential elections will make no forecasts - instead it will look back on four years of Democratic leadership at the White House and four years of right-wing radicalization inside and outside of the G.O.P. Whoever wins will have to deal with the Tea Party, and the record shows it will not be easy for anyone.
How do images shape our worldview ? What do their study bring to our understanding of society ? Through interviews, essays and reviews this dossier shows how the close study of still or moving images has become central to the social sciences. From anthropology to history or literature, taking into account the overwhelming presence of visual representation yields unexpected and original information about human, social and political relationships.
How do scientific discoveries and progress come about? Against an idealist and triumphalist conception of the history of science, Simon Schaffer’s oeuvre examines science in the making, in close proximity to its practices and actors. Far from diminishing its prestige, this approach restores science to the central place it occupied in Old Regime societies.
Umberto Eco is best known to the general public for his novels and critical works in which he developed his theory of reception. Who realizes, however, that this aspect of his work is only one part of a general semiology organized around a philosophy of signs?
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.
Et pourquoi l’usage de l’IA générative serait-elle incompatible avec la création artistique ? Il y a pourtant longtemps que la notion d’auteur, seul maître à bord de son oeuvre, a fait l’objet de contestation.
Longtemps marquée par le franquisme, l’histoire de la guerre d’Espagne se renouvelle aujourd’hui, nourrie par les expériences vécues. En mettant en évidence les dynamiques de fascisation et d’internationalisation, peut-on déplacer le regard vers un nouveau récit du conflit ?
Comment le passage d’une classe à l’autre, longtemps pensé comme une aventure individuelle, peut-il devenir un levier d’émancipation collective ? C. Jaquet reprend, à partir de Marx et de Spinoza, la question de l’abolition des classes.
À propos de : Stefan C. Aykut et Amy Dahan, La mutation climatique, Presses de Sciences Po
À propos de : Zoé Grumberg, Militer en minorité ? Le « secteur juif » du Parti communiste français après la Libération, PUR
À propos de : Gabrielle Radica, La famille des classiques, ENS Éditions
