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.
Summer is here; Books&Ideas is off on holiday. We will be back with new publications starting August 30. In the meantime, here is a selection of texts published over the past year.
How can we explain the variations between judicial decisions in criminal matters? Using the method of natural experiment, economist Arnaud Philippe sets out to identify the factors that influence decisions and determine criminal sanctions. At the risk of forgetting sociology?
Employees are the primary inventors, but they are often deprived of their rights by legal strategies that capture their expertise. In response, new forms of resistance are emerging, based on open access.
About: Alain Trannoy & Etienne Wasmer, Le grand retour de la terre dans les patrimoines, Odile Jacob
About: Hugues Draelants & Sonia Revaz, L’évidence des faits. La politique des preuves en éducation, Puf
About: Yannick Fer, Sociologie du pentecôtisme, Karthala
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.
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 1947, Princess Elizabeth promised to serve ‘the great imperial family’, as part of the attempt to remake post-war Britain as a global power. The British Empire collapsed; but this language of service and Commonwealth allowed the Queen to take up the postcolonial concerns of the 21st century.
During the Christmas season, Books and Ideas offers a selection of reviews and essays that tackle the subject of cities and the issues they raise as complex centers of urban life: how could we live better in them? How to reduce the inequalities they create? Can they become more sustainable? The following texts cast a new light on all of these questions.
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.
Is there still room for hope at the White House?
By asserting that structuralism is a fruitful approach to kinship relations or the difference between the sexes, Françoise Héritier radically renewed anthropological methodology. Her life’s work has also shown us that scientific commitment goes hand-in-hand with societal involvement.
A great historian of the English working class, a major intellectual figure in debates surrounding Marxism in the years 1960-1970, and an anti-nuclear activist who initiated an environmentalist critique of capitalism—such were the many faces of Edward Palmer Thompson, whose work deeply permeates the different social sciences to this day.
André Gorz’s multiform thought is entirely centred on liberation: from work, which prevents individuals from thriving; from consumption, which grows ever higher; and from the social system, which reduces individuals to mere pawns in a “megamachine”.
Alors que la multiplication des tensions autour de l’eau semble inévitable, Simon Porcher propose une série de mesures pour adapter notre cadre économique et législatif.
Amer savoir, celui qu’on tire du voyage ! Mais au fait, pourquoi voyager ? Et peut-on habiter le monde tout en le parcourant ?
Après 1945, l’utilisation géopolitique du sport trouve sa place dans les nouvelles alliances de la guerre froide. L’idéologie et la diplomatie se glissent alors dans tous les recoins de l’activité sportive.
À propos de : Josiane Boutet, Marcel Cohen, linguiste engagé dans son siècle (1884-1974), éditions Lambert-Lucas
À propos de : David Robinson, Voices in the code. A story about people, their values, and the algorithm they made,
À propos de : Geneviève Pruvost, Quotidien politique. Féminisme, écologie, subsistance, La Découverte