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.
The rise of surveillance technologies is redefining the approach to security amid economic pressures. Wherever it is implemented, this surveillance, boosted by new technologies, raises the question of abuses that threaten civil liberties.
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.
How can we move beyond the double deadlock of state socialism and market capitalism? For Lea Ypi, returning to Kant and the Enlightenment offers a perspective to provide a new ground to freedom as social responsibility, and to open up towards a cosmopolitan horizon against the authoritarianism of profit.
From Salomé to Lolita, representations of “temptresses” haunt male fantasies. They entail a woman who has said “yes” before she has even been asked anything. And women who “fire up” men’s desire must pay the price.
How do children construct their racial identity? Based on a groundbreaking study of children from so-called “mixed” couples, Solène Brun explores the processes of racialization within family structures.
About: Sandra Hoibian, La mosaïque française. Comment (re)faire société aujourd’hui, Flammarion
About: Jean-Claude Schmitt, Les Images médiévales. La figure et le corps, Gallimard
About: Bertrand Cochard, Vide à la demande. Critique des séries, L’Échappée
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.
Disasters and the tragedies that they entail accumulate, along with human and social science research trying to grasp the significance of their repetition. The aim of the dossier launched today by Books & Ideas is to comprehend the nature of these studies.
How to combat growing inequalities and injustice in a given country? Recent research suggests that solutions lie in better understanding and controlling access to education and working conditions but also in regulating tax havens and the salaries of executives.
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.
Although now considered a pseudo-science, phrenology was tremendously successful in its Victorian heyday. Tracing the intellectual and scientific journey of George Combe, the ’science’s most prominent promoter in Great Britain, this paper addresses the phrenologists’ little-known contribution to the ’social question’ debate of the day, and the ambiguities of their social gospel.
Now a well-known Chinese lawyer of the democratic dissidence in China, Zhang Sizhi was once a young nationalist, a high-ranking official in the court of Beijing and a victim of anti-rightist repression. In his memoirs, he provides a detailed and fascinating description of the profession and China in the second half of the 20th century.
One of Albert O. Hirschman’s contributions to economic theory is a richer understanding of the concept of the “rational actor,” which, he demonstrated, possesses the deliberative capacities that democratic market societies require. This following is a profile of an economist who was also a dissident and an activist.
Comment dépasser la double impasse du socialisme d’État et du capitalisme de marché ? Pour Lea Ypi, revenir à Kant et aux Lumières constitue une perspective afin de refonder la liberté comme responsabilité sociale, et pour ouvrir un horizon cosmopolite contre l’autoritarisme du profit.
Adam Hochman propose une décomposition rigoureuse du concept de race et de sa prétendue réalité biologique. Sa critique de la race comme réalité sociale est néanmoins affaiblie par des choix définitionnels contestables.
L’État est-il l’acteur principal de la transition énergétique ? Faut-il, pour sortir du pétrole et du charbon, une politique ambitieuse de redistribution ? Questions discutées, qui supposent pour être bien comprises de ressaisir l’histoire longue de l’énergie.
À propos de : Agnès Grivaux, Capitalisme et déraison. Essai sur la première Théorie critique, Classiques Garnier
À propos de : Kate Brown, Plutopia, une histoire des premières villes atomiques, Actes Sud
À propos de : Antoine Lilti, L’illusion d’un monde commun. Tahiti et la découverte de l’Europe, Flammarion
