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.
Digitally distributed television series are one of the key forms of contemporary entertainment. By analyzing this distinctive form of consumption, it is possible to explain these consumers’ relationship to time, narratives, and decision-making.
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.
Drawing on a socio-historical study of the construction of astronomical observatories on the island of Hawai‘i, Pascal Marichalar shows that scientific policies can no longer be considered separately from their ecological and social impacts.
Popular sovereignty and the rule of law are inseparable: the idea that there could be “illiberal democracies” is groundless and plays into the hands of populists.
Olivier Mahéo, De Rosa Parks au Black Power : Une histoire Populaire des mouvements noirs, 1945-1970, Presses Universitaires de Rennes
À propos de : Vincent Tiberj, La droitisation française. Mythe et réalités (France’s rightward turn: myths and realities), Puf
About: Emmanuelle Durand, L’envers des fripes. Les vêtements dans les plis de la mondialisation, Premier Parallèle
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.
Historians, sociologists, and social scientists in general have long tried to “think big” and “global.” The rise of Asia in the world economy has stimulated anew this attraction for the macro-level. Books and Ideas proposes to look at some of the most innovative ways this work has been done recently, in the history of ideas, of trade and cultural exchanges, economic convergences and decolonization.
At a time when Europe is equated with sovereign debt and political powerlessness, one should not forget that the foundations for a European citizenship have already been laid. Its potential for democracy needs to be interrogated, as do the cultural resources that it can rely on.
The June protests which shook Brazil in 2013 stunned the world. This dossier, published by Books&Ideas, discusses the main issues at the core of these protests, analyzing them in the light of previous mobilizations and explaining why they are essential to the understanding of contemporary Brazil.
Thanks to his work on Greco-Roman antiquity, his intellectual curiosity, his pronounced taste for interdisciplinarity, his sense of humor, and the freedom that informs all his research, Paul Veyne is a twentieth-century historian whose work cannot be avoided. A loose cannon at the heart of the academic establishment, a deep thinker and a dilettante, Veyne invites us, through his work, to a festival of thought.
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.
À Los Angeles, la résistance des habitants et des pouvoirs publics à la politique anti-migrants manifeste l’ampleur du militantisme populaire. On voit s’engager là une lutte majeure pour la souveraineté territoriale.
Alors que se multiplient les initiatives muséales privées (fondations Arnault, Pinault, Cartier, etc.), les musées publics apparaissent fragilisés face à des contraintes budgétaires accrues. G. Adam dessine un panorama global des enjeux inhérents à la privatisation des musées.
Rousseau n’est pas un penseur du déclin, qui jugerait que l’histoire est un mouvement de corruption. Sa philosophie critique n’est pas pessimiste, mais permet de penser les conditions de l’action politique, et avec elles celles de la liberté.
Frédéric Jacquin, Mourir de la peste. Anthropologie d’une épidémie (1720-1722), Champ Vallon
Fanny Henriet, L’économie peut-elle sauver le climat ?, Puf
Ghassan Hage, Pierre Bourdieu’s Political Economy of Being, Duke University Press
