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.
How are television series written? Muriel Mille’s study sheds light on a collective process based on a division of labor and time constraints. It represents a total break with the auteur ideal of New Wave cinema.
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.
Is it possible to identify the origin of the shift from feudalism to capitalism? Such a transition cannot be reduced to the expansion of trade or a linear evolution. It implies a transformation of social relations, work, and production.
By adopting a child’s perspective, Camille Mahé shows that younger children perceived the Second World War differently than adults.
About: Guillaume Durieux, Faut-il en finir avec l’école ? Autonomie & justice scolaire, Éditions Eliott
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.
How to renew the currently dwindling support for democratic governance? To the minds of theorists and historians, whether advocating going back to classical political traditions like Republicanism or drawing lots, or experimenting new approaches, increased political participation may be the best path to follow.
A selection of five essays and reviews recently published in Books&Ideas discusses the legacy and renewal of social class studies in France, Great-Britain and India.
Is there still room for hope at the White House?
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?
Rediscovering an activist thinker who was at the origins of eco-feminism, but remains unknown. Her work inspired an extremely heterogeneous movement, but has her ambition to concretely transform the social, economic and political organisation of society been pursued?
“Do we have the right to make bets on the future of mankind?” Forty-one years after being the first ecologist candidate in a presidential campaign and publishing his manifesto book, René Dumont’s intuitions and warnings have lost little of their relevance.
Delphine Rouilleaut est la présidente du collectif Alerte, réseau qui rassemble 34 associations et fédérations actives dans la lutte contre la pauvreté. Elle exprime la voix de la société civile et explique les ressorts de la construction d’un plaidoyer en faveur des personnes en situation de vulnérabilité ou d’exclusion.
Caroline Muller et Frédéric Clavert engagent une réflexion sur ce que l’usage du numérique transforme dans le métier d’historien, depuis le travail sur les sources jusqu’à la structuration de la discipline elle-même.
D’utopie à dystopie, comment Internet s’est-il retourné contre ses propres valeurs libertaires en quelques décennies ? Par l’analyse d’un vaste corpus documentaire, Sébastien Broca étudie cette transformation sous l’angle des critiques de l’empire des « big tech » du numérique.
À propos de : Catherine Rémy, Hybrides. Transplanter des organes de l’animal à l’humain, CNRS Éditions
À propos de : Jean-Yves Authier et Joanie Cayouette-Remblière (dir.), Ce que voisiner veut dire. Une grande enquête sur les liens sociaux de proximité, Puf
À propos de : Caroline Piketty, Harmonies volées. Printemps 1945 : le retour des pianos pillés par les nazis, L’Archipel
