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 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?
Quotas in India contribute to the emancipation of lower castes while producing perverse effects that are difficult to control. Rohini Somanathan questions the right balance between targeted positive discrimination policies and public policies with a universal vocation.
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.
Developed land is a major but neglected share of property holdings. In a new book, Alain Trannoy and Etienne Wasmer analyze this form of property, identifying its causes in ways that will generate discussion about its distribution—and possible taxation.
About: Hugues Draelants & Sonia Revaz, L’évidence des faits. La politique des preuves en éducation, Puf
About: Yannick Fer, Sociologie du pentecôtisme, Karthala
About: Vincent Citot, Histoire mondiale de la philosophie, Une histoire comparée des cycles de la vie intellectuelle dans huit civilisations, Puf
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.
Twenty years after the publication of Viviana Zelizer’s “The Social Meaning of Money”, this special issue brings together scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds to examine the genesis of the book, its impact in shaping the analysis of economic value, and its enduring intellectual influence on both sides of the Atlantic.
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.
In the U.S., in France as well with Hugues Lagrange’s book on “the denial of cultures”, culture has again become the focus of poverty studies. Our dossier on “culture of poverty” reviews this new trend and examines a notion that has paradoxically been given a new lease of life by the economic downturn, half a century after Oscar Lewis controversially introduced it.
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.
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”.
« La scène des clubs berlinois a-t-elle un problème d’antisémitisme ? » s’interrogeait un journaliste du Spiegel en décembre 2023. Cet article explore les dessous d’un clivage au sein de la scène techno berlinoise autour du conflit israélo-palestinien.
Comment peut-on créer des algorithmes qui soient aussi justes qu’efficaces ? David Robinson propose des pistes de réflexion et tire les conséquences d’une expérience collective.
Pour transformer le quotidien, il est nécessaire non seulement de défaire les rapports de classe, de sexe et de race, mais aussi de renouer avec la matière et la ruralité. L’entre-subsistance permet de fissurer le système capitaliste et patriarcal.
À propos de : Aurélien d’Avout, La France en éclats. Écrire la débâcle de 1940, d’Aragon à Claude Simon, Les impressions nouvelles
À propos de : Laurie A. Paul, Ces expériences qui nous transforment, Eliott
À propos de : Félicien Faury, Des électeurs ordinaires. Enquête sur la normalisation de l’extrême droite, Seuil