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.
What binds people together and turns them into a society? In an ambitious book, the sociologist Serge Paugam wrestles with this question, while bringing sociology into conversation with psychology.
The EU aims for net climate neutrality by 2050, utilizing the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) as its main tool. But the climate crisis demands more than market mechanisms. It requires comprehensive planning and legal frameworks that prioritize public over private interests.
In a book that is part history of ideas, part political essay, Camille Dejardin argues that John Stuart Mill’s oeuvre is useful for understanding contemporary issues, notably the ecological crisis and related economic change. Yet she does so while advancing some half-truths.
Is the law doing enough to protect the environment? Through an analysis of the concept of environmental crime, Grégory Salle shows that legal provisions are limited by a social vision that favors the technical and capitalist exploitation of nature.
About: Thierry Hoquet, Le nouvel esprit biologique, Puf
About: Marie Gaille, En soutien à la vie. Éthique du care et médecine, Vrin
About: Zrinka Stahuljak, Les Fixeurs au Moyen Âge. Histoire et littérature connectées, Seuil
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
According to Nancy Fraser, the renewal of socialism requires a conflation of activism and political theory; indeed, emancipation can only exist on the basis of equal participation in all spheres of life, and can only be understood in terms of social struggles, which today appear in multiple forms.
Among the recipients of the 2009 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics was Elinor Ostrom, for her analysis of economic governance, especially in relation to the commons. While this choice took many in the profession by surprise, her life-long quest for an understanding of successful common property resource management holds important lessons for our future.
Intellectuel russe influent et figure clé du néo-eurasisme, Alexandre Douguine prône une alliance entre la Russie et les anciennes républiques soviétiques contre l’Occident. Son aura, bien que limitée politiquement, a marqué des courants conservateurs et nationalistes en Russie et certains cercles proches du pouvoir.
En retraçant la complexe ascension du néolibéralisme nord-américain au cours des quarante dernières années, la sociologue australienne Melinda Cooper contribue à en désamorcer l’aspect faussement inéluctable, voire à préparer son déclin possible.
S’inscrivant dans l’entreprise de longue haleine d’une « politique de la littérature », Jacques Rancière révèle la portée révolutionnaire des intrigues faussement inoffensives dont Tchekhov a nourri ses nombreux récits.
À propos de : Christophe Bouriau, Kant écologiste, Puf
À propos de : Frédéric Monferrand, La nature du capital. Politique et ontologie chez le jeune Marx, Éditions Amsterdam
À propos de : Jérémie Foa, Survivre. Une histoire des guerres de Religion, Seuil
