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.
Summer is here; Books&Ideas is off on holiday. We will be back with new publications starting August 30. In the meantime, here is a selection of texts published over the past year.
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?
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.
About: Alain Trannoy & Etienne Wasmer, Le grand retour de la terre dans les patrimoines, Odile Jacob
About: Hugues Draelants & Sonia Revaz, L’évidence des faits. La politique des preuves en éducation, Puf
About: Yannick Fer, Sociologie du pentecôtisme, Karthala
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.
As protests against racism break out all over the world following the murder of George Floyd, Books & Ideas gathers a selection of texts examining the history of these multifaceted discriminations and of the struggles for racial justice.
Over the past few months, Books and Ideas has been running a series of interviews with leading contemporary scholars, who took the time to discuss their particular topics of research with us. For the Christmas season, we have put together a selection of seven discussions with intellectuals across the humanities and sciences: sociology, history, comparative literature, neuro-biology, anthropology and political science.
Is it really the case, as is often alleged, that money decides everything about elections? As the US presidential election is looming, La Vie des idées/Books & Ideas and Public Books team up to examine the influence of money in today’s electoral democracies.
By asserting that structuralism is a fruitful approach to kinship relations or the difference between the sexes, Françoise Héritier radically renewed anthropological methodology. Her life’s work has also shown us that scientific commitment goes hand-in-hand with societal involvement.
Miguel Abensour profoundly renewed thinking about democracy. His political philosophy paid close attention to the desire for emancipation and was based on an original conception of utopia breaking with the mythology of the ‘ideal city’ or of a ‘good society’.
“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.
Alors que la multiplication des tensions autour de l’eau semble inévitable, Simon Porcher propose une série de mesures pour adapter notre cadre économique et législatif.
Amer savoir, celui qu’on tire du voyage ! Mais au fait, pourquoi voyager ? Et peut-on habiter le monde tout en le parcourant ?
Après 1945, l’utilisation géopolitique du sport trouve sa place dans les nouvelles alliances de la guerre froide. L’idéologie et la diplomatie se glissent alors dans tous les recoins de l’activité sportive.
À propos de : Josiane Boutet, Marcel Cohen, linguiste engagé dans son siècle (1884-1974), éditions Lambert-Lucas
À propos de : David Robinson, Voices in the code. A story about people, their values, and the algorithm they made,
À propos de : Geneviève Pruvost, Quotidien politique. Féminisme, écologie, subsistance, La Découverte