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.
The plaza in front of the Western Wall in Jerusalem was the scene of intense conflict between Jews and Muslims in the twentieth century. Paying unique attention to the faintest traces, historian Vincent Lemire traces the successive episodes of violence and destruction that unfolded at the foot of the wall.
Michel Crozier’s work was shaped by the conviction that organizational phenomena create society. He helped pioneer the tools for analyzing groups established to carry out a common project according to a specific system of action and rules of the game.
The “California dream” does not date back to the Gold Rush of the 19th century, but only to the 20th, and is more a matter of criticism than enthusiasm. Louis Warren invites us to put this myth into perspective, and to be wary of the tendency to see California as the laboratory of the United States.
How have French women of Arab and North African descent become the subject of a collective fantasy? If the language of immigration reveals collective imaginaries and social and discursive practices that are worth analyzing, then the word beurette also deserves our attention.
Some exceptional experiences give us access to a different reality from the one we encounter in our everyday lives. In the twentieth century, a number of philosophers explored these experiences in the pursuit of a new form of empiricism.
About: Florence Burgat, L’inconscient des animaux, Seuil
About: Patrick Chastenet, Les racines libertaires de l’écologie politique, L’échappée
About: Sébastien Motta, Le Mélange des genres, Critique de l’ontologie par l’élucidation du concept d’identité, Classiques Garnier
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.
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.
Books & Ideas is slowing down for the summer and will be offering weekly selections of reviews and essays published over the last year. This week’s selection questions our global consumerism, looks back in its history and analyses its legal framework.
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 essays, interviews and reviews published over the past year.
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.
A highly respected figure in African studies, Jack Goody has become a distinctive voice in the torrent of academic critiques of western ethnocentrism. His work, spanning more than sixty years, has been based on a single ambition: comparison, for the sake of more accurately locating European history within Eurasian and world history.
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.
Fred Block & Margaret Somers, two key members of an international network of scholars appealing to Karl Polanyi’s masterpiece of 1944, forcefully argue that it constitutes a critical resource for understanding not only the nature and origins of the market economy but also its recurrent crises, including the current one.
Depuis un an aux manettes de l’Argentine, Javier Milei continue d’intriguer. À l’étranger, il fascine le camp ultralibéral-conservateur autant qu’il inquiète les milieux progressistes. Si son style détonne, on a encore du mal à cerner le phénomène politique qu’il incarne.
Comment fabrique-t-on de la sociologie aujourd’hui ? À partir de leurs trajectoires croisées, trois sociologues reviennent sur leurs conditions de travail et la manière dont elles affectent leur production scientifique.
L’œuvre de l’écrivain-historien, particulièrement ses Mémoires, accompagne la transition de la rhétorique des Lumières vers le registre du moi et de l’expérience vécue. S’intègre-t-elle pour autant dans la jeune école historiographique des années 1820 ?
À propos de : Nicolas Cadet, Combattre la pandémie. Les médecins et l’État face au choléra de 1832, Vendémiaire
À propos de : Arlette Jouanna, Le Sang des princes. Les ambiguïtés de la légitimité monarchique, Gallimard
À propos de : Geneviève Pruvost, La subsistance au quotidien, conter ce qui compte, La Découverte
