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.
Faced with the risk of losing man to the self, Pierre Guenancia says that we should abandon the self to rediscover man.
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.
How can we move beyond abstract architecture, where buildings are constructed without their audiences? Peter Ferretto’s method is based on observation, engagement, and the osmosis between teaching, practice, research, and social impact.
A sociologist and an economist who oppose green industrial policy advocate ecological planning based on democratic foundations.
“Excited delirium” is a diagnosis that was used to absolve police officers of responsibility for the deaths of Black and Brown men. For decades, it was legitimized by a network of forensic pathologists, law enforcement agencies, and private companies that sustained this pseudoscience.
About: Gilles Havard, Les Natchez. Une histoire coloniale de la violence, Tallandier / Flammarion
About: Sylvain Dufraisse, Une histoire sportive de la guerre froide, Nouveau Monde Éditions
About: Hamadi Redissi, dir., Le pouvoir d’un seul, Diwen
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
As populism is rising on a global level, Books & Ideas offers a series on media politics in East Asian countries, to be published over the next two weeks. Though situations are extremely diverse, they can teach us a lot on the relationship between the state and journalists in authoritarian contexts. What role is left for the media to play in non-democracies?
How do scientific discoveries and progress come about? Against an idealist and triumphalist conception of the history of science, Simon Schaffer’s oeuvre examines science in the making, in close proximity to its practices and actors. Far from diminishing its prestige, this approach restores science to the central place it occupied in Old Regime societies.
What distinguishes a blank canvas from an empty frame? A simple object from a readymade? What is this mysterious gap that art digs as it separates from life? Such are the questions posed by Arthur Danto, a major figure of contemporary art theory.
From the margins to which he was confined, Georges Devereux (1908-1985) formulated some of the most original scientific work of his century. In the wake of Freud, whose legacy he firmly defended, Devereux initiated the transcultural practice of psychiatry. François Laplantine, one of his former disciples, reconsiders the legacy of ethnopsychoanalysis’ founder.
Une rumeur circule dans certains pays africains : l’État français organiserait des vols de pénis afin de pallier la baisse de la fécondité. La rumeur, relayée par la propagande russe, est devenue une infox.
Quelles relations le “jansénisme” entretient-il avec la doctrine de Cornélius Jansen, et celle-ci avec l’augustinisme dont il se réclame ? S. Icard fait le point sur les débats qui jouèrent un rôle déterminant dans la première modernité.
Quels sont les effets de la rationalisation économique sur les services publics ? Nadège Vezinat éclaire de manière nuancée les logiques institutionnelles qui affaiblissent les administrations de l’État social, leurs agents et, au-delà, les droits de tous les usagers.
À propos de : Nancy Rose Hunt, Un État nerveux. Violence, remèdes et rêverie au Congo colonial, Éditions de l’EHESS
À propos de : Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesús, Excited Delirium : Race, Police Violence, and the Invention of a Disease, Duke University
À propos de : Muriel Mille, Le travail de la fiction. Dans les coulisses d’une série télévisée, Presses Universitaires de Vincennes
