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 destructive potential of nuclear weapons makes states “responsible” and helps stave off a Third World War; the process of triggering the bomb is controlled; proliferation must be avoided, but our nuclear arsenal must be modernized. If we are to dispel the myths surrounding nuclear weapons, a debate is needed.
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.
Through his research into little-known aspects of twentieth-century French thought and authors sensitive to the diversity of modes of knowledge, Frédéric Fruteau de Laclos has issued a manifesto for empiricism and a rallying cry against ethnocentrism.
Secularisation is often presented as a Western model that was exported during decolonisation; but according to M. A. Meziane, it was in fact spread by colonialism itself as an instrument of domination.
About: Diane Roman, La cause des droits. Écologie, progrès social et droits humains, Dalloz
About: Haud Guéguen et Laurent Jeanpierre, La perspective du possible. Comment penser ce qui peut nous arriver, et ce que nous pouvons faire, La Découverte
About: Olivier Boulnois, Généalogie de la liberté, 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.
Our Books and Ideas dossier on the American presidential elections will make no forecasts - instead it will look back on four years of Democratic leadership at the White House and four years of right-wing radicalization inside and outside of the G.O.P. Whoever wins will have to deal with the Tea Party, and the record shows it will not be easy for anyone.
The Paris Agreement on Climate Change is three years old this week but is already under attack. In support of further necessary action to address the changing climate, Public Books & La Vie des Idées offer a collaborative series of articles examining the intersection of climate change and capitalism.
Books & Ideas is slowing down for the summer and will be back at the end of August. In the meantime, here is a selection of interviews, reviews and essays on popular music published over the past year.
Though poorly known in France, the work of the anthropologist Mary Douglas is nonetheless essential for understanding the elementary forms of social organization and daily life. By shedding light on her academic career and personal life, this portrait rehabilitates the thought of a major intellectual.
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.
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.
Cinquante ans après la révolution, et malgré la célébration de l’événement par la majorité de la population, l’extrême droite refait surface au Portugal.
Les Amérindiens ont du mal à se mobiliser contre une industrie pétrolière dont ils dépendent à bien des égards. Mais peut-on étudier ces mobilisations avec les seuls outils de la science politique, sans s’appuyer sur l’anthropologie de l’Amazonie ?
Comment s’organisaient les monarchies marocaines et tunisiennes sous le Protectorat français ? En étudiant les structures administratives et les droits des fonctionnaires dans ces deux pays, Antoine Perrier met en lumière des dynamiques souvent négligées de l’histoire coloniale du Maghreb.
À propos de : Éric Fabri, Pourquoi la propriété privée ?, Le Bord de l’Eau
À propos de : Christine Détrez, Crush. Fragments du nouveau discours amoureux, Flammarion
À propos de : Gilles Havard, Les Natchez. Une histoire coloniale de la violence, Tallandier / Flammarion