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.
A five-year investigation reveals how the most militant blue-collar workers in Sochaux are growing older but continuing to stand up for their beliefs even after their retirement.
While we have entered the age of generative AI, it is worth having a look at how computers can help literature scholars and intellectual historians to explain the life of concepts, aesthetics and genres.
Are we responsible for our own health? Yes, according to advocates of liberal public policy. Yet this position fails to acknowledge social inequality’s serious pathogenic effects.
By following inmates who were not initially religious but who later found God in prison, Thibault Ducloux rethinks our understanding of the social conditions that produce and preserve faith.
About: Paul Guillibert, Exploiter les vivants. Une écologie politique du travail, Amsterdam
About: Jean-Louis Roch, Vivre la misère au Moyen Âge, Les Belles Lettres
About: Laurent Coumel, 24 heures de la vie à Tchernobyl, Puf
A rumour is circulating in some African countries: the French state is organising penis thefts to offset declining fertility. The rumour, spread by Russian propaganda, has become fake news.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Kenzaburō Ōe, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, is a controversial figure in Japan. And rightly so, for there are a great many contradictions in both his fictional and theoretical work. He is a fierce opponent of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy, and yet continues to celebrate the heroism of the soldier who finds glory through sacrifice.
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.
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.
Que serait une pédagogie deleuzienne ? Elle opposerait à l’« image dogmatique de la pensée » une théorie de l’apprentissage plus ouverte, sensible aux hasards et aux rencontres susceptibles de former des vocations.
Detroit a longtemps été la ville décroissante, symbolisant à elle seule le déclin du capitalisme industriel. Elle est aujourd’hui une ville renaissante, où s’installent des formes d’agriculture urbaine. Mais comment évoquer tous ces aspects ?
Comment expliquer la révolution silencieuse qui a eu lieu en Bretagne au XXe siècle, c’est-à-dire la disparition du breton au profit du français ? Répression et humiliation par le biais de l’école républicaine, ou stratégie de la part des Bretons eux-mêmes ?
À propos de : Flora Bastiani, Philosophie du soin critique. Penser la relation en réanimation, en soins intensifs et dans le prélèvement d’organes, Le cercle herméneutique
À propos de : Thierry Hoquet, Histoire (dé)coloniale de la philosophie française. De la Renaissance à nos jours, Puf
À propos de : Michael Lucken, Les Occupants. Les Américains au Japon après la Seconde Guerre mondiale, La Découverte
