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.
Pentecostalism, a rapidly growing movement, is a paradoxical religion: it denies its status as a church, leaving individuals in a one-to-one relationship with God, yet in a way that allows dominated groups to acquire a degree of social legitimacy.
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.
In a book that is learned and ambitious as well as accessible, Vincent Citot compares the philosophies of eight different civilizations to understand their cyclical evolution from a religious to a scientific stage.
For over a century, the left has owed its political identity and major political victories to a critical adherance to the Enlightenment. This is why, Stéphanie Roza argues, abandoning this legacy is dangerous.
About: Coralie Chevallier et Mathieu Perona, Homo sapiens dans la cité. Comment adapter l’action publique à la psychologie humaine, Odile Jacob
About : Julien Fretel & Michel Offerlé, Écrire au président. Enquête sur le guichet de l’Élysée, La Découverte
About: Hélène Tordjman, La croissance verte contre la nature. Critique de l’écologie marchande, La Découverte
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.
The last year has been extremely tough for Europe as a political idea. The debt crisis, the rise of the radical right, repeated and widespread attacks against immigrants, foreigners, but also the very concept of supranational solidarity have seemed to bring one of the richest regions of the globe to the brink of collapse. Is the situation as hard as it has been made to look? And where should Europe’s efforts first turn to?
Summer is here. Books&Ideas is off on holiday. We will be back with new publications starting August 29th. In the meantime, here is a selection of essays, interviews and reviews published over the past year.
This dossier examines the recently reopened debate on regional integration in Asia. What are the obstacles to the construction of an Asian Union? How is the issue tackled in Japan, China or Australia?
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.
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.
Ronald Dworkin’s innovative and politically ambitious work has become essential reading in political and legal theory. Taking issue with classical political liberalism, he argues that liberty and equality are not mutually exclusive, and are indeed inseparable. And against traditional interpretations of law, he argues that law must be understood by comparing it to a collective novel, a mixture of creativity and interpretation.
Aux États-Unis, Jim Crow désigne un ensemble de coutumes et de lois qui a fait des Noirs une sous-caste d’“intouchables” dans les États sudistes pendant 70 ans. À partir de l’abondante littérature historique sur la période, le sociologue Loïc Wacquant forge un modèle de ce régime afin de l’étendre à d’autres systèmes de domination raciale.
John Bellamy Foster présente une approche marxiste de la crise écologique fondée sur le matérialisme écologique, l’hypothèse de la « rupture métabolique » et la dialectique de la nature.
Comment classe-t-on les stades d’une maladie, les meubles dans un catalogue, les races dans un système d’apartheid ? L’ouvrage classique de Star et Bowker est traduit en français 25 ans après sa parution, alors que la tentation discriminatrice revient en force.
À propos de : Chris Wickham, The Donkey and the boat. Reinterpreting the Mediterranean economy, 950-1180, Oxford University Press
À propos de : Yorim Spoelder, Vision of Greater India. Transimperial Knowledge and Anti-Colonial Nationalism, c. 1800-1960, Cambridge University Press
À propos de : Quinn Slobodian, Crack-Up Capitalism. Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy, Metropolitan Books