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.
Can Nietzsche be considered a social thinker? Straddling social critique and critique of the social, French and German interpretive traditions that embrace Nietzsche make it necessary to revise the hasty conclusions of Marxists and anti-postmodernists.
In their recent research about Israeli politics, Noam Gidron and his coauthors explore the country’s affective polarization, the support for the judicial overhaul, Likud’s populism, and the relations between them.
Julia Cagé and Thomas Piketty’s economic history of political conflict in France is a defense of bipartition: The Left-Right divide, which is the foundation of our democracy, has enabled social progress. We must therefore work to restore it.
In his academic reading of Julia Cagé and Thomas Piketty’s book, Michel Offerlé provides a critical analysis of the selected indicators, followed by a comparison with works of electoral sociology and electoral history.
About: Nina Valbousquet, Les âmes tièdes. Le Vatican face à la Shoah, La Découverte
About: François Azouvi, Du héros à la victime : la métamorphose contemporaine du sacré, Gallimard
About: Eric Fabri, Pourquoi la propriété privée (The Whys and Wherefores of Private Property), Le Bord de l’Eau
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.
How to renew the currently dwindling support for democratic governance? To the minds of theorists and historians, whether advocating going back to classical political traditions like Republicanism or drawing lots, or experimenting new approaches, increased political participation may be the best path to follow.
The June protests which shook Brazil in 2013 stunned the world. This dossier, published by Books&Ideas, discusses the main issues at the core of these protests, analyzing them in the light of previous mobilizations and explaining why they are essential to the understanding of contemporary Brazil.
Protectionism, a solution? Really? The economic crisis may not have turned the tide against liberalization, but we certainly cannot look at protectionism the same as we used to.
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.
Leading 19th century statesman, political economist, architect of the 1860 commercial treaty between France and the United Kingdom, and campaigner for peace between European nations, Michel Chevalier had also been a dominant voice in the Romantic socialism of Saint-Simonianism: the eclectic nature of his thought would lend itself to a particular vision of Europe, forerunner of today’s European Union.
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.
À l’heure de l’administration Trump II, l’Europe doit se tourner vers l’autonomie stratégique pour compenser le déclin de la relation transatlantique. Cela implique de financer les capacités militaires et l’indépendance économique de l’Europe par la dette communautaire.
Dans la Chine de Xi Jinping où toute dissidence semble impossible, des publications hétérodoxes ont continué à s’exprimer sur des supports divers, même s’il reste difficile de saisir les logiques de la censure et des sanctions auxquelles les auteurs se sont exposés : une anthologie en esquisse le panorama.
La taxation de l’héritage est très impopulaire, alors que la transmission des patrimoines est la source majeure des inégalités sociales. Au XIXe siècle pourtant, cette taxation et sa légitimité étaient discutées.
À propos de : Pierre Nevejans, Diplomaties plurielles au XVIᵉ siècle. Florence et la France à la fin des guerres d’Italie, Classiques Garnier
À propos de : Johann Michel, Lire les images. Herméneutique de l’art, Puf
À propos de : Bruno Cabanes, Les fantômes de l’île de Peleliu, Seuil
