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.
Condensing the history of migration into the space of five buildings in the industrial suburb of Saint-Denis, Fabrice Langrognet gives voice to unexpected archives. These tell us much about the coexistence of multiple and diverse foreigners united by precarity and uncertainty.
As multilateral cooperation is increasingly under attack, Katerina Linos challenges certain misperceptions about the role of international institutions, particularly the European Union, and emphasizes their capacity for action in times of multiple crises.
The “ardor of pillagers” refers to the momentum driving the depletion of life, which is outlined by Hicham-Stéphane Afeissa in his new book, drawing on the entire field of ecological thought.
Ecological politics have struggled to ward off environmental disaster. To impose itself as a transformative force, Jean-Baptiste Comby shows that ecological politics must become the strategic tool and compass of a genuine class struggle.
About: Maud Gelly, Les Politiques du tri. D’une épidémie à l’autre (SIDA, COVID), Le Croquant
About: Laura Tatoueix, Défaire son fruit. Une histoire sociale de l’avortement en France à l’époque moderne, éditions de l’EHESS
About: Isabelle Jonveaux, Une culture de la satiété. Enquête sociologique sur le jeûne comme expérience spirituelle, Presses Universitaires de Rennes
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.
Summer is here; Books&Ideas is off on holiday. We will be back with new publications starting August 30. In the meantime, here is a selection of essays, interviews and reviews published over the past year.
Books & Ideas is going on holiday for the summer, and will resume its publication schedule in September. In the meantime, we present you with a weekly roundup of our most recent essays and reviews. Our second summer selection features portraits of prominent intellectual figures: Albert Camus, René Dumont, Ronald Dworkin, Joan W. Scott and Max Weber.
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.
Richard Hoggart (1918-2014), a poor child who went onto become a university professor, was the epitome of a successful scholarship student. The trajectory of this “exemplary counter-example” sheds light on the mechanisms of social reproduction when they prove inoperative and the distance that can be traveled from one’s native milieu.
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.
Fred Block & Margaret Somers, two key members of an international network of scholars appealing to Karl Polanyi’s masterpiece of 1944, forcefully argue that it constitutes a critical resource for understanding not only the nature and origins of the market economy but also its recurrent crises, including the current one.
En analysant près de 8 000 recrutements à la maîtrise de conférences en France entre 2017 et 2024, Olivier Godechot, Rachel Issiakou, Yann Renisio et Adrien Rougier reviennent sur la question ancienne et controversée du localisme académique.
Dans le Paris post-soixante-huitard, un groupe de maoïstes s’organise autour de Fernando, mystérieux prophète des temps modernes. En explorant le fonctionnement de cette organisation, Julie Pagis invite à approfondir la notion de domination charismatique chère à Max Weber.
Traditionnellement fixée à 476, la fin de l’Antiquité se laisse difficilement marquer par une date unique pour une histoire « en tranches ». Sylvain Destephen propose l’an 542, marqué par guerres, peste et mutations impériales. Un travail de contextualisation qui met en avant la période mal connue de l’Antiquité tardive.
À propos de : Élie Haddad, D’une noblesse l’autre : France, XVIe-XVIIIe siècle, Champ Vallon
À propos de : Sébastien Gandon, Russell global. Pour une histoire des réceptions de la philosophie analytique, Classiques Garnier
À propos de : Clémence Cardon-Quint, L’argent de l’école. Histoire du budget de l’Éducation nationale depuis 1945, Presses de Sciences Po
