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.
How do citizens view the power of the President of the Republic? An analysis of letters sent to the Élysée Palace reveals the relationship between French citizens and their head of state, as well as the role played by an invisible service: the presidential post office.
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.
Can one save the planet and still be a capitalist? For Hélène Tordjman, the answer is “no.” To save nature, capitalism must be abandoned. Not an easy task!
What if human lives actually do have a price tag? Ariel Colonomos analyses the social and political conditions of pricing practices for human lives, offering an innovative interpretation of the role of the state in modern European history.
About: Patrick Farges et Elissa Mailänder (dir.), Marcher au pas et trébucher. Masculinités allemandes à l’épreuve du nazisme et de la guerre, Presses du Septentrion
About: Pierre-Étienne Vandamme, Démocratie et Justice sociale, Vrin
About: François-Xavier Fauvelle et Anne Lafont, L’Afrique et le monde : histoires renouées. De la préhistoire au XXIe siècle, 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.
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.
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. Economic inequalities have been at the forefront of intellectual debate this year with the publication of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Our third selection of articles brings an international perspective on the issue, with a sociological and historical outlook.
Books & Ideas is going on holiday for the summer, and will resume its publication schedule in September. In the meantime, we present to you a weekly roundup of our most recent essays and reviews. Our first summer selection features compelling interviews on subjects as varied as food and media studies, African-American history, quantum physics, Russian political culture, and Muslim-Jewish relations.
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.
What distinguishes a blank canvas from an empty frame? A simple object from a readymade? What is this mysterious gap that art digs as it separates from life? Such are the questions posed by Arthur Danto, a major figure of contemporary art theory.
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.
Actrices de la sécularisation et de la résistance, les Iraniennes sont la cible du régime depuis 1979. C’est sur cette toile de fond qu’éclate en 2022 le mouvement « Femme, Vie, Liberté ».
Sommes-nous responsables de notre santé ? Oui, disent les politiques publiques libérales. C’est ne pas voir que les inégalités sociales ont des effets pathogènes profonds.
La numérisation de la vie sociale a fait émerger une variété de manières de mesurer et catégoriser les individus. Les sociologues Marion Fourcade et Kieran Healy voient dans cette évolution le signe d’une transformation profonde de nos sociétés.
À propos de : Andrea Wulf, Les rebelles magnifiques, Éditions Noir sur Blanc
À propos de : Colin Jones, La chute de Robespierre. 24 heures dans le Paris révolutionnaire, Fayard
À propos de : Camilla Townsend, Le cinquième soleil : une autre histoire des Aztèques, Albin Michel