Books & ideas

Dual Identity

Victor Lu Huynh — 2026-02-10T07:00:00Z

How do children construct their racial identity? Based on a groundbreaking study of children from so-called “mixed” couples, Solène Brun explores the processes of racialization within family structures.

The I and the self

Sabine Hammond — 2025-04-10T08:30:00Z

Faced with the risk of losing man to the self, Pierre Guenancia says that we should abandon the self to rediscover man.

The Inquiry Into Being

Cédric Mouriès — 2024-11-26T07:30:00Z

Despite repeated proclamations of the death of metaphysics, the contemporary philosophical landscape is marked by the proliferation of ontologies. Sébastien Motta sets out to demonstrate the sterility of the ontological enterprise through a logical analysis of their assumptions.

American Democracy and the Challenge of Identity Pluralism

Jules Naudet — 2022-10-14T07:00:00Z

Hakeem Jefferson argues that the United States is experiencing a democratic backsliding. He calls for deep institutional reforms that aim at better reflecting the American public, such as expanding the number of judges in the Supreme Court or having a US Senate apportionment based on state population.

The Making of Race

Editorial Team — 2020-07-27T07:00:00Z

Books & Ideas is slowing down for the summer and will be offering weekly selections of reviews and essays published over the last year. This week's selection questions the social construction of racial identities, and the history of domination.

Holidays in the Highlands

Marion Amblard — 2018-03-01T08:00:00Z

Long weighed down by historical prejudice, the Highlands slowly started to attract the public's interest from the mid-18^th century onwards. With the development of mass tourism, public perceptions of the Scottish region gradually improved, fostering its integration within Great Britain.

Race and Counter-Cultures in the United States

Andrew J. Diamond — 2016-12-08T08:00:00Z

According to journalist and critic Jeff Chang, Trump's appeal partially lays in culture war politics dating back to the 1990s, when the ideas of multiculturalism and post-racialism clashed intensively. It now remains to be seen whether justice movements activated on the ground can come together to resist the new president's policies.

The Origins of the Islamic State

Marieke Louis — 2016-04-28T07:00:00Z

The Islamic State (IS) was not born miraculously in the summer of 2014. Its origins lie in the intertwined histories of Iraq and Syria over the past twenty years. Loulouwa Al Rachid and Matthieu Rey untangle IS's complex heritage, bequeathed to it both by Baathist authoritarianism and the United States' intervention in Iraq.

This is their body

Sébastien Roux — 2016-03-24T07:22:18Z

How did the body come to play such a crucial part in the definition of contemporary identities? Relying on studies on transplants, childbirth or people's relation to corpses, Dominique Memmi brings to light what is socially and politically at stake in the fact that the self is rooted in the body.

Divorce and Identity

Taraneh Moussavi — 2013-07-01T07:50:55Z

How do we define ourselves? Should we abolish the concept of gender from the expression of our identity, due to its being a vehicle of inequality and injustice? In this interview, François de Singly explains that what is important is for every individual to be able to define the hierarchy governing the different dimensions of his/her identity.