Institut du monde contemporain

The key notion of caste often goes beyond the strict framework of Hinduism, in which it originated, to influence the social structures of other religious groups. Rémy Delage shows us the extent to which caste categories are important for understanding the social organization of Muslims in the region.

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.

One of Albert O. Hirschman’s contributions to economic theory is a richer understanding of the concept of the “rational actor,” which, he demonstrated, possesses the deliberative capacities that democratic market societies require. This following is a profile of an economist who was also a dissident and an activist.

Martha Nussbaum has written a prolific body of work, all of it aimed at correcting the failings of political liberalism and constructing a more fully developed democracy. The theory of capabilities is at the root of this endeavour: it allows us to combat all forms of inequality by analysing the conditions out of which they emerge.

Enlargement of the sphere of social disadvantage, conversion of some of the higher social categories to a culture of measuring performance, and opposition in some low-income categories to policies that are too focused on the poorest ones; in Olivier Schwartz’s view, those are three of the main factors that make for difficulties in reconstructing a city of fellow creatures. In this picture, France is both less and more a class society than it was forty years ago.

With the exception of kilts, the skirt symbolises a woman: scatterbrained, seductive or “feminine”, the wearer is well and truly a member of the weaker sex. The historian Christine Bard analyses the introduction of a “Skirt Day”, which would aim to make the skirt an acceptable garment once more. Could this be a new liberation, following the liberation of trousers for women?

The Gezi park uprising of June 2013 emerged in protest against a planned urban development project proposed by the Turkish government as part of its wider policy of attempting to revive the country’s glorious Ottoman past, despite the fact that Turkey is now a modern republic. J-F. Pérouse takes a look at the country’s ambitious urban transformation.

Randomized evaluation has become very fashionable. Initially developed in the field of development economics, it has now spread to many public policy areas. Yannick L’Horty and Pascale Petit here discuss the advantages and the limits of this relatively recent tool for evaluating social policies.

In ancient Rome, the State did not meddle in the private religious lives of its citizens, even though the gods were part of the community and lived among them. The Roman religion accepted diverse forms of worship – provided that they did not seek to impose transcendence. In this essay John Scheid restores to the Roman religion its immanent and physical attributes.

Behind the commendations of the nonprofit sector and the promotion of “Social and Solidarity Economy”, Matthieu Hély discerns the retreat of public service and the deliberate deregulation of the wage system. The nonprofit sector can no longer be idealized and misconstrued as a compromise between different and antagonistic logics. It must be addressed in light of what it has become: a labor market with increasingly precarious actors who have been stripped of the statute formerly guaranteed by public service.

Claude Lefort, who died in October 2010, was the author of a great number of titles in political philosophy, working both on history of ideas and interpretation of events, unceasingly questioning the political conditions of freedom.

The highest prize of the architectural world was awarded to Swiss architect Peter Zumthor in 2009. His phenomenological approach, paying special attention to natural landscapes and local building traditions, is at odds with the dominant contemporary architectural design. He has the merit of raising the thorny question of what architecture means at a time of widespread urban living and the crisis of place.