Books & ideas

The Social Sources of Institutions

Dimitri della Faille — 2020-02-17T08:00:00Z

Critical of capitalism and nationalism, the work of Thorstein Veblen focuses mainly on the analysis of institutions: their strengths, their weaknesses, and the way they manage to stabilize and build up in spite of their failures.

Brexit and Scottish Nationalism

Alice Bonzom & Mélanie Cournil — 2020-01-27T08:00:00Z

The Brexit vote, welcomed with dismay in Scotland, has prompted the Scottish National Party to present itself as the only sound alternative to Westminster's policies, viewed as damaging to Scottish interests. F. Simpkins analyses the SNP's strategies and outlines the many political challenges ahead.

The Militarisation of Russian Society

Clémentine Fauconnier — 2019-11-25T08:00:00Z

Russia has seen a huge increase in commemorations of the Soviet victory. Some of these parades are organized by civilians, while others are more official. But all of them reveal a rise in a nationalism that Putin would like to epitomise.

Cow Terrorism

Mathieu Ferry — 2018-03-26T07:00:00Z

The sacredness of the cow and the religious proscription against the consumption of beef were invented as late as the medieval period, and have since represented powerful unifying forces among the Hindu community. Today, the wave of lynchings the country has experienced shows how these notions continue to be instrumentalized by the nationalist extreme right.

Celebrating Scottish Heroes

Clarisse Godard Desmarest — 2017-10-16T07:00:00Z

The 19^th century in Scotland saw the emergence of an architectural trend of building monuments dedicated to the celebration of cultural heroes. In his latest book, Johnny Rodger examines the political significance of the hero building in the relationships between the people, the nation and the state.

A World of Museums

Elizabeth Dospel Williams — 2017-07-17T07:00:00Z

Adopting an ethnographical approach on the world of museums, Peggy Levitt explains how, as a crucial link between past and present, the local and the global, they play a political role in addressing questions of nationalism and cosmopolitanism.

Indian Populism

Sylvie Guichard — 2017-04-10T07:00:00Z

Since Narenda Modi, the strongman of Hindu nationalism, was elected prime minister, discrimination against minorities has increased in India and freedom of expression no longer seems guaranteed. Can Indian democracy resist the rise of an authoritarian and xenophobic right?

Shaping Indochinese Identity

Blaise Truong-Loï — 2017-02-02T08:00:00Z

It is now incongruous to imagine Vietnamese people identifying themselves as “Indochinese”. For a long time, however, the colonial territory served as a framework for the expression of Vietnam's national identity. This phenomenon does not illustrate so much the effectiveness of the education given in schools under the French empire as the negotiated nature of colonisation in Asia. A fresh look at a classic work.

National Parks & National Pride

Laura Brimont — 2016-03-10T09:08:18Z

The national park is not only a space dedicated to walks, recreation, and even wondrous contemplation, it is also a tool used by the Nation. Guillaume Blanc analyses this overlap between environment and politics through the cases of France, Canada, and Ethiopia.

The Projection Room

Monica Eppinger — 2015-11-19T08:00:00Z

A virulent nationalism is currently being injected along Russia's newly blurred southwestern border with Eastern Ukraine. As tempting as it my be to slip back into Cold War rhetorics, Monica Eppinger warns us that the old framework and distant gaze of geopolitics are prone to missing much.