Books & ideas

Macron and the sex thieves

Julien Bonhomme — 2025-06-10T07:00:00Z

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.

A Conversation Between Africa and the World

Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch — 2024-05-28T12:35:47Z

Religious dialogue, trade, slave mobility, knowledge circulation, pilgrimage and intellectual exchange, colonization, resistance, creolization: Africans have been connected to the rest of the world in every possible way.

Africas in the World

Ayrton Aubry — 2024-02-13T13:41:55Z

At a time when simplistic representations of Africa's role in international relations are being perpetuated, Sonia Le Gouriellec's book provides a review of the main studies on the place of the continent in the global arena from past to present.

The Ghosts of Colonisation

Igor Martinache & Jules Naudet — 2024-01-19T09:00:00Z

What traces have colonial enterprises left behind? By confronting the public history of colonialism in the United Kingdom and Zimbabwe with that of his own family, Simukai Chigudu reveals the repressed part of the colonial legacy and how it continues to fuel the cycle of violence.

Africanist

Elara Bertho — 2024-01-16T11:08:00Z

In her memoir, the renowned French researcher Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch looks back on her Jewish childhood, her first experience of Africa in the 1960s, the neo-colonialist stance of some academics, and her intellectual and political career, in which anti-racism has played a pivotal role.

Making Refuge in a Neoliberal Country

Yasmine Bouagga — 2019-04-04T06:00:00Z

How do refugees experience everyday life in the United States? Anthropologist Catherine Besteman investigates the trajectories of Somalian refugees in Lewinston, Maine, from their application for resettlement to their struggles in a world that disrupts their social organization and their way of living.

How Oracles Are Forged

François Héran — 2018-11-05T07:00:00Z

Alarmist predictions about African migration are all the rage. François Héran shows that they are based less on a demographic approach than on an economic conjecture, and on the fallacy that development in Africa can only be achieved at the expense of Europe.

Fragile States: Nation-building in Sudan

Christopher Tounsel — 2018-10-25T07:00:00Z

Was nation-building in Africa destined to fail? The question is particularly important for one of the most fragile states in the world—Sudan. Set in a period that straddles the late colonial and early independence era, Alden Young's book addresses the auspices of postcolonial nation-building.

1839 or the Odyssey of Freedom

Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch — 2016-12-15T08:00:00Z

Abducted in Africa, detained in Cuba, the slaves aboard the Amistad ship organised a rebellion in 1839, before reaching the United States where they were subsequently imprisoned. The survivors were ultimately taken back to Sierra Leone, following a long publicity tour set up to pay for their homeward journey.

AIDS, Africa, and the Myth of “Sexual Behavior”

Julie Castro — 2016-04-21T08:37:00Z

Is the scale of the African AIDS epidemic tied to a specific type of sexual behavior? By considering different versions of this hypothesis, Julie Castro shows that it is not based on indisputable evidence and that it rests upon essentializing cultural representations, which help to obscure other forms of transmission.