Books & ideas

Does Truth Have a History?

Thomas Boccon-Gibod — 2026-05-05T08:05:30Z

Is Foucault's genealogy concerned with the will to truth or with truth itself? According to Pascal Engel, in maintaining the ambiguity between the two, Foucault ignored the norms of knowledge as an essential source of emancipation.

Jane Mansbridge, Political Science between Facts and Norms

Samuel Hayat & Julien Talpin & Audric Vitiello — 2023-11-28T10:00:00Z

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.

Halal Cool

Leyla Arslan — 2018-07-12T07:00:00Z

How to live one's Muslim faith in a context of growing Islamophobia? John O'Brien explores the multiple ways in which young American Muslims manage to reconcile their beliefs with their national belonging.

Analytics of Power

Claire Pagès & Mathieu Trachman — 2012-11-29T08:00:00Z

After the publication of her last book, Parting Ways. Jewishness and the Critique of zionism, Judith Butler discusses her most recent work in an interview, proposing a new analytics of power. She discusses how the most recent evolution of capitalism exposes populations to greater precarity, and defends the idea of a life that would be completely democratic, taking into account the multiplicity of power relations.

Social Life as Improvisation

Pauline Peretz & Olivier Pilmis & Nadège Vezinat — 2011-01-31T09:59:35Z

American sociologist Howard Becker stands out for his rejection of theory and his attachment to ethnographical observation of worlds in which he is himself an actor. One of his key lessons to sociologists is that they should ask “how” rather than “why”.