Books & ideas

Does one choose to be sick?

Élodie Boublil — 2025-10-07T06:00:00Z

Are we responsible for our own health? Yes, according to advocates of liberal public policy. Yet this position fails to acknowledge social inequality's serious pathogenic effects.

Empowering Marginalized Youth

Editorial Team — 2025-05-30T06:57:14Z

As a professor of education, Bianca Baldridge highlights the importance of extracurricular programs for young people, and the lack of social recognition enjoyed by community-based educators.

A European code of capital ?

Éric Monnet & Antoine Vauchez — 2024-12-31T08:49:00Z

Katharina Pistor has renewed the critique of economic inequality by showing how the institutions of private law form the lock of an unequal economic and social system.

Why Social Democratic Parties no longer expropriate the Rich?

Charlotte Cavaillé — 2021-10-20T07:00:00Z

In a new edited volume, a group of economists map variations in the determinants of voting to better understand the political processes behind the rise in income inequality.

The Seeds of Inequality

Georges Felouzis & Barbara Fouquet-Chauprade — 2021-07-12T07:00:00Z

Poverty and great social inequality are being created at this very moment in the routines of small children. Talking, eating, socializing, taking care of oneself, keeping oneself clean, dressing, obeying, and learning: children's sociological future is determined by the adoption of even the most trivial of habits.

Who Owns the Night?

Catherine Guesde — 2021-05-03T07:00:00Z

The way nightlife has been affected by the recent Covid-19 restrictions invites us to think back on the value and features of the night as we have known it for most of our lives. A pioneer in the burgeoning field of night studies, Will Straw sheds light on the history of the night and the issues related to its loss.

Inequalities to the Beats of Financialization

Olivier Godechot — 2021-04-26T07:00:00Z

Financialization pervades all spheres of the economy today, but it is not a uniform and monolithic phenomenon. We need to carefully distinguish the different mechanisms by which it is deployed, in order to understand how it produces social inequalities.

Unequal Environments

Matthew Soener — 2021-01-25T08:00:00Z

The two most urgent problems facing humanity are economic inequality and environmental destruction. Lucas Chancel argues these two are deeply intertwined. Solutions to one must necessarily involve the other.

Against Hereditary Rights

Rafe Blaufarb — 2020-09-21T07:00:00Z

How did the French Revolution, after abolishing privilege, also become the foundation of modern inequality? Thomas Piketty's latest book focuses on the evolving ideological constructions of property across the ages and offers ways to solve the problem of inequality without challenging to the individual right to private property.

Reinventing Capitalism

Torben Iversen — 2020-06-15T07:00:00Z

Should we blame capitalism for the challenges rich democracies have been facing over the past thirty years—from growing inequality to the rise of populism? According to Torben Iversen, the opposite is true: it was democracy that transformed capitalism to take full advantage of new technologies.