Books & ideas

The Other Side of Model Minorities

Margot Delon — 2024-03-21T07:37:00Z

While Chinese immigrants and their descendants have long been portrayed as a “model minority”, Ya-Han Chuang shows how this qualifier papers over the representations that are imposed on members of this minority in France – who are now fighting back against racism.

The Political Uses of Law

Pierre Auriel — 2023-01-31T08:30:00Z

From the landmark Bobigny abortion trial to the Affaire du Siècle climate justice campaign, can the law serve as an effective political tool for social struggles? Countering the image of a fundamentally conservative law, the sociologist Liora Israël looks back at the strategic uses of the law by the French left after 1968.

LGBT: Chinese and Online

Tao Hong & Lucas Monteil — 2018-10-11T07:00:00Z

After surfacing in the 1990s, the LGBT movement has continued to take hold in China, despite the new Chinese leadership's increasing hostility towards independent non-governmental organisations. This relative success is partly due to an innovative use of the Internet by the movement's actors.

Sloganising Bodies

Maëlle Bazin — 2018-02-01T08:00:00Z

Why do people strip naked in the public space? Under French law, public nudity is considered a form of indecent exposure, however more often than not it is in fact about the pleasure of a lifestyle or about conveying a message.

Citizen Hacker

Clément Mabi — 2017-07-06T07:00:00Z

To increase citizen participation and political responsiveness, today new civic tech claims to be ‘hacking' democracy. Going beyond their immediate appeal, can these technologies deeply transform politics? What project do they propose?

Civic Mobilization in Russia: Protest and Daily Life

Karine Clément — 2013-06-14T08:43:34Z

Has Russia, amidst rising social discontent and pervasive economic crisis, rediscovered collective mobilization? In this essay, Carine Clément emphasizes the potential for self-organization evident in mobilization “from below,” which is rapidly expanding in daily life.

When the Check-Out Staff Checked Out

Sophie Bernard — 2012-07-06T06:40:12Z

Whilst staff working conditions in the supermarket industry have often been criticised by the media and social scientists alike, supermarket distribution nevertheless remains a sector largely untouched by mass worker mobilisation. In her work, Marlène Benquet shares her account of an unlikely supermarket strike, following the events as they unfolded.