Books & ideas

Two Centuries of Alternation, 1

Michel Offerlé — 2025-12-18T10:48:00Z

Julia Cagé and Thomas Piketty's economic history of political conflict in France is a defense of bipartition: The Left-Right divide, which is the foundation of our democracy, has enabled social progress. We must therefore work to restore it.

There May Be Evidence for This, But...

Benoît Peuch — 2024-07-02T16:22:46Z

Is scientific evaluation sufficient to improve educational practices? For many teachers, evidence-based policy constitutes an obstacle to their own practices because it relies on statistical generalizations without taking into account their professional intuitions.

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.

Fighting over Numbers

Olivier Pilmis — 2015-12-21T08:00:00Z

Two recent books explore the importance of quantification in contemporary technologies of power and forms of resistance to them. But is activism on behalf of an emancipatory rather than subservient use of numbers possible or even desirable?

Are Statistics Useless?

Alden Young — 2013-11-12T10:10:46Z

What do we really know about economic growth, wealth, the population or the structure of the economy in Africa? Building a history of how economic statistics about Africa are produced and consumed helps Jerven design a new approach to developing a periodization of the African state.

The Numbers of Crime

Bilel Benbouzid — 2012-05-08T09:06:16Z

When it comes to delinquency, the press, as well as political discourse, tends to emphasize the “crime angle” over the “sociological angle.” Moreover, when quantitative data is used in public debate, trust in statistics is low. Philippe Robert's and Renée Zauberman's new book may suggest a way out of this unfortunate situation.

The 993rd Man

Ivan Jablonka — 2012-03-09T12:42:31Z

By using statistics to study the attitudes of Jews in the face of persecution in the French town of Lens between 1940 and 1944, two historians offer a quantitative sociological analysis of the victims' trajectories. This original approach paves the way for a social history of genocide.

Tax Havens: A Guided Tour

Thomas Vendryes — 2012-01-24T09:37:57Z

What sums of money are hidden in tax havens? By whom? And how? Using original methodology and data that has not yet been fully utilized, Gabriel Zucman sheds new light on these questions, in the hope that it might boost the fight against tax havens.

The Construction of Racial Identity in the United States

Daniel Sabbagh — 2010-12-17T08:44:16Z

The history of the American census is also that of the institutionalization of racial and ethnic categories. In a detailed study of the practices of classifying the U.S. population from 1790 to 1940, the historian Paul Schor demonstrates the instability of the categories produced and the way in which forms of classification of blacks were extended to other categories.

Risk and the Masses

Jean-Baptiste Fressoz — 2010-12-03T08:00:00Z

The failure of the vaccination campaign against the H1N1 virus has sometimes been blamed on the ‘wild rumours' circulating on the Internet. According to Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, this interpretation misses the point. He offers a stimulating historical parallel between the inoculation against smallpox in the 18^th century and the H1N1 outbreak of 2009. His analysis highlights the limitations of risk as a method of persuasion and body management.