Florence Gould Foundation

The genetic revolution is marked, in particular, by complex transformations in reproductive technologies. From our relationship to motherhood to the idea of ‘free-choice eugenics’, Jean-Hugues Déchaux looks back over the ethical controversies surrounding genetic engineering.

In India as in Europe, the left wing is struggling. Looking beyond the financialisation of the economy and disparities in social conditions, this essay sheds light on other factors explaining the weakness of the Indian left wing, from electoral dynamics to the criminalisation of the political class.

Though poorly known in France, the work of the anthropologist Mary Douglas is nonetheless essential for understanding the elementary forms of social organization and daily life. By shedding light on her academic career and personal life, this portrait rehabilitates the thought of a major intellectual.

The recent rise of the far right has disrupted the political balance in Germany. Its racism illustrates the failings of both denazification and historical introspection in the West. The next elections are in 2021… watch this space.

The sacredness of the cow and the religious proscription against the consumption of beef were invented as late as the medieval period, and have since represented powerful unifying forces among the Hindu community. Today, the wave of lynchings the country has experienced shows how these notions continue to be instrumentalized by the nationalist extreme right.

Umberto Eco is best known to the general public for his novels and critical works in which he developed his theory of reception. Who realizes, however, that this aspect of his work is only one part of a general semiology organized around a philosophy of signs?

Given the large number of social transfers that already exist in France, would a basic income provide a more efficient way of fighting poverty? To do so, it would have to be set high and supplement existing forms of social protection. On these grounds, Clément Cadoret questions this idea’s financial and political feasibility.

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?

During the Soviet era, October 1917 was the central political and cultural reference. One hundred years later, Russian society is still deeply divided over its past. Will the centenary of the Revolution be the great moment of national reconciliation the Russian power wants it to be?

Given the United Kingdom’s impending split from the European Union, Laurent Warlouzet shows how their complex relationship is the fruit of strategic co-operations, resulting from the vagaries of history, rather than of any “natural” isolationism.

Behind the violent debates that have shaken up South African universities, it is the whole legacy of colonialism and of the apartheid era that is at stake. This allows Ernst Wolff to question the status of contemporary African philosophy.

Since Narenda Modi, the strongman of Hindu nationalism, was elected prime minister, discrimination against minorities has increased in India and freedom of expression no longer seems guaranteed. Can Indian democracy resist the rise of an authoritarian and xenophobic right?

The border between Bangladesh and India has created an artificial rift within a space connected by intense circulations. Thrown into illegality, the many migrants who continue to circulate between the two States face heightened risks of exploitation and increasing marginalisation.

Sociologist Marie Loison-Leruste shows how address registration is for homeless persons the key to gaining access to rights. She suggests that, beyond reflecting on the question of non-take-up, the state must urgently back the professionals who support the homeless.

Can an algorithm predict crime? For several years, United States police forces have used software that is said to detect the locations of future crimes and offences. Of the many companies working in this field, Predpol is the name that is mentioned the most. But the success of this Californian start-up is more the result of marketing than any actual predictive effectiveness. The stance of this paper is twofold: first, a closer look from the seismologist who developed the algorithm reveals that this solution is far from having the predictive capacity boasted by its promoters. Second, the ethical problem with Predpol’s algorithm appears not to be police discrimination, as many feared, but rather the exclusion of a section of the population from the public security offering.

We should not be misled by the The Revenant’s hyperrealism: Iñárritu’s film is a brilliant filmmaker’s ego trip more than it is an accurate depiction of the trapper’s role in conquering the American West. Despite its meticulous reconstruction of living conditions at the time, the film is teeming with clichés and approximations.

Whereas in France police forces deemed guilty of brutality have called for a demonstration against “anti-cop hatred,” in Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland, the interaction between the police and protesters is marked by restraint and dialogue. The French police are resisting the new models of policing built around the concept of de-escalation. Olivier Fillieule and Fabien Jobard explain the reasons for this doctrinal retrenchment.

Asylum applications on the grounds of sexual orientation, although uncommon, raise questions that are relevant to any asylum claim: according to what criteria and what level of persecution are “genuine” refugees distinguished from “bogus” ones? And what is meant by this policy of proof?

Can we define capitalism? By acknowledging the role played by economic and philosophical idea in its development, is there not a risk of ignoring the importance of material and technical conditions? The economists Clément Carbonnier and Geoffrey Hodgson discuss this issue.

What distinguishes a blank canvas from an empty frame? A simple object from a readymade? What is this mysterious gap that art digs as it separates from life? Such are the questions posed by Arthur Danto, a major figure of contemporary art theory.

In the early modern period, Spain and Portugal carried out dramatic mass expulsions that affected more than half a million people of Jewish or Muslim faith. Revisiting the fate of these populations helps to put into perspective the refugee crisis that the world is currently facing.

Seven years have passed since the start of the economic and political crisis in Iceland in 2008. Attempts at reforming the country’s constitution, the heterodox positions it has taken in matters of finance, and the political dynamism of its civil society have certainly aroused curiosity; however, these astonishing facts have yet to draw the interest of political science.

For the past five years, the population of Syria has been undergoing severe repression at the hands of a regime implementing a policy of mass destruction, forcing over half of all Syrians to leave their homes, and seriously threatening the future of a country that has had the strength drained out of it.

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.

Although the massacres in Rwanda did not take place in the context of a religious war, religion did play an important role: identifying the Tutsi with the devil caused violence to spread throughout society.

Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitaï discusses the relationship between cinema and literature, memory, space, and language. In particular, he tells us about his screen adaptation of Jérôme Clément’s autobiographical novel, which portrays the story of a son’s quest in search of his Jewish mother’s painful past.

Thanks to his work on Greco-Roman antiquity, his intellectual curiosity, his pronounced taste for interdisciplinarity, his sense of humor, and the freedom that informs all his research, Paul Veyne is a twentieth-century historian whose work cannot be avoided. A loose cannon at the heart of the academic establishment, a deep thinker and a dilettante, Veyne invites us, through his work, to a festival of thought.

Scenes of lynching, beheadings, corpses… Although easily accessible on the Internet, images of violence are often occulted in the French media. Why are some images shown while others are kept out of circulation? Are some forms of violence unfit to be seen?

According to Nancy Fraser, the renewal of socialism requires a conflation of activism and political theory; indeed, emancipation can only exist on the basis of equal participation in all spheres of life, and can only be understood in terms of social struggles, which today appear in multiple forms.

“Do we have the right to make bets on the future of mankind?” Forty-one years after being the first ecologist candidate in a presidential campaign and publishing his manifesto book, René Dumont’s intuitions and warnings have lost little of their relevance.

Ronald Dworkin’s innovative and politically ambitious work has become essential reading in political and legal theory. Taking issue with classical political liberalism, he argues that liberty and equality are not mutually exclusive, and are indeed inseparable. And against traditional interpretations of law, he argues that law must be understood by comparing it to a collective novel, a mixture of creativity and interpretation.

Much confusion has arisen in recent urban policy discussions in France about the importance of “empowerment”. To reduce this confusion, and to see more clearly the relevance of American experience to France, Julien Talpin points out the basic difference between community development and community organizing, and explores the latter in a field study in Los Angeles. The difference between the two can be subtle, but familiarity with it is nevertheless indispensable for designing and putting into place participation by neighbourhood residents.