Books & Ideas is the English-language mirror website of La Vie des Idées, a free online journal which has gained a large readership and established itself in France as a major place for intellectual debate since 2007.
The mass slaughters of dogs carried out in Mexico and Europe in the 19th century seem to have been a rehearsal for the human holocausts of the 20th century.
A rumour is circulating in some African countries: the French state is organising penis thefts to offset declining fertility. The rumour, spread by Russian propaganda, has become fake news.
By scapegoating international organisations, Trump’s attacks are undermining multilateralism and the liberal order that emerged in 1945. This American disengagement is reopening the debate on a possible alternative leadership role for the EU.
This fascinating political sociology study looks at the lifestyles and subjective perceptions of average National Rally voters in the South of France. It sheds light on the racist motivations behind people’s support for the party.
How did French Jews view Nazism? Beginning in 1933, they organized and prepared for war with a lucid yet often resigned outlook on Hitler’s Germany.
About: Émilie Hache, De la génération. Enquête sur sa disparition et son remplacement par la production (On Generation: A Study of its Disappearance and Replacement by Production), Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond
About: Florence Hulak, L’histoire libérale de la modernité. Race, nation, classe, Puf
About: Stéphanie Soubrier, Races guerrières. Enquête sur une catégorie impériale (1850-1918), CNRS Editions
The American sociologist Harrison White made a vital contribution to the development of social network analysis. Besides his work in this field, his theoretical synthesis and his understanding of social formations have influenced a variety of fields such as the sociology of art and economic sociology.
Ukraine’s water networks have been mobilized since the start of the war in 2014. Infrastructure workers are some of the last to leave settlements attacked by the Russian army. Water systems and people are resisting but are reaching the limits of their capacity to adapt to violence and disruptions.
Michel Crozier’s work was shaped by the conviction that organizational phenomena create society. He helped pioneer the tools for analyzing groups established to carry out a common project according to a specific system of action and rules of the game.
Books & Ideas is slowing down for the summer and will be offering weekly selections of reviews and essays published over the last year. This week’s selection questions the social construction of racial identities, and the history of domination.
This dossier examines the recently reopened debate on regional integration in Asia. What are the obstacles to the construction of an Asian Union? How is the issue tackled in Japan, China or Australia?
Protectionism, a solution? Really? The economic crisis may not have turned the tide against liberalization, but we certainly cannot look at protectionism the same as we used to.
Leading 19th century statesman, political economist, architect of the 1860 commercial treaty between France and the United Kingdom, and campaigner for peace between European nations, Michel Chevalier had also been a dominant voice in the Romantic socialism of Saint-Simonianism: the eclectic nature of his thought would lend itself to a particular vision of Europe, forerunner of today’s European Union.
A great historian of the English working class, a major intellectual figure in debates surrounding Marxism in the years 1960-1970, and an anti-nuclear activist who initiated an environmentalist critique of capitalism—such were the many faces of Edward Palmer Thompson, whose work deeply permeates the different social sciences to this day.
How do scientific discoveries and progress come about? Against an idealist and triumphalist conception of the history of science, Simon Schaffer’s oeuvre examines science in the making, in close proximity to its practices and actors. Far from diminishing its prestige, this approach restores science to the central place it occupied in Old Regime societies.
Les découvertes de la biologie contemporaine donnent un contenu empirique à l’idée bergsonienne selon laquelle les animaux insèrent de l’indétermination dans le monde. Bergson apparaît dès lors comme le complément philosophique nécessaire aux avancées de l’éthologie et de la biologie de l’évolution.
Caribéennes, africaines, afrodescendantes : des femmes noires ont pensé et porté la citoyenneté française. Leurs trajectoires et leurs luttes souvent occultées donnent à voir une autre histoire de la nation, façonnée par le colonialisme, au prisme de la race, de la classe et du genre.
L’usage intensif des énergies carbone a permis la prospérité, particulièrement depuis 1945, et avec elle une relative pacification des relations internationales. La décarbonation impose donc, selon P. Charbonnier, d’inventer une autre géopolitique.
À propos de : Clare Carlisle, The Marriage Question. George Eliot’s Double Life, Penguin Books
À propos de : Geneviève Verdo, Des peuples en mal d’union. Aux origines de l’Argentine, Flammarion
À propos de : P. B. Cherlin, John Dewey’s Metaphysical Theory, Palgrave, MacMillan
