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.
Faced with the risk of losing man to the self, Pierre Guenancia says that we should abandon the self to rediscover man.
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.
How can we move beyond abstract architecture, where buildings are constructed without their audiences? Peter Ferretto’s method is based on observation, engagement, and the osmosis between teaching, practice, research, and social impact.
A sociologist and an economist who oppose green industrial policy advocate ecological planning based on democratic foundations.
“Excited delirium” is a diagnosis that was used to absolve police officers of responsibility for the deaths of Black and Brown men. For decades, it was legitimized by a network of forensic pathologists, law enforcement agencies, and private companies that sustained this pseudoscience.
About: Gilles Havard, Les Natchez. Une histoire coloniale de la violence, Tallandier / Flammarion
About: Sylvain Dufraisse, Une histoire sportive de la guerre froide, Nouveau Monde Éditions
About: Hamadi Redissi, dir., Le pouvoir d’un seul, Diwen
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.
The EU aims for net climate neutrality by 2050, utilizing the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) as its main tool. But the climate crisis demands more than market mechanisms. It requires comprehensive planning and legal frameworks that prioritize public over private interests.
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 focuses on digital tools, their relationship to political power and capitalism.
Summer is here; Books&Ideas is off on holiday. We will be back with new publications starting August 30. In the meantime, here is a selection of essays, interviews and reviews published over the past year.
Is there still room for hope at the White House?
Although now considered a pseudo-science, phrenology was tremendously successful in its Victorian heyday. Tracing the intellectual and scientific journey of George Combe, the ’science’s most prominent promoter in Great Britain, this paper addresses the phrenologists’ little-known contribution to the ’social question’ debate of the day, and the ambiguities of their social gospel.
Books & Ideas is going on holiday for the summer, and will resume its publication schedule in September. In the meantime, we present you with a weekly roundup of our most recent essays and reviews. Our second summer selection features portraits of prominent intellectual figures: Albert Camus, René Dumont, Ronald Dworkin, Joan W. Scott and Max Weber.
Rediscovering an activist thinker who was at the origins of eco-feminism, but remains unknown. Her work inspired an extremely heterogeneous movement, but has her ambition to concretely transform the social, economic and political organisation of society been pursued?
Depuis l’amorce du processus de libéralisation de l’avortement dans les années 1970, l’accès à ce droit fait l’objet d’une lutte permanente des deux côtés de l’Atlantique.
Peut-on situer l’origine du grand basculement du féodalisme au capitalisme ? L’hypothèse de la transition ne se réduit ni à une simple expansion du commerce ni à une évolution linéaire. Il implique une transformation des rapports sociaux, du travail et de la production.
Quelles relations le “jansénisme” entretient-il avec la doctrine de Cornélius Jansen, et celle-ci avec l’augustinisme dont il se réclame ? S. Icard fait le point sur les débats qui jouèrent un rôle déterminant dans la première modernité.
À propos de : Nadège Vezinat, Le service public empêché, Puf
À propos de : Nancy Rose Hunt, Un État nerveux. Violence, remèdes et rêverie au Congo colonial, Éditions de l’EHESS
À propos de : Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesús, Excited Delirium : Race, Police Violence, and the Invention of a Disease, Duke University
