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.
Part celebration, part demonstration, the activist carnival has emerged as a form that blends festive traditions and subversive politics. As a strategy for mobilization as well as transgression, carnival blurs the boundary between revolt and theater.
Jeanne Tsai and Batja Mesquita show how emotions are shaped by cultural logics that orient our relationships and judgments. Their conversation raises a broader question: what does it mean to understand others in culturally plural societies?
Despite being confined to diplomacy’s backstage, ambassadors’ wives were the invisible architects of France’s prestige abroad. From social receptions to soft power, Isabelle Dasque examines two centuries of feminine influence.
Active in the fight against poverty since the 1950s, the ATD Fourth World movement has successfully combined grassroots action, research and advocacy, exerting a lasting influence on social policies in France and internationally.
About: Sacha Lévy-Bruhl, Le grand renversement de l’État social, Presses universitaires de France
About: Fatma Çingi Kocadost, La promesse qu’on nous a faite, Éditions de l’EHESS
About: Silyane Larcher et Félix Germain (dir.), Marianne est aussi noire. Luttes occultées pour l’égalité, Seuil
The female silhouette – understood as the body’s visible form and socially perceived appearance – has long been shaped by social norms. In the age of social media, these norms are intensifying, prompting, in response, the rise of so-called “body-positive” movements.
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.
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.
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 ways to shift our intellectual categories.
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.
The media industry has undergone dramatic changes in its technologies and business models. To help us understand the effects of these changes on democracy, Books and Ideas takes the discussion away from simplistic dichotomies between the Internet and the so-called “traditional” press.
Now a well-known Chinese lawyer of the democratic dissidence in China, Zhang Sizhi was once a young nationalist, a high-ranking official in the court of Beijing and a victim of anti-rightist repression. In his memoirs, he provides a detailed and fascinating description of the profession and China in the second half of the 20th century.
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?
By asserting that structuralism is a fruitful approach to kinship relations or the difference between the sexes, Françoise Héritier radically renewed anthropological methodology. Her life’s work has also shown us that scientific commitment goes hand-in-hand with societal involvement.
Jeanne Tsai et Batja Mesquita montrent que les émotions sont façonnées par des logiques culturelles qui orientent nos relations et nos jugements. Elles interrogent ainsi ce que signifie comprendre autrui dans des sociétés culturellement plurielles.
En dressant une biographie sociologique du nouveau sélectionneur de l’équipe de France, Stéphane Beaud rappelle l’alchimie complexe des conditions sociales qui mènent à la réussite.
Issus du trafic d’antiquités et parfois qualifiés de « Guéniza Afghane », les Bamyan Papers sont un des rares corpus permettant de contribuer à une histoire économique et sociale par le bas de l’Islam médiéval. Ils sont également une fenêtre vers l’histoire délaissée de l’Afghanistan prémoderne.
À propos de : Anton Brender, Géopolitique de la dette. Où va l’épargne du monde ?, Odile Jacob
À propos de : Charles-François Mathis et Steve Hagimont (dir.), La Terre perdue. Une histoire de l’Occident et de la nature XVIIIe-XXIe siècle, Tallandier
À propos de : Bruno Quélennec, Salima Naït Ahmed (dir.), Penser l’antisémitisme contemporain. Anthologie critique, Éditions de l’Aube
