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.
What bitter knowledge travel brings! In fact, why travel at all? And can we inhabit the world while journeying through it?
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.
With the frontier of automation now extending to emotional skills, Allison Pugh sheds light on the human capacity to forge connections. Irreducible to machines, these core connections give meaning to professional work and remain crucial in many sectors.
The “double life” of the great English novelist George Eliot combines the literary field with the experience of marriage. Her works form the crucible for reflections on love, social norms and freedom.
About: Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Universaliser. « L’humanité par les moyens d’humanité », Albin Michel
À propos de : Arnaud Exbalin, La grande tuerie des chiens. Mexico en Occident, XVIIIe-XXIe siècle, Champ Vallon
About: Félicien Faury, Des électeurs ordinaires. Enquête sur la normalisation de l’extrême droite, Seuil
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.
How to combat growing inequalities and injustice in a given country? Recent research suggests that solutions lie in better understanding and controlling access to education and working conditions but also in regulating tax havens and the salaries of executives.
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?
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?
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.
For more than thirty years, Joan Scott has been informing and transforming both our history and the way we write history, while encouraging us to question categories and change our modes of thinking. From class struggle to sex differentiation, sexual emancipation and race, she proposes a critical analysis of Republican rhetoric to undermine naturalized forms of inequality.
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.
Comment la justice peut-elle triompher de la force ? La pensée de Simone Weil unit politique et théologie en offrant une vision radicale de la puissance : non pas domination mais retrait, pour un monde où la violence cède à l’obéissance.
La notion de valeur a-t-elle perdu de sa valeur ? En envisageant le concept dans sa pluralité, E. Dacheux et D. Goujoun plaident pour une économie sociale, écologique et délibérative.
À propos de : Étienne Anheim, Paul Pasquali, Bourdieu et Panofsky. Essai d’archéologie intellectuelle, Minuit
À propos de : Céline Marty, L’écologie libertaire d’André Gorz. Démocratiser le travail, libérer le temps, Puf
À propos de : Sophie Cras & Charlotte Guichard, Vendre son art. De la renaissance à nos jours, Seuil
