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.
During the Christmas season, Books and Ideas offers a selection of reviews and essays that tackle the subject of cities and the issues they raise as complex centers of urban life: how could we live better in them? How to reduce the inequalities they create? Can they become more sustainable? The following texts cast a new light on all of these questions.
Five leading scholars of Big Tech studies share their views on the hopes and dangers of the on-going Digital Revolution. Their answers reveal the pressing need for more political, social and economic theorizing of these dynamics.
Books & Ideas is slowing down for the summer and will resume its publication schedule on August 26. In the meantime, we present to you a weekly selection of articles published over the last year.
In an innovative study that returns Albert Camus’ early works to their rightful place in the canon, Laurent Bove suggests we should view Camus as a philosopher of immanence and of acquiescence to the joy of the world. This reading is enlightening as far as Camus’ thoughts on history are concerned, but tends to gloss over the ruptures that run though his work, which is driven with multiple tensions.
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.
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.
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
