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.
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.
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. Economic inequalities have been at the forefront of intellectual debate this year with the publication of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Our third selection of articles brings an international perspective on the issue, with a sociological and historical outlook.
In this virtual roundtable published in partnership with Public Books, six contributors from France, Russia and the US address the issue of contemporary Russia and its often tense relations with the West.
Jane Mansbridge has made a major contribution to political theory. She has spent her life combining empirical research with a theoretical approach, and has played a vital role in developing the critique of rational choice and the study of democracy as a permanent process continually in flux.
Kenzaburō Ōe, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, is a controversial figure in Japan. And rightly so, for there are a great many contradictions in both his fictional and theoretical work. He is a fierce opponent of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy, and yet continues to celebrate the heroism of the soldier who finds glory through sacrifice.
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.
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
