Translated with the support of the Institut français
An in-depth study of the recent history of the right to know in the United States traces the origins of the rise of transparency back to practical, anti-bureaucratic demands rather than to any ideological claims made by the generation of 1968.
Randomized controlled experiments hold out the promise of heightened scientificity and new forms of social action. In this essay, Agnès Labrousse points out some of the practical limits of these experiments and situates them within a longer history of social experimentation and governing by evidence.
With the ‘Arab Springs’, the question of revolution was raised afresh. Taking a comparative approach, H. Bozarslan and G. Delemestre analyse the link between revolution and the democratic process, focusing on the role played by intellectuals in the revolutionary dynamic.
The name of the new UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, was revealed in October 2016. Although the transparency of this election has been celebrated, no democratic debate has really taken place concerning the programs of the different candidates, which have received very little press coverage.
The state of exception has a long history in France. Intended as a measure for dealing with crises of any sort, it is now used as a response to terrorism. According to legal expert François Saint-Bonnet, however, there is no evidence that it is the right solution to the kind of terrorism that strikes today.
Climate change has fueled scientific, economic, and political debates for over fifty years. Roman Felli offers an economic history of the idea of adapting to climate change and denounces the way it has been instrumentalized by market principles at the expense of society’s most vulnerable citizens.
Judging by the opinions of the Front National’s members and supporters, no matter what its president says, the party has never stopped being racist and xenophobic. This is clearly shown by the French National Consultative Commission on Human Rights’ annual survey.
By studying political and legal debates over citizenship through the prism of the colonial situation in the nineteenth century, in the metropole as well as the colonies, Silyane Larcher proposes a new genealogy of citizenship and asks us to rethink how the French Republic was constructed.
For more than ten years, a mobile studio has been touring the United States and offering to record the conversation of all those who might be interested. By collecting the words of anonymous people, StoryCorps aims to strengthen ties and to document contemporary America. Could it be that it primarily encourages self-staging?
By building markets, distributing information, and developing adapted incentives, modern economic theory claims to lead us to the common good.
Ken Loach’s latest film, which won the Palme d’Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival, charts the struggles of a carpenter trying to get state welfare after suffering a heart attack. I, Daniel Blake offers an accurate depiction of the dehumanisation suffered by the most destitute in a United Kingdom undermined by de-industrialisation and inequality.
The Renaissance reinvented modesty – that contradictory passion which reveals while hiding. In a masterful book, Dominique Brancher shows how this art of circumvention spanned a variety of knowledge, especially medical knowledge, in the sixteenth century.
Qi—“breath” or “energy”—lies at the heart of many traditional Asian practices, be they martial or artistic, that rest upon a broader understanding of mind and body. This concept has now become pervasive in Western ideas of health and spirituality. Could this trend be a positive effect of globalization?
Multinationals are not the only actors in the globalised world. Globalisation is also apparent in less visible forms of exchange that take place in spaces usually held as marginal. Armelle Choplin and Olivier Pliez focus our attention on this trade in minor mode.
Political leaders are often accused of cynicism in their handling of international relations. Others see such behavior as no more than “realism.” But what exactly does this term mean? Two recent works reconsider the origins of the concepts of Realpolitik and geopolitics and challenge the dichotomy between values and interests.
Looking at the mutations of photography since its origins, one realizes that contrary to what is often believed, it exalts artificiality, fiction and imagination and relies on an anti-naturalistic aesthetic. Could the 19th century be the matrix of our artistic modernity?
The climate has become a major stake in international cooperation. The sociologist Jean Foyer, who observed the COP21 at Le Bourget (France) in December 2015, considers the major trends and defining moments of the latest round of climate negotiations.
Public policies often encourage gentrification in the name of social mix, among other arguments. In urban research, however, this type of discourse is the subject of intense criticism.
The Islamic State (IS) was not born miraculously in the summer of 2014. Its origins lie in the intertwined histories of Iraq and Syria over the past twenty years. Loulouwa Al Rachid and Matthieu Rey untangle IS’s complex heritage, bequeathed to it both by Baathist authoritarianism and the United States’ intervention in Iraq.
The revolutions of the 19th century led to the emergence of a new figure – that of the political refugee – and to new policies for receiving such individuals. But then as now, the uncertainty of the vocabulary used in this context reflected the contradictory position of European states in the face of the right to asylum, caught somewhere between the duty to protect and the fear of strangers.
As a result of their rapid growth and of the dynamics of their development, the BRIC countries and emerging markets are now highlighting their increasing weight in the global economy by taking on an ever-greater role as international investors. But if we look behind these common characteristics, the dynamics and modes of their investments and the strategies of their multinational corporations stand in sharp contrast to one another.
Scattered all over the world are abandoned places, promises of modernity that history, economics or politics have shattered. The Suspended Spaces collective has undertaken to project the gaze of contemporary artists onto these ghostly spaces.
There are currently two million prisoners in the USA, and the use of high security solitary confinement is on the increase. The violence of this procedure and its dramatic effects, in particular on the youngest inmates or those suffering from psychiatric conditions, has now sparked a public debate.
By tracing the history of surveillance in Europe and the Soviet bloc, the historian Sophie Cœuré explains the differences between democracies and dictatorships in this area. She also urges us to put things in perspective: We do not (yet) live in a “surveillance society.”
A great historian of the English working class, a major intellectual figure in debates surrounding Marxism in the years 1960-1970, and an anti-nuclear activist who initiated an environmentalist critique of capitalism—such were the many faces of Edward Palmer Thompson, whose work deeply permeates the different social sciences to this day.
The national park is not only a space dedicated to walks, recreation, and even wondrous contemplation, it is also a tool used by the Nation. Guillaume Blanc analyses this overlap between environment and politics through the cases of France, Canada, and Ethiopia.
Works of art, prime objects of desire at the best of times, are intimately connected to the history of wars, annexations and conquests. In this history, Bénédicte Savoy discusses the transnational history of spoliations or “patrimonial translocations”, and the long-lasting memory of such traumatic events. “
Michel de Certeau (1925-1986), whose works became classics in the humanities and social sciences due to his relentless effort to decompartmentalize knowledge, produced a unique oeuvre, in which his Christian faith inspired without limiting his historical and anthropological insights into contemporary culture.
Do consumers have any kind of real countervailing power in the age of neoliberal globalisation? A new book analyses the political role of boycotting and of exercising economic power “from below”.
Relying on recent studies on the working-class, Dominique Memmi shows that building a talent is not just a matter of class relations, but is also related to gender-relations. While men are believed to have gifts that distinguish them, women give of themselves for others.
The Syrian revolution is orphan because the repressive, authoritarian and increasingly ferocious regime of Bashar al-Assad is still in place. According to Ziad Majed, the lack of response from the international community is largely responsible for this state of affairs.
Two recent books explore the importance of quantification in contemporary technologies of power and forms of resistance to them. But is activism on behalf of an emancipatory rather than subservient use of numbers possible or even desirable?
Thirty years ago, Pierre Bourdieu’s La Distinction laid the groundwork for a reintegration of cultural factors into our thinking about capital. Is this argument still valid today? Philippe Coulangeon talks about the metamorphoses of distinction in a world defined by inequalities in wealth and by the mutations of cultural legitimacy.
The Front National has been an established player in French political life for thirty years now. Nevertheless, behind the figure of its historical leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the development of the party itself has had its fair share of vicissitudes.
In Russia, the government’s propaganda machine is not limited to the political sphere. In rewriting the country’s history, it is promoting “the decay of rationality and the de-installation of a scientific worldview”. Historian Ekaterina Pravilova addresses the effects of this crisis of knowledge for Russia’s intelligentsia and academic community.
How can we explain Vladimir Putin’s extraordinary levels of popularity in Russia? Beyond accusations of poll manipulation and propaganda, Carine Clément traces the history and characteristics of “Putinism”, a system of ideas and practices feeding on patriotism and a general sense of political apathy throughout Russia.
No problem in the world is more important than climate change. In her latest book, Naomi Klein aims to show that fighting global warming means fighting capitalism. But how?
To understand the symbolic revolution Manet launched, it is necessary to break with traditional representations of art history. This requires an intellectual revolution in its own right. Thus behind Manet, there lurks another heresiarch: Bourdieu himself.
By comparing the Muslim pilgrimage in its contemporary form with its past manifestations, Sylvia Chiffoleau shows how the control procedures established long ago have been strengthened and expanded by the Saudi dynasty in order to deal with a sharp rise in the number of pilgrims but also to increase its own legitimacy.
Poet Jean-Christophe Bailly argues that contemporary urban spaces, whether sites of historic importance and cultural heritage or serving a purely functional purpose, no longer lend themselves to wandering and strolling. He compares the memories imposed in museums and on the construction sites of new cities with those of passers-by as they wander through the cityscape, the latter pensive memories he believes are the sole source of utopia.