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.
Interview International Video Interviews
Quotas in India contribute to the emancipation of lower castes while producing perverse effects that are difficult to control. Rohini Somanathan questions the right balance between targeted positive discrimination policies and public policies with a universal vocation.
How did African-Americans attempt to overturn the relations of racial domination in the United States? From the post-war period onwards, by creating cultural and educational institutions specific to their community, which are still useful today in the fight against discrimination.
Are we free, or are our actions determined by natural causes? The problem thus posed is a metaphysical construct: From late antiquity onwards, the authentic meaning of freedom as a principle of action has been obscured by the invention of free will and the excessive importance given to the concept of the will.
Vygotsky is a major educational theorist credited with showing how the mind of the child is formed. In this book, Pascal Sévérac explains what Vygotsky’s theory owes to Spinoza’s.
About: Delphine Dulong, Premier ministre, CNRS Éditions
About: Jean Vioulac, Anarchéologie. Fragments hérétiques sur la catastrophe historique, Puf
About: Carole Gayet-Viaud, La civilité urbaine. Les formes élémentaires de la coexistence démocratique, Economica
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.
Rorty made conversation a philosophical genre in its own right, which led him to reject any distinctions he considered futile: between analytic and continental philosophy, between the Enlightenment and postmodernity, between philosophy and literature.
In 1947, Princess Elizabeth promised to serve ‘the great imperial family’, as part of the attempt to remake post-war Britain as a global power. The British Empire collapsed; but this language of service and Commonwealth allowed the Queen to take up the postcolonial concerns of the 21st century.
Food is now a conspicuous topic, from culinary blogs to magazines, diet books, TV shows and contests. Yet unbeknownst to many, it often holds an underground, clandestine place in some of social science’s major works. This dossier assesses the current importance of such scholarly endeavors, known as “food studies” in the United States.
Summer is here. Books&Ideas is off on holiday. We will be back with new publications starting August 29th. In the meantime, here is a selection of essays, interviews and reviews published over the past year.
Recent publications on the Holocaust, as well as the opening of a new archival site for researchers, have enriched the history and historiography of what remains as the most traumatic event of the 20th century. From Saul Friedländer’s cohesive rendition of the genesis and enactment of the final solution (2007), to the opening of the Bad Arolsen archives in Germany in 2008, and the new study of the Warsaw Ghetto archives by Samuel D. Kassow (2007), this dossier presents a selection of five reviews and essays recently published on Books&Ideas, showing that the study of the Holocaust continues to stir up considerable interest in the international research community.
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. Our second summer selection features portraits of prominent intellectual figures: Albert Camus, René Dumont, Ronald Dworkin, Joan W. Scott and Max Weber.
Although now considered a pseudo-science, phrenology was tremendously successful in its Victorian heyday. Tracing the intellectual and scientific journey of George Combe, the ’science’s most prominent promoter in Great Britain, this paper addresses the phrenologists’ little-known contribution to the ’social question’ debate of the day, and the ambiguities of their social gospel.
Les quotas en Inde contribuent à l’émancipation des basses castes tout en produisant des effets pervers difficiles à maîtriser. Rohini Somanathan s’interroge sur le bon équilibre entre politiques de discrimination positive ciblées et politiques publiques à vocation universelle.
Contre le néo-industrialisme vert et l’inefficacité des politiques climatiques, un sociologue et un économiste prônent une planification écologique à grande échelle, sur une base sociale et démocratique.
Papes, rois et autres conciles : le Moyen Âge serait « réformateur ». Alors que les discours contemporains sont saturés de « réformes », un livre collectif s’interroge sur le sens et la rareté du mot en Occident entre le XIIIe et le XVe siècle.
À propos de : John Dewey, Nature humaine et conduite, Gallimard
À propos de : Laurent Nespoulous, Pierre-François Souyri, Le Japon. Des chasseurs-cueilleurs à Heian, 36000 à l’an mille, Belin
À propos de : Bram Büscher et Robert Fletcher, Le vivant et la révolution, Actes Sud