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.
Review History
At the beginning of the eleventh century, the collapse of the Umayyad caliphate coincided with political fragmentation. It was in this unusual context, soon to be exacerbated by Christian incursions from the north and Berber incursions from the south, that this part of the Muslim world experienced a flourishing culture.
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.
Educating children by respecting their spontaneous interests: Such is the promise of alternative pedagogies. Subjecting these promises to sociological critique, Ghislain Leroy shows that they are not necessarily emancipatory and may even contribute to the reproduction of social inequalities.
While Chinese immigrants and their descendants have long been portrayed as a “model minority”, Ya-Han Chuang shows how this qualifier papers over the representations that are imposed on members of this minority in France – who are now fighting back against racism.
About: Jérémie Foa, Tous ceux qui tombent. Visages de la Saint-Barthélemy, La Découverte
About: Denis Colombi, Pourquoi sommes-nous capitalistes (malgré nous) ? Dans la fabrique de l’homo œconomicus, Payot
About: Clément Viktorovitch, Le pouvoir rhétorique, apprendre à convaincre et à décrypter les discours, Seuil
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.
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.
How do images shape our worldview ? What do their study bring to our understanding of society ? Through interviews, essays and reviews this dossier shows how the close study of still or moving images has become central to the social sciences. From anthropology to history or literature, taking into account the overwhelming presence of visual representation yields unexpected and original information about human, social and political relationships.
Books & Ideas is slowing down for the summer. In the meantime, here is a selection of essays, reviews and interviews published over the past year, exploring the relationship between music and politics.
From the margins to which he was confined, Georges Devereux (1908-1985) formulated some of the most original scientific work of his century. In the wake of Freud, whose legacy he firmly defended, Devereux initiated the transcultural practice of psychiatry. François Laplantine, one of his former disciples, reconsiders the legacy of ethnopsychoanalysis’ founder.
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.
A highly respected figure in African studies, Jack Goody has become a distinctive voice in the torrent of academic critiques of western ethnocentrism. His work, spanning more than sixty years, has been based on a single ambition: comparison, for the sake of more accurately locating European history within Eurasian and world history.
L’État peut-il changer le comportement des individus ? Il s’y efforce, mais les changements les plus remarquables sont le plus souvent des effets non intentionnels.
Dans le premier tiers du XXe siècle, une école littéraire a brillé sous l’appellation de « merveilleux scientifique ». Puisant dans la fiction, la science et les techniques, elle a nourri les imaginaires de la modernité.
Comment se fait le théâtre à la fin du Moyen Âge, et que fait-il à la cité qui l’organise ? Par son caractère exceptionnel autant que la richesse de la documentation, le Mystère des trois doms représenté à Romans-sur-Isère en 1509 révèle sa dimension collective – religieuse, sociale et civique.
À propos de : Judith Herrin, Ravenne. Capitale de l’Empire, creuset de l’Europe, Passé composés
À propos de : Frédéric Keck, Préparer l’imprévisible. Lévy-Bruhl et les sciences de la vigilance, Puf
À propos de : David Edmonds, Parfit : A Philosopher and His Mission to Save Morality, Princeton University Press