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.
The French government’s approach to religious pluralism cannot be easily summarized, given its diversity and complexity, as well as its dependence on the contingencies of politics.
Sandra Ristovska examines how images shape judicial reasoning and the new uncertainties introduced by AI and deepfakes. These technologies amplify longstanding problems of evidence, interpretation, and inequality before the law.
To mark the 80th anniversary of the end of the war in East Asia, a nuanced assessment of the American occupation of Japan (1945–1952) and its lasting impact on contemporary Japanese society is now available in French for the first time.
By tracing the history of the French word pute (whore), since the twelfth century, Dominique Lagorgette reveals the mechanisms of linguistic oppression at work in our societies.
About: Pierre Serna, La Révolution oubliée. Orléans, 1789-1820, CNRS Éditions
About: David Copello, Les droits humains armés. Guérillas, dictatures et démocratie en Argentine, Presses universitaires de Rennes
About: Lan Jiang Fu, Confucius revisité. Du marchand confucéen à l’entrepreneur du XXIe siècle, Hémisphères
The female silhouette – understood as the body’s visible form and socially perceived appearance – has long been shaped by social norms. In the age of social media, these norms are intensifying, prompting, in response, the rise of so-called “body-positive” movements.
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.
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.
As populism is rising on a global level, Books & Ideas offers a series on media politics in East Asian countries, to be published over the next two weeks. Though situations are extremely diverse, they can teach us a lot on the relationship between the state and journalists in authoritarian contexts. What role is left for the media to play in non-democracies?
Over the past few months, Books and Ideas has been running a series of interviews with leading contemporary scholars, who took the time to discuss their particular topics of research with us. For the Christmas season, we have put together a selection of seven discussions with intellectuals across the humanities and sciences: sociology, history, comparative literature, neuro-biology, anthropology and political science.
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.
Now a well-known Chinese lawyer of the democratic dissidence in China, Zhang Sizhi was once a young nationalist, a high-ranking official in the court of Beijing and a victim of anti-rightist repression. In his memoirs, he provides a detailed and fascinating description of the profession and China in the second half of the 20th century.
Ronald Dworkin’s innovative and politically ambitious work has become essential reading in political and legal theory. Taking issue with classical political liberalism, he argues that liberty and equality are not mutually exclusive, and are indeed inseparable. And against traditional interpretations of law, he argues that law must be understood by comparing it to a collective novel, a mixture of creativity and interpretation.
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.
En 2020, le gouvernement japonais a décidé de créer les « University for International Research Excellence » (UREX), dotées de moyens importants. Objectif : créer des pôles d’excellence en matière d’innovation scientifique et technologique, capables de rivaliser avec leurs homologues dans le monde.
Les fermes-usines élèvent, abattent et découpent des centaines de milliers de porcs par an, transformant ainsi le vivant en produit et exploitant à cette fin une main d’œuvre la plupart du temps immigrée.
Elara Bertho invite à relire la Guinée de Sékou Touré à travers un corpus qui mêle discours officiels et dissidents, presse et poésie, œuvres connues et pépites accumulées à travers un long travail de terrain. Elle dresse le portrait fragmenté d’une utopie post-coloniale aux échos transcontinentaux.
À propos de : Laure Bereni, Managing Corporate Virtue. The Politics of Workplace Diversity in New York and Paris, Oxford University Press
À propos de : Véronique Brindeau, Les arbres de Nagasaki, Arléa
À propos de : Guillaume de Rougé, La France et la défense européenne dans l’après-guerre froide. Le Fil d’Ariane, 1991-2001, Presses universitaires de Rennes
