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.
Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, as the monarchy established its authority across French territory, the rivers of the Paris Basin continued to be managed by various actors through negotiations aimed at coordination.
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.
How can we move beyond the double deadlock of state socialism and market capitalism? For Lea Ypi, returning to Kant and the Enlightenment offers a perspective to provide a new ground to freedom as social responsibility, and to open up towards a cosmopolitan horizon against the authoritarianism of profit.
How are television series written? Muriel Mille’s study sheds light on a collective process based on a division of labor and time constraints. It represents a total break with the auteur ideal of New Wave cinema.
Is it possible to identify the origin of the shift from feudalism to capitalism? Such a transition cannot be reduced to the expansion of trade or a linear evolution. It implies a transformation of social relations, work, and production.
About: Camille Mahé, La Seconde Guerre Mondiale des Enfants, Allemagne, France, Italie (1943-1949), PUF
About: Guillaume Durieux, Faut-il en finir avec l’école ? Autonomie & justice scolaire, Éditions Eliott
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.
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.
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 essays and reviews published over the past year.
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?
The last year has been extremely tough for Europe as a political idea. The debt crisis, the rise of the radical right, repeated and widespread attacks against immigrants, foreigners, but also the very concept of supranational solidarity have seemed to bring one of the richest regions of the globe to the brink of collapse. Is the situation as hard as it has been made to look? And where should Europe’s efforts first turn to?
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.
One of Albert O. Hirschman’s contributions to economic theory is a richer understanding of the concept of the “rational actor,” which, he demonstrated, possesses the deliberative capacities that democratic market societies require. This following is a profile of an economist who was also a dissident and an activist.
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.
La rencontre entre la post-croissance et les espaces urbains concrétise une économie du bien-être qui peut redonner vie au projet européen à l’heure où le continent s’interroge à raison sur son identité mais à tort sur son déclin.
80% du commerce mondial transite par voie maritime ; moins de dix entreprises contrôlent l’essentiel de ce trafic. Le capitalisme ne se limite pas à l’extraction de matières premières, il organise un système où la fluidité des marchandises repose sur la captivité des corps et des territoires.
Caroline Muller et Frédéric Clavert engagent une réflexion sur ce que l’usage du numérique transforme dans le métier d’historien, depuis le travail sur les sources jusqu’à la structuration de la discipline elle-même.
À propos de : Sébastien Broca, Pris dans la toile. De l’utopie Internet au capitalisme numérique, Seuil
À propos de : Catherine Rémy, Hybrides. Transplanter des organes de l’animal à l’humain, CNRS Éditions
À propos de : Jean-Yves Authier et Joanie Cayouette-Remblière (dir.), Ce que voisiner veut dire. Une grande enquête sur les liens sociaux de proximité, Puf
