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.
What is the nature of the distinctive rationality that underpins Cleisthenes’ reform, which many see as the birth of Greek democracy? What social mechanisms, civic experiences, and forms of vernacular knowledge made this new system of political organization possible?
The love for newness did not begin with modern consumer society. It has long been capitalism’s primary engine and has been central to how it imagines the market. At present, its environmental impact is disastrous.
Can morality be grounded in the sense of sympathy? According to Adam Smith, sympathy with the sentiments of others is precisely what allows for self-command, a cardinal virtue that enables us to act from a sense of duty.
About: Patrick Boucheron, Peste Noire, Seuil
About: Richard Schittly, Les Oubliés d’Action directe. De l’ultra-gauche au terrorisme, La Manufacture des livres
About: Pascal Engel, Foucault et les normes du savoir, Eliott éditions
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.
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.
How do images respond to political events and how do they shape them ? What is the political power of images ? Should images of violence be shown in the media ? Through its winter selection, Books&Ideas offers to rediscover a group of four essays and reviews, all published in 2015, which have tackled these questions through the prism of history, philosophy, aesthetics and political sciences.
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.
Miguel Abensour profoundly renewed thinking about democracy. His political philosophy paid close attention to the desire for emancipation and was based on an original conception of utopia breaking with the mythology of the ‘ideal city’ or of a ‘good society’.
Ronald Coase (1910-2013), the 1991 Nobel Laureate in Economics, is famous for his oft-quoted and just as often misunderstood “theorem.” His seminal works on transaction costs, property rights, and regulation continue to stimulate a rich reflection in economics and beyond.
L’art naît de contrainte et meurt de liberté : il semble que le cinéma iranien, sous contrôle et censure, illustre ce fameux adage.
Parcourant un vaste corpus littéraire, Anne de Guigné restitue l’économie telle que la saisissaient les grands écrivains de chaque époque, en révèle les contradictions et les impensés, et pressent que le raisonnement littéraire peut constituer un instrument complémentaire de l’enquête économique.
La panthéonisation de Marc Bloch est l’occasion de relier son parcours de citoyen avec les pistes scientifiques qu’il a ouvertes vers le comparatisme, l’interdisciplinarité ou encore l’étude des mentalités. Derrière l’hommage, il s’agit de l’inscrire dans son temps, ainsi que dans son monde social.
À propos de : Julie Fette, Gender by the Book. 21st-Century French Children’s Literature, Routledge
À propos de : Christophe Bouton, Sur les traces du temps, Minuit
À propos de : Allison Carnegie et Richard Clark, Global Governance Under Fire. How International Organizations Resist the Populist Wave, Princeton University Press
