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.
How can we define democracy today? What role does or should the people play in the democratic process ? Through its summer selection, Books&Ideas offers to rediscover a group of four interviews and reviews, published in 2015 and 2016, which have tackled these questions through the prism of history, philosophy and political sciences.
Books & Ideas is going on holiday for the summer, and will resume its publication schedule in September. In the meantime, we present to you a weekly roundup of our most recent essays and reviews. Our first summer selection features compelling interviews on subjects as varied as food and media studies, African-American history, quantum physics, Russian political culture, and Muslim-Jewish relations.
Is there still room for hope at the White House?
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’.
André Gorz’s multiform thought is entirely centred on liberation: from work, which prevents individuals from thriving; from consumption, which grows ever higher; and from the social system, which reduces individuals to mere pawns in a “megamachine”.
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.
Depuis 1871, le prix du pétrole a connu des envolées multiples : l’histoire de ces fluctuations des cours met en lumière les fragilités additionnées d’une dépendance ordinaire.
Contraintes par des budgets de plus en plus austères, l’action écologique locale des pouvoirs publiques n’est souvent que faux-semblant. Ce sont pourtant les communes qui sont, en la matière, en première ligne.
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.
À propos de : Elara Bertho, Conakry, une utopie panafricaine. Récits et contre-récits 1958-1984, CNRS Éditions
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
