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.
From Salomé to Lolita, representations of “temptresses” haunt male fantasies. They entail a woman who has said “yes” before she has even been asked anything. And women who “fire up” men’s desire must pay the price.
In their recent research about Israeli politics, Noam Gidron and his coauthors explore the country’s affective polarization, the support for the judicial overhaul, Likud’s populism, and the relations between them.
How do children construct their racial identity? Based on a groundbreaking study of children from so-called “mixed” couples, Solène Brun explores the processes of racialization within family structures.
In a stimulating and well-informed essay, Sandra Hoibian refutes the idea that French society is becoming fragmented and suggests ways to measure a vague concept: social cohesion.
About: Jean-Claude Schmitt, Les Images médiévales. La figure et le corps, Gallimard
About: Bertrand Cochard, Vide à la demande. Critique des séries, L’Échappée
About: Pascal Marichalar, La Montagne aux étoiles, La Découverte
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.
The June protests which shook Brazil in 2013 stunned the world. This dossier, published by Books&Ideas, discusses the main issues at the core of these protests, analyzing them in the light of previous mobilizations and explaining why they are essential to the understanding of contemporary Brazil.
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?
Our Books and Ideas dossier on the American presidential elections will make no forecasts - instead it will look back on four years of Democratic leadership at the White House and four years of right-wing radicalization inside and outside of the G.O.P. Whoever wins will have to deal with the Tea Party, and the record shows it will not be easy for anyone.
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.
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’.
Né d’une ambition de démocratisation culturelle, le Centre Pompidou a très tôt fait de la connaissance de ses visiteurs et visiteuses un enjeu central. Comment l’institution s’est-elle efforcée de mieux les comprendre, de les accueillir autrement, et de toucher des publics venus d’autres horizons sociaux ?
Sans l’apport de la psychologie, la philosophie ne peut pas comprendre la déraison à laquelle a mené la pensée du progrès et des Lumières. L’école de Francfort en a fait le constat dès les années 1930.
Une étude croisée des réalités soviétiques et états-uniennes permet de saisir l’impact de l’arme nucléaire sur leurs sociétés respectives et sur ces villes de l’atome sans « chômage, ni pauvreté, ni criminalité ».
À propos de : Antoine Lilti, L’illusion d’un monde commun. Tahiti et la découverte de l’Europe, Flammarion
À propos de : Ana Lucia Araujo, Klara Boyer-Rossol, Myriam Cottias (dir.), Esclavages. Représentations visuelles et cultures matérielles, CNRS éditions
À propos de : Fabrice Argounès, Méridiens. Mesurer, partager, dominer le monde, CNRS Éditions
