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Books & ideas

La Vie des idées est un magazine international d’analyse et d’information sur le débat d’idées.

Essays

The Commons, Old and New

From Land Use to Information Sharing

by Eva Hemmungs Wirtén, 17 June

The idea of the Commons prospers today as a powerful trope of twenty-first century sharing. To tell the story of how yesterday’s digging and grazing became today’s googling and sampling, we need to look more closely at the way the unique properties of the modern information landscape come into focus by reference to the old commons economy: through the concepts of user rights, openness and (...)

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Civic Mobilization in Russia: Protest and Daily Life

by Carine Clément & translated by Michael C. Behrent, 14 June

Has Russia, amidst rising social discontent and pervasive economic crisis, rediscovered collective mobilization? In this essay, Carine Clément emphasizes the potential for self-organization (...)

Field Testing in Development Economics

An Interview with Esther Duflo

by Florian Mayneris & translated by John Zvesper, 10 June

Education, microcredit, health policy…. How can we really measure the effectiveness of a public policy? Esther Duflo talks about the principles of the experimental method she has developed and (...)

Books & Ideas: a permanent library

Tax Havens: A Guided Tour

by Thomas Vendryes & translated by Susannah Dale
When the lottery is fairer than rational choice

by Florent Guénard & Hélène Landemore
Are we Represented?

by Emilie Frenkiel & Ivan Jablonka & translated by Michael C. Behrent
The Reception of John Stuart Mill in France

by Vincent Guillin & Djamel Souafa & translated by Arthur Goldhammer
Pluralism, Values, and the European Judge

by Pierre Brunet & translated by Michael C. Behrent
Risk and the Masses

by Jean-Baptiste Fressoz
Syria: Anatomy of a Revolution

by Leïla Vignal & translated by Arianne Dorval
Republican Reflections on the 15-M Movement

by Philip Pettit
How to Modernize the British Welfare State

by Antoine Colombani
Could Random Selection and Deliberative Democracy Revitalize Politics in the 21st Century?

by Yves Sintomer & translated by John Zvesper
Teenagers and their sexuality

by Ivan Jablonka
October 2008: the return of the State?

by Bruno Bernardi
Who owns nature ?

by Philippe Descola
The Media Revolution and Public Debate

by Charles Girard & translated by Susannah Dale
Is representative democracy really democratic ?

by Hélène Landemore

Essays

Providing Fair Access to Housing

An Interview with Vincent Renard

by Stéphane Füzesséry & Nathalie Roseau & translated by Kate McNaughton, 6 June

Is there not a contradiction between the aims of sustainable urban development, which inflates the cost of housing, and the requirements of fairness in access to housing? Analysing the situation (...)

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Reviews

A Stroll through Public Space

About: Thierry Paquot, L’Espace public, La Découverte.

by Sophie Body-Gendrot & translated by Nicole Forstenzer, 3 June

Urban philosopher Thierry Paquot’s synthetic work maps out the historical development of the notion of public space. It highlights the diverse representations and uses of the public which (...)

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Reviews

The Environmental Dimensions of Today’s Food Insecurity

About: Lester R. Brown. Full Planet, Empty Plates. The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity, W.W. Norton, 2012

by Michel Gueldry, 30 May

Environmentalist icon Lester R. Brown denounces our excessive ecological footprint and the prevailing food insecurity that stems from the current geopolitics of food. From this pessimistic and (...)

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Essays

Revolution and the Crisis of Temporality

An Interview with Yves Citton and Myriam Revault d’Allonnes

by Guillaume Mazeau & Jeanne Moisand, 27 May

The German historian Reinhart Koselleck associated the “age of revolutions” (1750-1850) with a fracture in the social representation of time. Are we currently experiencing a new fracture, as (...)

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Essays

Rhythms of Construction

An Interview with C. de Portzamparc

by Cristelle Terroni & translated by Nicole Forstenzer, 23 May

Almost twenty years ago, Christian de Portzamparc was the first French architect to receive the Pritzker Prize. Today his Atelier, located in Paris, is more dynamic than ever, with ambitious (...)

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Reviews

Zomia, Land Without State

About: James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed. An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia, Yale University Press

by Nicolas Delalande & translated by Kate McNaughton, 20 May

For two thousand years, according to James Scott, the mountains of Zomia were a place of refuge for the people of Southeast Asia. For the author, this region, as a centre of resistance to the (...)

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Reviews

A World Out of Key

An Interview with Michel Foucher

by Pauline Peretz & translated by John Zvesper, 16 May

Although today’s world is more interdependent than ever, it is still a jigsaw puzzle of sovereign states. One consequence of globalization is that we have to update our own mental maps, and to (...)

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Essays

The Multiple Meanings of Revolution

Upheaval, crisis and imponderables

by Jean-Clément Martin & translated by Eric Rosencrantz, 13 May

Though the age of historic upheavals and major political crises seemed to be over, the word “revolution” has made a recent comeback in Georgia, in the Ukraine and in the “Arab Springs” of 2011. (...)

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Reviews

From Bombay to Mumbai

About: Gyan Prakash, Mumbai Fables, Harper Collins

by Vanessa Caru, 9 May

Gyan Prakash’s most recent book takes us on a journey through Bombay’s history, focusing on the myths and fables that have shaped how the city is represented. His ambitious project fails, however, (...)

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Essays

Filming the End of the World

An Interview with Peter Szendy

by Florent Guénard & translated by Kate McNaughton, 6 May

2012, Terminator, Blade Runner, Melancholia. There is no shortage of films portraying the end of the world; in fact, they are becoming ever more successful. But what is their real meaning? Are (...)

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Reviews

Interweaving Eastern and Western Perspectives

About: Hans Belting, Florence et Bagdad. Une histoire du regard entre orient et occident, Paris 2012. (English translation: Hans Belting, Florence and Baghdad Renaissance Art and Arab Science, Harvard University Press, 2011.)

by Christian Joschke & translated by Nicole Forstenzer, 2 May

In Florence and Baghdad, Hans Belting writes a new history of the human gaze based on its symbolic value in relation to the image. His starting point is the cultural transfer between the East and (...)

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Essays

Labour markets and the crisis of the European Monetary Union

by Bob Hancké, 29 April

Most observers think of the crisis of the European monetary union primarily as a crisis of failed fiscal discipline in a monetary union. Bob Hancke proposes a very different way of looking at (...)

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Reviews

Ghettos: Centers of Jewish Resistance?

About: The Yad Vashem Encyclopedia of the Ghettos during the Holocaust, editor in chief Guy Miron, Yad Vashem, 2009.

by Florence Heymann & translated by Eric Rosencrantz, 25 April

Running through this encyclopedic undertaking to map all the Jewish ghettos of World War II are Yad Vashem’s contentions that the ghettos did not constitute a prerequisite for the Final Solution (...)

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Essays

Revolution and Redistribution

Reflections on France and Egypt

by Charles Walton, 23 April

When we think about revolutions, don’t economic interests tend to be left out of the equation? For the last two decades political and cultural questions have made social justice appear a secondary (...)

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Reviews

The “Ambiguities” of Irène Némirovsky

About : A. Kershaw, Before Auschwitz. Irène Némirovsky and the Cultural Landscape of Inter-war France, Routledge.

by Olivier Philipponnat & translated by Susannah Dale, 18 April

After being readmitted to French literary heritage following the international success of Suite française (2004), Irène Némirovsky’s work provides a unique insight into the intellectual landscape of (...)

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Reviews

Muslims on the Decline?

About: Gayer, Laurent and Christophe Jaffelot (eds.), Muslims in Indian Cities: Trajectories of Marginalisation, Oxford University Press.

by Nida Kirmani, 16 April

The increasing marginalisation and ghettoisation of Indian Muslims is a hotly debated but poorly understood subject. Gayer and Jaffrelot’s edited collection presents rich empirical evidence from (...)

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