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.
Both as a religion and as a civilisation, Islam is currently beset by a cacophony and a worrying erosion of plurality by its apologists as well as its detractors. The “clash of ignorances” is much more real than the so-called “clash of civilisations”.
Quotas in India contribute to the emancipation of lower castes while producing perverse effects that are difficult to control. Rohini Somanathan questions the right balance between targeted positive discrimination policies and public policies with a universal vocation.
A recent book traces the rich history of Assyriology, from pioneers such as Oppert and Grotefend, through the major institutions that have contributed to its development, to today’s research projects. This is a portrait of a surprisingly contemporary science.
By analysing a generalised process of “logistisation”, Mathieu Quet shows that the circulation of people and goods is at the heart of our societies. But has logistics also captured language and the living world?
About: Benoît Pelopidas, Repenser les choix nucléaires. La séduction de l’impossible, Presses de Sciences Po
About: Frédéric Fruteau de Laclos, La connaissance des autres, Éditions du Cerf
About: Mohamad Amer Meziane, Des empires sous la terre. Histoire écologique et raciale de la sécularisation, La Découverte
Jane Mansbridge has made a major contribution to political theory. She has spent her life combining empirical research with a theoretical approach, and has played a vital role in developing the critique of rational choice and the study of democracy as a permanent process continually in flux.
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.
In 1947, Princess Elizabeth promised to serve ‘the great imperial family’, as part of the attempt to remake post-war Britain as a global power. The British Empire collapsed; but this language of service and Commonwealth allowed the Queen to take up the postcolonial concerns of the 21st century.
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.
Five leading scholars of Big Tech studies share their views on the hopes and dangers of the on-going Digital Revolution. Their answers reveal the pressing need for more political, social and economic theorizing of these dynamics.
We seem to struggle to take the measure of the Covid-19 pandemic. Its onset was sudden, its effects are uncertain and its long term consequences are still unpredictable. Books & Ideas gathers a selection of texts exploring the various facets of epidemics.
Though poorly known in France, the work of the anthropologist Mary Douglas is nonetheless essential for understanding the elementary forms of social organization and daily life. By shedding light on her academic career and personal life, this portrait rehabilitates the thought of a major intellectual.
Ronald Dworkin’s innovative and politically ambitious work has become essential reading in political and legal theory. Taking issue with classical political liberalism, he argues that liberty and equality are not mutually exclusive, and are indeed inseparable. And against traditional interpretations of law, he argues that law must be understood by comparing it to a collective novel, a mixture of creativity and interpretation.
A great historian of the English working class, a major intellectual figure in debates surrounding Marxism in the years 1960-1970, and an anti-nuclear activist who initiated an environmentalist critique of capitalism—such were the many faces of Edward Palmer Thompson, whose work deeply permeates the different social sciences to this day.
Les infrastructures de l’eau en Ukraine sont mobilisées depuis le début de la guerre russe en Ukraine dès 2014. Touchés par les bombardements, pris dans les combats, mais aussi marqués par les difficultés économiques, les systèmes et les humains résistent mais risquent d’atteindre leurs limites.
En raison du bouleversement climatique, l’effondrement forestier guette. Or il est urgent de définir des politiques ambitieuses fondées sur une forêt diversifiée, garante de la formation des sols et du cycle de l’eau. Alors, parlons croissance – mais croissance des arbres !
Dans une ville de province de l’Algérie coloniale, juifs et musulmans coexistent dans un climat de plus en plus tendu. C’est alors qu’un provocateur proche de l’extrême droite déclenche de sanglantes émeutes.
À propos de : Adrienne Mayor, Feu grégeois, bombes à scorpions et cochons enflammés. La guerre non conventionnelle dans l’Antiquité, Nouveau Monde éditions
À propos de : Thibault Ducloux, Illuminations carcérales : comment la vie en prison produit du religieux, Labor et Fides
À propos de : Tarun Khanna et Michael Szonyi (éd.), Making Meritocracy. Lessons from China and India, from Antiquity to the Present, Oxford University Press