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 if human lives actually do have a price tag? Ariel Colonomos analyses the social and political conditions of pricing practices for human lives, offering an innovative interpretation of the role of the state in modern European history.
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 history of masculinity and a history of men, this collective volume shows that while “ideal” Nazi masculinity was opposed to that of Jews and homosexuals, it was also contested and fragmented, both in the private sphere and on the battlefield.
Do the institutions and procedures of democracy deliver more social justice than authoritarian regimes or a hypothetical government of experts? They can, suggests one philosopher, by virtue of the impartiality they foster between citizens.
About: François-Xavier Fauvelle et Anne Lafont, L’Afrique et le monde : histoires renouées. De la préhistoire au XXIe siècle, La Découverte
About: Céline Spector, No Demos ? Souveraineté et démocratie à l’épreuve de l’Europe, Seuil
About: Solenne Carof, Grossophobie. Sociologie d’une discrimination invisible, Maison des Sciences de l’Homme
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.
The Paris Agreement on Climate Change is three years old this week but is already under attack. In support of further necessary action to address the changing climate, Public Books & La Vie des Idées offer a collaborative series of articles examining the intersection of climate change and capitalism.
In order to better grasp protests and social movements in China, whose number has impressively swollen in recent years, Books&Ideas presents a dossier on the evolution of social mobilization and on the representation of social instability in this country.
Twenty years after the publication of Viviana Zelizer’s “The Social Meaning of Money”, this special issue brings together scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds to examine the genesis of the book, its impact in shaping the analysis of economic value, and its enduring intellectual influence on both sides of the Atlantic.
Richard Hoggart (1918-2014), a poor child who went onto become a university professor, was the epitome of a successful scholarship student. The trajectory of this “exemplary counter-example” sheds light on the mechanisms of social reproduction when they prove inoperative and the distance that can be traveled from one’s native milieu.
By asserting that structuralism is a fruitful approach to kinship relations or the difference between the sexes, Françoise Héritier radically renewed anthropological methodology. Her life’s work has also shown us that scientific commitment goes hand-in-hand with societal involvement.
Kenzaburō Ōe, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, is a controversial figure in Japan. And rightly so, for there are a great many contradictions in both his fictional and theoretical work. He is a fierce opponent of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy, and yet continues to celebrate the heroism of the soldier who finds glory through sacrifice.
La résilience de l’économie russe, en dépit de la guerre et des sanctions, conduit à s’interroger : quels en sont les facteurs et les limites ?
La valeur d’une vie humaine est-elle mesurable ? Ariel Colonomos analyse les conditions politiques et sociales des pratiques de valorisation des vies humaines et ouvre une perspective novatrice sur le rôle de l’Etat dans l’histoire européenne moderne.
Les sociétés amazoniennes ont longtemps été considérées comme des sociétés égalitaires aux relations symétriques. Carlos Fausto montre que les relations asymétriques du type maître-animal apprivoisé sont pourtant au cœur de la théorie politique locale.
À propos de : Philippe Sénac, L’autre bataille de Poitiers. Quand la Narbonnaise était arabe (VIIIe siècle), Armand Colin
À propos de : Hélène Frappat, Le Gaslighting ou l’art de faire taire les femmes, L’Observatoire
À propos de : Nelly Wolf, Le Juif imaginé, d’Elsa Triolet à Romain Gary, CNRS Éditions