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 does it mean to “decolonize knowledge”? What is the difference between “anticolonial,” “postcolonial,” and “decolonial”? To address the semantic confusion surrounding the term “decolonial,” Lissell Quiroz and Philippe Colin propose a genealogy of this current of thought, which emerged in Latin America in the 1990s.
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 move beyond abstract architecture, where buildings are constructed without their audiences? Peter Ferretto’s method is based on observation, engagement, and the osmosis between teaching, practice, research, and social impact.
Sarah Gensburger dismisses the idea of the French state being overwhelmed by the fragmentation and proliferation of memory-related demands. Rather, the state is the primary creator of society’s memorial frameworks, even using them as a powerful means of reasserting its own legitimacy.
Faced with the risk of losing man to the self, Pierre Guenancia says that we should abandon the self to rediscover man.
About: Cédric Durand, Razmig Keucheyan, Comment bifurquer. Les principes de la planification écologique, La Découverte
About: Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesús, Excited Delirium: Race, Police Violence, and the Invention of a Disease, Duke University
About: Gilles Havard, Les Natchez. Une histoire coloniale de la violence, Tallandier / Flammarion
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.
Michel Crozier’s work was shaped by the conviction that organizational phenomena create society. He helped pioneer the tools for analyzing groups established to carry out a common project according to a specific system of action and rules of the game.
The EU aims for net climate neutrality by 2050, utilizing the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) as its main tool. But the climate crisis demands more than market mechanisms. It requires comprehensive planning and legal frameworks that prioritize public over private interests.
Is there still room for hope at the White House?
The last year has been extremely tough for Europe as a political idea. The debt crisis, the rise of the radical right, repeated and widespread attacks against immigrants, foreigners, but also the very concept of supranational solidarity have seemed to bring one of the richest regions of the globe to the brink of collapse. Is the situation as hard as it has been made to look? And where should Europe’s efforts first turn to?
Books & Ideas is slowing down for the summer and will be offering weekly selections of reviews and essays published over the last year. This week’s selection questions the relationship between gender and politics.
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.
According to Nancy Fraser, the renewal of socialism requires a conflation of activism and political theory; indeed, emancipation can only exist on the basis of equal participation in all spheres of life, and can only be understood in terms of social struggles, which today appear in multiple forms.
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.
Face à des directions artistiques plus frileuses, face à la concurrence de la photo et de l’IA, quelle liberté y a-t-il encore pour le dessin de presse aujourd’hui ? Pour Sergio Aquindo qui travaille depuis 25 ans pour la presse, il est encore possible d’y jouer finement de la polysémie du dessin, notamment dans les chroniques judiciaires.
Une longue tradition historiographique locale a longtemps fait prévaloir l’idée que la modération aurait caractérisé les Orléanais pendant la Révolution. C’était faire fi de l’existence de courants fortement politisés, au-delà même de la seule période révolutionnaire.
Dans un capitalisme chinois en quête d’une éthique, la figure ancienne du marchand confucéen est réinventé par des entrepreneurs.
À propos de : Jérôme Baschet, Quand commence le capitalisme ? De la société féodale au monde de l’économie, Crise et critique
À propos de : Simon Icard, Le jansénisme, une théologie, Éditions du Cerf
À propos de : Nadège Vezinat, Le service public empêché, Puf
