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.
Historian Jean-Baptiste Fressoz provides the first genealogical study of the concept of energy transition. In the face of discourses that keep postponing “the transition” to a later date, Fressoz takes up the unprecedented political challenge of a complete phase-out of fossil fuels.
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.
Lawyer, feminist activist and a prominent figure of the Syrian opposition, Dima Moussa advocates for an inclusive political transition, the establishment of genuine democratic institutions, and the necessity of a national debate open to all components of Syrian society.
The Vatican’s attitude during the Holocaust and the persecution of the Jews has been at the heart of numerous debates and controversies. Nina Valbousquet analyses the ambivalent position of the papacy during the pontificate of Pius XII (1939-1958) and provides a sensitive history of the Holocaust through the archives.
To achieve energy transition, we will need to extract as much metal in the next 20 years as we have done in the entire history of mankind. This is ‘one of the great paradoxes of our times’.
About: Michel Bourdeau, La fin de l’utopie libérale. Introduction critique à la pensée de Friedrich Hayek, Hermann
About: Montassir Sakhi, La révolution et le djihad. Syrie, France, Belgique, La Découverte
About: Zeyad Masroor Khan, City on Fire: a Boyhood in Aligarh, HarperCollins India
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.
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.
In our second winter selection of reviews and essays, Books & Ideas takes a look back at a few important articles published over the last year on the current developments and trends affecting public spaces for expression and debate : from the traditional media to the world wide web, these different spaces are all under pressure from ongoing changes. Rules and practices are evolving, as the traditional public space is being radically enlarged.
How to combat growing inequalities and injustice in a given country? Recent research suggests that solutions lie in better understanding and controlling access to education and working conditions but also in regulating tax havens and the salaries of executives.
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.
Thanks to his work on Greco-Roman antiquity, his intellectual curiosity, his pronounced taste for interdisciplinarity, his sense of humor, and the freedom that informs all his research, Paul Veyne is a twentieth-century historian whose work cannot be avoided. A loose cannon at the heart of the academic establishment, a deep thinker and a dilettante, Veyne invites us, through his work, to a festival of thought.
Now a well-known Chinese lawyer of the democratic dissidence in China, Zhang Sizhi was once a young nationalist, a high-ranking official in the court of Beijing and a victim of anti-rightist repression. In his memoirs, he provides a detailed and fascinating description of the profession and China in the second half of the 20th century.
La douleur chronique est fréquente, souvent invalidante et envahissante. Comment les médecins de la douleur composent-ils avec les nombreuses incertitudes qui l’entourent ?
Écrire une « nouvelle histoire du monde » depuis les origines de la planète Terre jusqu’à nos jours, en articulant l’histoire des sociétés humaines et celle de la « nature », tel est le pari audacieux de Peter Frankopan.
L’essor des technologies de surveillance redéfinit l’approche sécuritaire sous l’influence d’enjeux économiques. Partout où elle s’installe, cette surveillance dopée aux nouvelles technologies soulève la question de dérives liberticides.
À propos de : Marie Houllemare, Justices d’empire. La répression dans les colonies françaises au XVIIIe siècle, Puf
À propos de : Claire Larroque, Philosophie du déchet, Puf
À propos de : Solène Brun, Derrière le mythe métis. Enquête sur les couples mixtes et leurs descendants en France, La Découverte
