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.
Food is now a conspicuous topic, from culinary blogs to magazines, diet books, TV shows and contests. Yet unbeknownst to many, it often holds an underground, clandestine place in some of social science’s major works. This dossier assesses the current importance of such scholarly endeavors, known as “food studies” in the United States.
Historians, sociologists, and social scientists in general have long tried to “think big” and “global.” The rise of Asia in the world economy has stimulated anew this attraction for the macro-level. Books and Ideas proposes to look at some of the most innovative ways this work has been done recently, in the history of ideas, of trade and cultural exchanges, economic convergences and decolonization.
A selection of five essays and reviews recently published in Books&Ideas discusses the legacy and renewal of social class studies in France, Great-Britain and India.
Ronald Coase (1910-2013), the 1991 Nobel Laureate in Economics, is famous for his oft-quoted and just as often misunderstood “theorem.” His seminal works on transaction costs, property rights, and regulation continue to stimulate a rich reflection in economics and beyond.
Although now considered a pseudo-science, phrenology was tremendously successful in its Victorian heyday. Tracing the intellectual and scientific journey of George Combe, the ’science’s most prominent promoter in Great Britain, this paper addresses the phrenologists’ little-known contribution to the ’social question’ debate of the day, and the ambiguities of their social gospel.
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.
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
