How should we characterize the regime of Tunisian President Kais Saied since his 2021 power grab? To get a sense of what is happening “inside the country,” an edited volume provides an informed and engaged interpretation of the situation.
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.
Throughout the nineteenth century, ecological currents in the agricultural world promoted organic farming and the defense of small producers. The story of these “ecological farmers” sheds light on the forward-looking contract forged between agriculture and society.
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.
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.
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’.
Hayek always presented his reconstruction of liberalism as a utopia, based on the idea of a spontaneous, self-regulating social order, against the chimera of social justice.
Why did 5,000 Europeans join the jihad in Syria? The volunteers who left between 2011 and 2014 displayed a form of religious solidarity and a desire for revolution, which were later exploited by Daesh.
What constitutes a ghetto? Zeyad Masroor Khan offers an intimate portrayal of life in a marginalized neighbourhood shaped by persistent communal violence. Writing from Aligarh in North India, he vividly describes the spatial, social, and emotional dimensions of the ghetto.
In the tradition of Marcel Mauss, Pierre Lemonnier examines the male initiation rites of the Baruya of New Guinea not in terms of the signifier that can be attached to them, but rather the action on matter that they make possible.
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.
In ancient times, mythological and historical criminals were not always inhuman. They show us that there is nothing universal about our self-evident truths, particularly when they concern such fundamental concepts as good and evil.
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.
While public authorities currently seem to prefer to use incentives rather than constraints to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, economists are developing increasingly effective tools to measure the effectiveness of these policies.
The “Europe of the market” has dominated European social and economic policy since 1945. Yet three other models have opposed the liberal paradigm: solidarity, neomercantilism, and ultra-liberalism.
In this recent interview, Walzer reflects on his life of political commitment. From the creation of Dissent to the publication of the acclaimed Spheres of Justice, here is the journey of one of the most influential political theorists of the XXth century.
Time is the hardest thing for us to understand, as we cannot be sure whether it exists in and of itself, or whether it can even be defined. This is an age-old conundrum, but Francis Wolff offers a new answer rooted in neither physics nor phenomenology.
Maritime spaces are the focus of the major economic, ecological, and geopolitical challenges of our time. Lest they become the site of routine legal violations (ranging from pollution to overfishing), a government of the seas is necessary.
Philosophy has something to say about wine: about its definition, how to savor it, what it inspires, but also about the virtues of inebriation.
Contemporary uses of the word “Muslim” in France illustrate the variety of ways in which minorities identify themselves. In a book that straddles semantics and ethnography, Marie-Claire Willems sheds light on the diversity of forms of belonging available to populations exposed to exclusion.
The encounter between British miners and gay and lesbian activists during the strikes of 1984-85 was explored in the celebrated film Pride. A historian looks back at this memorable period and reveals the continuities between the two movements.
What economic impacts and consequences did conversion carry in early modern Rome? The history of an elite Jewish family offers revelations about Jewish conversions to Catholicism and the shifts in social status that followed baptism.
The question of original sin no longer concerns us as much as that of diet. But what if it were the same?
Cold War liberalism is hardly discussed in France, even though its theoretical importance should not be overlooked: its attacks on the welfare state have notably fostered neoconservatism.
Katharina Pistor has renewed the critique of economic inequality by showing how the institutions of private law form the lock of an unequal economic and social system.
Experience can only lead to knowledge if it is organized by concepts that are not derived from experience. This is the paradox at the heart of Kant’s metaphysics, which Antoine Grandjean gives an entirely new interpretation.
After 1946, the process of “decolonization by assimilation” ensured that the French Antilles remained part of France. The departmental framework, seen as the source of all the rights associated with citizenship, had a profound influence on Antillean politics and society.
In the Volta region, there is no such thing as land ownership: Land is not traded but shared. Why, then, do our societies consider the right to appropriate land to be perfectly legitimate?
The plaza in front of the Western Wall in Jerusalem was the scene of intense conflict between Jews and Muslims in the twentieth century. Paying unique attention to the faintest traces, historian Vincent Lemire traces the successive episodes of violence and destruction that unfolded at the foot of the wall.
How have French women of Arab and North African descent become the subject of a collective fantasy? If the language of immigration reveals collective imaginaries and social and discursive practices that are worth analyzing, then the word beurette also deserves our attention.
Some exceptional experiences give us access to a different reality from the one we encounter in our everyday lives. In the twentieth century, a number of philosophers explored these experiences in the pursuit of a new form of empiricism.
In this analysis of animal behavior, Florence Burgat brilliantly examines a continent that Freud left unexplored: the animal unconscious. But is psychoanalysis the right framework for such a project?
Patrick Chastenet examines the anarchist roots of political ecology. He considers five authors who connected the defense of nature to the defense of freedom: Reclus, Ellul, Charbonneau, Illich, and Bookchin. Chastenet offers a rich and instructive presentation that leads to many questions.
Despite repeated proclamations of the death of metaphysics, the contemporary philosophical landscape is marked by the proliferation of ontologies. Sébastien Motta sets out to demonstrate the sterility of the ontological enterprise through a logical analysis of their assumptions.
Whether conceived as advocacy of disorder or as “the highest expression of order,” as the abolition of the state or as state-led deregulation, anarchy feeds on every ambiguity. This is the case even in contemporary philosophy.
Following in Paul Ricœur’s footsteps, Olivier Mongin proposes an interpretation of politics as a tension between state domination at “the top” and living together at “the bottom.” This tension, he argues, contains a potential for reciprocal violence that poses a threat to democracy.
A new archaeology has emerged whose contributions to our understanding of twentieth-century mass violence oscillate between history and memory. A specialist in the field provides an impressive overview that sounds very much like a plea.
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.
Under the Ancien Régime, salaries were not enough to live on. Many people had to combine activities to make ends meet. Laurence Fontaine paints a vivid picture of this reality.
