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.
Around 1900, when Paris had absorbed its outlying communes and the city’s lower depths were populated by a range of shady characters, police officers oscillated between repression and social chronicle. These bulwarks against crime were also painters of poverty, who did not shy away from poetry.
The “California dream” does not date back to the Gold Rush of the 19th century, but only to the 20th, and is more a matter of criticism than enthusiasm. Louis Warren invites us to put this myth into perspective, and to be wary of the tendency to see California as the laboratory of the United States.
In ancient Greece, religious rites were designed to produce a unique state of receptivity. This book, which focuses on the tools used in sensory encounters with the gods, contributes to the sensory turn that is currently revitalizing historical studies.
‘Prevent disorder’ is the motto of Russian power, justifying all forms of repression and establishing a partly decentralized system of domination through fear at the hands of local mobs.
The hood-wearing entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley are workers subject to often fierce competition. Inequalities abound in the world of innovation.
Under the French Third Republic, the gender of “citizenship” and “philosophy” was masculine. Yet women pioneers managed to obtain university degrees and rise to positions of responsibility from which they had been excluded.
Arrests, torture, massacres: the Assad clan has been tormenting the Syrian people for the past 50 years. This major collective work provides conclusive evidence of the violence to which Europe turns a blind eye.
Have France’s Jews been excluded from the great national narrative? The fact is, their archives are as rich as they are significant, bearing witness to a very long history. Moreover, they provide a basis for writing the “external” as well as the “internal” history of Jewish communities.
Opening the doors to the backstage of political campaigns, Daniel Laurison invites us to take a closer look at the work of politicos who have played critical roles in presidential elections in the United States.
Rachel St. John explores the diverse range of nation-building projects that vied for legitimacy and land across the continent during the XIXe century, illuminating the diversity of North American political history and the contingency of national growth and definition.
What binds people together and turns them into a society? In an ambitious book, the sociologist Serge Paugam wrestles with this question, while bringing sociology into conversation with psychology.
In a book that is part history of ideas, part political essay, Camille Dejardin argues that John Stuart Mill’s oeuvre is useful for understanding contemporary issues, notably the ecological crisis and related economic change. Yet she does so while advancing some half-truths.
Is the law doing enough to protect the environment? Through an analysis of the concept of environmental crime, Grégory Salle shows that legal provisions are limited by a social vision that favors the technical and capitalist exploitation of nature.
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.
The complexity of contemporary biology is a source of wonder, fear, and misunderstanding. Thierry Hoquet reviews the major biological theories to help us think through the social implications of a science that is opening up fascinating, though not inevitable, horizons.
Since the 1980s, patient accompaniment has been considered a form of care in its own right. Yet, the “ethic of care,” now a key notion in philosophy, is also part of the solidarity pact that governs the welfare state in France.
“Fixers”, or dragomans, are vital intermediaries and interpreters for both journalists and soldiers in hostile terrain, and play a central role in a network of relationships and transfers. In the Middle Ages they embodied the need for otherness, and continue to do so today.
Do you really know what intersectionality is? What about the epistemology of positioning? A new collection of introductory essays on feminist philosophy questions the way feminist thought has been relatively overlooked by French philosophy, and brings to light the promise of emancipation that fuels it.
When dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic, the political and banking authorities seemed to shrug off budgetary concerns. But now that the pandemic’s restrictions have eased, debt-related concerns are returning to the spotlight.
The decolonial movement is diverse and often highly fragmented. Nevertheless, it remains a major theoretical force, one concerned with tracking down all forms of Eurocentrism and showing how knowledge is always necessarily situated.
Summer is here; Books&Ideas is off on holiday. We will be back with new publications starting August 30. In the meantime, here is a selection of texts published over the past year.
How can we explain the variations between judicial decisions in criminal matters? Using the method of natural experiment, economist Arnaud Philippe sets out to identify the factors that influence decisions and determine criminal sanctions. At the risk of forgetting sociology?
Employees are the primary inventors, but they are often deprived of their rights by legal strategies that capture their expertise. In response, new forms of resistance are emerging, based on open access.
Developed land is a major but neglected share of property holdings. In a new book, Alain Trannoy and Etienne Wasmer analyze this form of property, identifying its causes in ways that will generate discussion about its distribution—and possible taxation.
Is scientific evaluation sufficient to improve educational practices? For many teachers, evidence-based policy constitutes an obstacle to their own practices because it relies on statistical generalizations without taking into account their professional intuitions.
Pentecostalism, a rapidly growing movement, is a paradoxical religion: it denies its status as a church, leaving individuals in a one-to-one relationship with God, yet in a way that allows dominated groups to acquire a degree of social legitimacy.
