Essays

A rumour is circulating in some African countries: the French state is organising penis thefts to offset declining fertility. The rumour, spread by Russian propaganda, has become fake news.

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.

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.

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.

Rorty made conversation a philosophical genre in its own right, which led him to reject any distinctions he considered futile: between analytic and continental philosophy, between the Enlightenment and postmodernity, between philosophy and literature.

In 1947, Princess Elizabeth promised to serve ‘the great imperial family’, as part of the attempt to remake post-war Britain as a global power. The British Empire collapsed; but this language of service and Commonwealth allowed the Queen to take up the postcolonial concerns of the 21^st century.

Among the less visible actors in election campaigns, interest groups are the subject of numerous fantasies. Although they invest considerable resources, they in fact have little influence on the political agenda.

Quantitative reasoning is increasingly used by political authorities, especially at the EU level, to attempt to predict and plan for war. Using the Ukrainian case, this article stresses the limits of such practices and the common misperceptions upon which they rely.

Within French government ministries, cabinet offices are a source of numerous fantasies due to their opaque role and the omnipotence of graduates of the École Nationale d’Administration. A centuries-old institution at the heart of political-administrative power, their composition has nonetheless diversified, and female representation has increased over time.

As inflation takes its toll on household budgets, asset reserves will make all the difference. How will those who do not possess them manage? There is an urgent need to address the measure of this structural inequality across social classes and age groups.

On the eve of the Second World War, more than a million British children were evacuated to the countryside for their protection. Hailed as a patriotic success, the ‘Operation Pied Piper’ was actually marred by accusations of abuse. Despite growing media coverage and public awareness, survivors still await reparation.

The multiplicity of possible gender positions cannot be reduced to a spectrum opposing male and female. Numerous conceptions of gender confront one another in a multi-dimensional space, each of them proposing a different alternative to male and heterosexual norms.

Since the 2016 referendum, Brexit has dominated the political conversation in Northern Ireland, launching a debate on the Irish reunification and exacerbating communitarian tensions within Northern Irish society. What are the social and economic roots of these conflicts, and what is at stake for Northern Ireland’s future?

At a time when billionaires are being targeted by conspiracy theories, what is the actual power of philanthropic billionaires such as Soros in the Georgian Revolution in 2003, or Gates in the global health ecosystem?

What will farming look like in the future? Will there still be room for agriculture? What is certain is that the time has come for a complete overhaul of a model that is now obsolete. This essay considers the possible scenarios.

Rediscovering an activist thinker who was at the origins of eco-feminism, but remains unknown. Her work inspired an extremely heterogeneous movement, but has her ambition to concretely transform the social, economic and political organisation of society been pursued?

A period of political and economic turmoil calls for a new analytical framework to be developed. Drawing upon the tools of social science and fiction, the “Rising Invisible Majority” project examines how the shifts of a long-term political economy rendered a large share of its population ‘invisible’.

How can economic policy-makers use economic history as a guide for their deliberations and decisions? Focusing on the case of central banking, this essay argues that the virtue of history is not only to improve economic models and quantitative studies, but to provide a perspective distinct from standard economic reasoning.

Although little known abroad, the Japanese press holds an important place in the global media landscape, two of the top circulation newspapers being Japanese dailies. How do these titles thrive, and how do they shape the public debate in Japan? This article studies specificities of the Japanese media market and some of its recent changes.

This article presents a portrait of the city of Wuhan, which has been at the center of the news since the appearance of Covid-19, and discusses the experience of lockdown as recounted by its ordinary inhabitants, mixing suffering, despair, indignation and spirit of solidarity.

Are hiring decisions based on objective facts and rational thinking? Contrary to what portrayals of homo economicus suggest, emotion is a fundamental basis of decision-making. This is especially true when it comes to candidate evaluation, as Lauren Rivera shows in her study of the recruitment process in elite professional service firms.

One is mistaken to think that corporations dominate the electoral process in the United States is misplaced. The problem is actually deeper: money structures the field of ideas and sets the terms of the debate.

With taxpayer suffrage abolished and universal suffrage achieved, political participation in our democratic societies should no longer be conditioned on property ownership. However, as Timothy Kuhner shows, politics remain subservient to capital.

Great Britain only belatedly passed certain laws regulating the funding of political parties. With a small share of public money and varied sources of private funding, this system is accused of favouring large donors and extremism. These criticisms invite us to think of a fairer system.

In France as in the United States, transparency has become a core democratic requirement, and is the cornerstone of all the laws that claim to regulate the funding of political life. But this art of disclosing information often coexists with the ability to conceal it.

From October 2019 to May 2020, 150 French citizens have been involved in a participatory democracy experiment, defining measures to fight against climate change. But how, and through which legal process, can the citizens’ proposals be implemented?

Japan and the Korean peninsula share a troubled history, and the already tense relationships of these areas have been deteriorating over the past few years. Floriano Filho maps out these tensions as well as their symptoms—which include an arms race—while bringing light to their historical roots.

From crooning to auto-tune, the voice is at the heart of popular songs. However, it has proved difficult to study: how can something as personal be analysed? Catherine Rudent provides an overview of current approaches of the voice in popular music studies.

During the Black Plague, Boccaccio’s Decameron provided readers ways to laugh through the pandemic. A few centuries later, a new kind of pandemic strikes: with Covid-19, the world as we knew it seems forever changed. Can fiction help us imagine new ways of existing together in times of uncertainty?

Advanced capitalist democracies have undergone deep changes over the past thirty years, described by Torben Iversen as a transition to a knowledge-based economy. However, his account misses an aspect of class development: the emergence of a new proletariat, highly exploited in the knowledge economy.

With the population aging in the US as in many Western countries, COVID-19 has only revealed an increasingly urgent need for care. But the lack of support for caregiving is an ongoing and increasingly shared struggle. How can we care for the caregivers, and build a society that values care?

For Torben Iversen, capitalism is not responsible for the crisis democracies are currently facing. After Jenny Andersson, Cyril Benoît underlines the limits of this optimistic interpretation.

For Torben Iversen, capitalism is not responsible for the crisis democracies are currently facing. Responding to this argument, Jenny Andersson underlines the limits of this optimistic interpretation.

The Covid-19 virus follows years of austerity politics in Europe and this market-driven ideology is already shaping discussions of how we should handle it. This article examines the way these decisions have affected our ability to respond to the current epidemic.

If Covid-19 has spread so rapidly, it is namely because urbanisation is now planetary and connects a wide range of territories to each other, through an international flows of goods and people.

China managed to maintain a certain amount of economic activity during the lockdown, but at what cost and under what conditions? This article highlights the regime’s use of the media alongside the political and market logics specific to China.

Gender not only reached an unprecedented level of exposure in public debates but has become a structuring element of contemporary conservative discourses. This text discusses how gender can be incorporated into assessments of the current crisis of democracies

Tracing apps to prevent the spread of Covid-19 have been implemented in various Asian countries, and Europe is also considering their use. But is the data privacy risk worth taking? This essay proposes an overview of such technologies and questions their efficiency.