La Vie des Idées is on vacation. We will resume our publications on Monday, August 28. In the meantime, here is a selection of texts and interviews published this year.
The tests
■ Marie Loison-Leruste, “The right to live in the city: The challenges of the domiciliation of homeless »
Sociologist Marie Loison-Leruste shows how the domicile of homeless people constitutes their key to accessing the law. Beyond the reflection on non-recourse, she suggests, it is urgent that the State supports professionals in their support.
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■ Juan Camilo Cardenas & Rajiv Sethi, “Elinor Ostrom: beyond the tragedy of the commons”
In 2009, Elinor Ostrom was among the winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics for her analysis of economic governance, particularly as it relates to the commons. While this choice may surprise many in the profession, her lifelong quest to understand how common resources can be successfully managed holds many lessons for our future.
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■ Alvaro Santana Acuña, “The Hidden Cost of Contemporary Art”
How is the value of contemporary art determined in a globalized art market? In the field of mainstream contemporary art, price formation results from a multipolar process over which artists, dealers and collectors no longer have exclusivity, since obscure or invisible intermediaries now intervene.
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■ Isaac William Martin, “Redneck blues”
The majority of commentators saw Trump as the candidate of poor white Americans. Sociologist Isaac Martin points out, in reverse, the long American tradition of accusing poor whites of racism, as if to better allow the racism of the elites to flourish.
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■ Clément Cadoret, “Universal income: stop magical thinking”
While France has many social transfer mechanisms, would a universal income make it possible to fight poverty more effectively? For this to happen, it would have to be of a high level and added to current social protection systems. For Clément Cadoret, this raises the question of its financial and political feasibility.
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■ Ewa Tartakowsky, “The Jew with the Silver Coin”
In Poland, one can buy a strange lucky charm in order to become rich: the image of a Jew holding a silver coin. What does this popular reappropriation of the figure of the Jew mean in the Polish context after the Holocaust? And what is the conscious part of anti-Semitic prejudices in this representation?
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■ Hieronymus Bosch, “The French Art of Police Deviance”
The violent arrest of Théo in Aulnay-sous-Bois reveals the limits of a police force that is quick to target certain categories of the population. It also shows that these police deviances have structural sources, largely ignored by the Ministry of the Interior.
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Interviews:
■ Ivan Jablonka, “Refugee camps are here to stay: Interview with Cyrille Hanappe”
An architect and teacher at the École nationale supérieure d’architecture de Paris-Belleville, Cyrille Hanappe has been involved for several years in the shanty towns of Île-de-France and in the refugee camps of the North. He points out that, while the shanty town and the camp have long been an unthought of, they are in fact part of the long term. The refugee camps will eventually become neighborhoods in our cities.
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■ Laurent Aucher & Frédérique Barnier, “Common Cause: Interview with Colette Bec & Gilles Perret”
More than seventy years after the creation of Social Security, sociologist Colette Bec and director Gilles Perret debate the ideas that built social protection in France and the liberal developments it faces today.
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Reviews:
■ Marie Gaille, “Immodest Modesty”
The Renaissance reinvented modesty, this contradictory passion, which reveals everything while hiding. In a masterful book, D. Brancher shows how this art of circumvention crosses knowledge, in particular medical knowledge, to XVIe century.
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■ Christian Baudelot, “The glory of our fathers”
France in general, and its middle classes in particular, are affected by a phenomenon of systemic downgrading. In a tonic essay, Louis Chauvel contributes to the analysis of inequalities by integrating the consideration of the generational divide.
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■ Philippe Steiner, “The general interest, a matter of incentives”
By building markets, distributing information, and designing appropriate incentives, modern economic theory aims to lead us toward the common good.
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■ Claire Lemercier, “Birth of globalized trade”
Looking at the day-to-day operations of an average business in XVIIIe century, Francesca Trivellato describes the establishment of an intercultural trade that knows how to use and go beyond community networks as needed. She thus sheds new light on the age of trade on which capitalism has long been based.
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■ Justine Lacroix & Jean-Yves Pranchère, “Arendt in troubled waters”
Has Arendt’s thought been contaminated by a Heideggerian philosophy with a Nazi tendency? And if so, is this a sign of a lack of lucidity or of a deep adherence? E. Faye asks the question, but her interpretation is debatable. This article is followed by a response from E. Faye.
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■ Béatrice Damian-Gaillard, “Porn under the microscope”
Alongside often reductive denunciations, studies on pornography have developed in the academic world. Florian Vörös brings together the essential texts, which attest to the diversity of the productions and uses of pornography, analyze the affective experiences it arouses, and the hierarchies it works and reproduces.
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■ Olivier Godechot, “The economy of a scientific debate”
Economic negationism. And how to get rid of it has sparked lively discussions in France. What can we learn from this for a reflection on methods in social sciences and the terms of scientific debate?
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■ Matthieu Calame, “As brilliant as a tree”
Did you think that a tree was limited to branches and leaves? Enter the fascinating world of spruces, lime trees and oaks, a forest of mutual aid and competition where trees flourish thanks to a thousand ingenuities.
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