Summer mix

Sophie Leclercq, “ An ethnologist in the artists’ village »
Beijing 798 immerses us in the world of a contemporary art center in the northeastern suburbs of Beijing renowned throughout the world. Contemporary art and global market, avant-garde and political subversion, creation and artists’ districts, ambivalences of Chinese cultural policy are all themes raised by this ethnography of the multifaceted place that is the Dashanzi art district or 798.
Read the article ➞

Thomas Vendryes, “ Tax havens: guided tour »
How much money is hidden in tax havens ? By whom ? And how ? Using an original methodology and previously under-exploited data, Gabriel Zucman sheds new and harsh light on these problems, hoping that it can help improve the fight against tax havens.
Read the article ➞

Nicolas Delalande, “ The creation of the Greek state in XIX^e century »
Interview with Anastassios Anastassiadis 1/2 – The Greek crisis is first and foremost that of the Greek State and its legitimacy. We must go back to XIX^e century to understand the distrust of the populations towards the bureaucracy and the role of international powers in the Greek political game. In this interview published in two parts, Anastassios Anastassiadis gives his historian’s view on the current difficulties.
Read the article ➞

Nicolas Delalande, “ Greece in the European Union »
Interview with Anastassios Anastassiadis 2/2 – The Greek crisis is first and foremost that of the Greek State and its legitimacy. In the second part of this interview, Anastassios Anastassiadis explains where the Greek state’s difficulties in collecting taxes come from, and highlights the role of inequalities and the Greek political class in the unfolding of the crisis.
Read the article ➞

Nicolas Delalande & Florent Guénard, “ Neo-liberalism and its history »
What is neoliberalism ? What are its historical roots ? In a large-scale work, Serge Audier undertakes to reconstruct the intellectual archeology of this complex and multiple movement. La Vie des idées publishes three critical reviews in two days, from three different perspectives, as well as the author’s response.
Read the article ➞

Pap Ndiaye, “ Activist brothers »
Sometimes opposed in public debates, Jews and blacks nevertheless have a long history of common activism. Using her proven method, Nicole Lapierre traces the destiny of some emblematic figures of the struggles shared by these two minorities.
Read the article ➞

Arnaud Esquerre, “ What is the “ objectivity » ? »
The way in which we conceive of what is or is not objective has changed several times since the XVII^e century. To explore these variations, Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison study the “ atlas » that would form the scientific uses of the image. These illustrations of plants, planets, jellyfish or snowflakes say a lot, in fact, about the regimes of objectivity – with the horizon of XXI^e century, the possible disappearance of representations in scientific practices.
Read the article ➞

Yves Sintomer, “ Drawing of lots and deliberative democracy »
The practice of the representative sample in decision-making gives the drawing of lots a place in contemporary political regimes. The diversity it introduces into procedures helps to strengthen democratic legitimacy. It therefore seems possible, according to Yves Sintomer, to associate the drawing of lots with the elections themselves.
Read the article ➞

Bernard Thomann, “ Are Asian economies converging towards Anglo-Saxon capitalism? ? »
Are the economic take-off and the new hegemony of capitalism in East Asia converging towards a global model based on the Anglo-Saxon capitalist system or should we see the beginning of a new form of capitalism, based on regional economic integration? ? Two works address this question from the point of view of regulation theory.
Read the article ➞

Pierre Merle, “ Who benefits from educational spending? ? »
Sociologist Pierre Merle takes stock of growing inequalities in the distribution of educational resources – a decisive issue in the development of any educational reform.
Read the article ➞

André Cartapanis, “ For a Euro-federation »
Since the fall of 2009, the euro zone has been subject to the turbulence of the sovereign debt crisis of Greece, Portugal and Spain. According to Michel Aglietta, this crisis reveals that the Europeans have gone too far, by creating a single currency within an economic space that is too heterogeneous – or not far enough on the path to monetary federalism.
Read the article ➞

Jean-François Laé & Numa Murard, “ Current account settlements »
What does human life look like from a bank teller? ? The variable geometry rules of the banking institution mean that the morality of money is not the same for everyone. And money, which crosses social boundaries, also reinforces them, inflicting on the less wealthy the humiliations of difficult ends of the month in the name of “ autonomy “.
Read the article ➞

Olivier Christin, “ The slow triumph of numbers »
The Ancien Régime is generally considered a period of decline in freedoms and forgetting of representative systems. However, new political and religious challenges have led to important adjustments in the concrete implementation of the majority decision. For Olivier Christin, the contribution of the modern era to the formation of political decision-making practices which will be those of the democratic revolution must therefore be reassessed.
Read the article ➞

Thomas Grillot & Silyane Larcher, “ Overseas: the Republic in its diversity »
2011 saw the organization of a very ambitious Overseas Year which was to make visible, stripped of their exotic trappings, French territories marginalized economically, culturally, and politically. A response to the social movements of 2009, it was intended above all to function as a showcase for a new way of thinking about the integration of these “ empire confetti “. Did it live up to its promises? ?
Read the article ➞

Philippe Minard, “ For the connected story »
By restoring the conditions in which the first contacts between the Dutch, Malays and Javanese took place at the turn of the XVII^e century, Romain Bertrand offers us a master book destined to set a standard, and illustrates the heuristic fertility of connected history. In these times of intellectual timidity and pusillanimous prudence, he brought a refreshing wind to the historical discipline.
Read the article ➞

Clément Rivière, “ The ethnographer and his dealer »
Between an initiatory story and a reflective review of the field investigation, Sudhir Venkatesh gives access behind the scenes to the research carried out in the heart of the black ghetto of Chicago. A plea for the ethnographic method, his work is peppered with valuable reflections on the practical and ethical difficulties that it involves.
Read the article ➞

Jacques Rodriguez, “ The excesses of the health society »
In 1872, the English writer Samuel Butler published a critical dystopia of the Victorian society of his time. In Erewhon, illness is condemned as a crime, and crime treated as an illness. Very current charge which calls into question the medicalization of society and its excesses.
Read the article ➞

David Bornstein & Bernard Thomann, “ Fukushima: the lasting catastrophe »
Interview with Paul Jobin – Paul Jobin, who follows the workers at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, analyzes the government denial concerning the health consequences of their work and, more broadly, the long-term effects of the disaster. This censorship, however, is being undermined by social mobilizations which take place in particular via the internet.
Read the article ➞

Nora Benkorich, Thirty years later, a look back at the Hama tragedy »
By relying on Arab sources almost untapped in French and Anglo-Saxon research, Nora Benkorich traces the events which culminated in February 1982 in the massacres perpetrated by the Syrian authorities against the population of the town of Hama. The current uprising and that of Hama thirty years ago diverge in many aspects and have only the brutality of government repression in common.
Read the article ➞

Pascal Sévérac, “ Joyful melancholy of the landscape »
In an unclassifiable, poetic and political book, Jean-Christophe Bailly questions the identity of France through travel: the change of scenery is then what best defines this identity, open and variable, worked by a past which modifies, infinite, the territory.
Read the article ➞

Aurélien Bordet, “ The hospital undermined by management »
Since 2009, the hospital has undergone reforms with serious consequences for both its staff and its patients. A collective work shows how management gradually penetrates all aspects of hospital life to modify its activity and purpose.
Read the article ➞

Sarah Kolopp, “ The socialist roots of neoliberalism »
The classic dichotomies between socialism and capitalism, planning and market, Keynesianism and monetarism have obscured alternative models such as market socialism. J. Bockman invites us to reassess the place of the Eastern bloc in the development of economic thought.
Read the article ➞

Pauline Peretz, “ The first name, personal support of identity ? »
Interview with Baptiste Coulmont – The only cultural good accessible to all but also required of all by the State, the first name is a strong marker of the sex, age and social and ethnic origin of the person who wears it. According to sociologist Baptiste Coulmont, changing one’s first name, however, allows one to escape this determinism by validating the identity that one has chosen for oneself.
Read the article ➞

Laure Bordonaba, “ Extravagant perched birds »
The medievalist Michael Camille scrutinized the stone monsters which, emerging from XIX^e century of the imagination of Viollet-le-Duc and Lassus, perch on Notre-Dame: symbols of a chimerical Middle Ages, these apocrypha reveal implicitly the modernity which gave birth to them.
Read the article ➞