Lachenal, Guillaume. 2017. Le médecin qui voulut être roi. Sur les traces d’une utopie coloniale. Paris : Seuil.
Christian Bouquet | 26.04.2018
In the 1930s, first in Wallis and then in Cameroon, the French colonial authorities experimented with a mode of administration guided by military doctors. The results are seen as contrasting, depending on the historians’ standpoint. Lachenal doesn’t see it as a « colonization benefit », but he collected several testimonies offering a more nuanced view. [...]
Desbois, Henri et Philippe Gervais-Lambony. 2017. « Les lieux que nous avons connus… ». Deux essais sur la géographie, l’humain et la littérature. Paris : Presses Universitaires de Paris Nanterre.
Olivier Lazzarotti | 08.03.2018
Following a theoretical approach leading to inscribe their point of view in the current of thought of "humanist geography", then following its application to a few cases, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in particular, the authors propose to reflect on a quest for the "human" in geography. [...]
Jarrige, François et Thomas Le Roux. 2017. La Contamination du monde. Une histoire des pollutions à l'âge industriel. Paris : Seuil, coll. « L’Univers historique ».
Igor Moullier | 08.02.2018
The dilemmas posed by industrial production and its pollution are not new. Jarrige and Le Roux show how, as early as in the 18th century, industrial societies perceived the problems related to pollution and how science and the state contributed to deal with their effects. [...]
Pleyers, Geoffrey et Brieg Capitaine (dirs.). 2016. Mouvements sociaux. Quand le sujet devient acteur. Paris : Maison des Sciences de l'Homme.
Gérard Martial Amougou | 26.01.2018
Subjectivization would be at the heart of contemporary social movements. Based on a critical and analytical reading of the book edited by Geoffrey Pleyers and Brieg Capitaine, this review revisits the theoretical issue of subjectivization in the apprehension of collective movements, while highlighting some of the challenges that emerge from its articulation with "global thinking". [...]
Poncet, Patrick. 2017. Intelligence spatiale. Rennes : Presses Universitaires de Rennes, coll. « Espace et Territoires ».
Patrick Poncet | 12.10.2017
Les objets formels qu’examine l’intelligence spatiale sont donc en priorité des espaces. Nous verrons qu’ils ont un pendant, les spatialités, tout aussi importantes et intéressantes, mais plus difficiles à saisir. C’est du reste du côté de l’étude des spatialités que se trouvent les plus grandes perspectives de progrès pour la géographie [...]
Rudolf, Florence. 2016 (dir.). Les villes à la croisée des stratégies globales et locales des enjeux climatiques. Québec : Presses de l’Université Laval, coll. « Sociologie contemporaine ».
Nathalie Blanc | 11.10.2017
In the face of climate change and its impacts, societies have developed a series of operational tools and concepts that have allowed them to take account of the evolution of this issue. Beginning in 2010, resilience partially replaced the logic of risk and hazard, as well as the one of mitigation. The coordinators of the book try, in three parts, to understand how the issue of resilience really allows to take into account the realities of adaptation to climate [...]
Castoriadis, Cornelius. 2016. Guerre et théories de la guerre. Écrits politiques. 1945-1997, VI. Paris : Éditions du Sandre.
Christophe Premat | 28.09.2017
The publication of the political writings of Castoriadis on war enlightens the controversies of the early 1980s concerning the evolution of the Soviet regime. Castoriadis was criticised for the data used to propose the concept of stratocracy. However, these writings renew the thinking on political totalitarianism, by showing that war had at that time become a global project of society. The arms race did not respond to a circumstantial evolution, it was due to a project of society totally [...]
Bouveresse, Jacques. 2017. Le mythe moderne du progrès, décortiqué et démonté par le philosophe Jacques Bouveresse à partir des critiques de Karl Kraus, Robert Musil, George Orwell, Ludwig Wittgenstein et de Georg Henrik von Wright. Marseille : Agone, coll. « Cent mille signes ».
Hervé Regnauld | 23.08.2017
What is progress about ? In a short and convincing essay, Bouveresse demonstrates that progress, in science, adds some knowledge to the preexisting theories, but adds many more questions about new problems. So progress is not an acccumulation, but a questioning. [...]
Charles, Julien. 2016. La participation en actes. Entreprise, ville, association. Paris : Éditions Desclée de Brouwer, coll. « Solidarité et société ».
Sarah Van Hollebeke | 08.08.2017
La participation en actes is part of the pragmatic research in social sciences, which argues on the improvement of the classical model of participatory democracy. By exposing the experiences of the actors of several participatory projects, the author invites the reader to take into account the conditions and constraints that enclose participation, as well as the "cost" to pay to participate. The originality of this book is that it associates a focus on the burdens of participation with an [...]
Lion, Gaspard. 2015. Incertaines demeures. Enquêtes sur l’habitat précaire. Montrouge : Bayard.
Olivier Lazzarotti | 26.07.2017
The work of sociologist Gaspard Lion focuses on the precarious habitat of people living in the circumparisian woods, residing in year-round campsites or settling in the streets. It allows to account for these "marginal" forms of living. They then contribute to fuel the ongoing reflection on "dwelling". [...]
