Éric Giuily

A Question of Spin Winning Strategies, Losing Strategies

A leading expert reveals in six crucial points how to communicate convincingly

Xavier Hochet

Transforming Businesses From Strategy to Implementation

Michèle Alliot-Marie

A Nation of Irresponsible Citizens

François Durpaire

White France, Black Anger

André Gauron

Ramparts Against the Rule of Money

Henry Delmar, Jean-François Mattéi

Philosophy of Aesthetic Surgery Surgery as Desire

What are the visible and hidden forces that drive personal transformation?

Philippe Pédrot

Judging What Cannot Be Decided The Body Seized by the Law

This is a careful study of the cataclysm that biomedical technology has wreaked on procreation, gestation, life and death.

Raymond Boudon

Why intellectual peoples don't like liberalism

Given the intellectual force of liberalism, its political appeal, its economic effectiveness and its historical significance, why is it so unpopular among French intellectuals? Why does it elicit so little serious discussion? And why is it the object of so much confusion, so many clichés and misunderstandings? Is it simply out of resentment, because intellectuals feel that the market does not afford them the material and symbolic rewards that they believe they deserve? Is it just because they prefer to play a critical role in a society where capitalism is triumphant? Perhaps, but these reasons do not explain everything — and they certainly don’t explain the systematic rejection of liberal thought in France. A sociologist of knowledge rather than of social determinism, and a specialist in belief systems, Raymond Boudon ruthlessly analyses the cognitive mechanisms that make liberalism so hateful in the eyes of French intellectuals. The result is a keen, detailed review of the clichés that have encumbered discussions for more than thirty years. Raymond Boudon, a professor at the University of Paris-IV, is a member of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques. He us the author of numerous works, most notably L’Inégalité des chances, La logique du social, L’Idéologie ou l’origine des idées reçues, L’Art de se persuader, Le Sens des valeurs and Déclin de la morale? Déclin des valeurs. He is the co-author, with R. Leroux, of Y a-t-il encore une sociologie?