Human Sciences All books
Claude Fischler, Véronique Pardo
Special Diets
In many countries, restrictive diets are changing individual eating habits — and profoundly altering the way we relate to one another.
Laurent Bègue-Shankland
The Psychology of Good and Evil
How our idea of morality builds on and informs our personal life and our relationships
Mario Bettati
International Environmental Law
An indispensable book for students, diplomats and activists faced with attacks on the environment
Christine Tardieu
How We Become Bipeds The Wolf-Child Myth
A history of how and why humans are the only mammals that permanently adopted bipedalism.
Bernard Walliser
Cognitive Economics
This book should help readers gain a greater understanding of economic reasoning and rationality. It shows how a period of study and apprenticeship can improve the otherwise limited rationality of economic decisions-makers, how to co-ordinate the various actors expectations in a given situation, and how speculation results from the circulation of the opinions of the economic decision-makers. Bernard Walliser teaches economics at the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées.
Marylène Patou-Mathis
The Savage and Prehistory, the White Man’s Mirror
Throughout history how has Western man regarded human beings that differ from him?
Michel Aglietta, Thomas Brand
A New Deal for Europe
This book poses a burning question: is European construction still a common goal, shared by all the E.U. states and legitimised by their citizens?
François Saint-Pierre
In the Name of the French People Trial by Jury or by Professional Judges?
Who should judge serious crimes?
Nicolas Baumard
What Are the Bases of Morality?
Why are we moral? The great classical philosophical theories are examined here in the light of the latest research in the areas of ethology, psychology and the cognitive sciences as they relate to the natural foundations of morality.
Geneviève Bédoucha
Lunar Eclipse in Yemen An Anthropologist's Emotions and Feelings of Bewilderment
This is a fascinating approach by a woman of a tribal society in a mountain valley in northern Yemen, near the Saudi Arabian border. Partly a travel book and partly a journal of the author's fieldwork, it restores an anthropologist's unique first-hand experience, questionings, hesitations and discoveries, from the first moments spent in an unfamiliar village. There are few anthropological works on Yemen, and even fewer about private life in rural societies in the hinterland of the former Arab Republic of Yemen (the author's fieldwork dates from the 1980s, before reunification). At the time, the presence of a female anthropologist led both men and women to talk openly, often jokingly and provocatively, of male-female relations, and it seemed to encourage women to voice strong criticisms of male behaviour and privileges. The women's comments reveal them to be lucid independent thinkers, and not at all submissive. This book is an invitation to discover a little-known rural community at close quarters, and to penetrate the secret universe of Yemen's many-storied mud houses. It reveals relations between men and women in a closed, but curious and hospitable, Muslim Arab society. An anthropologist and research fellow at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Geneviève Bédoucha is a specialist in the relations between socio-political structures and irrigation systems in Arabic and Islamic societies.
Jacques Barillon, Paul Bensussan
A Criminal Desire
Jacques Barillon and Paul Bensussan show, on a European scale, the ravages caused by an overly psychological approach to the law. They resolutely denounce the extremes and excesses of the new moral and sexual order that is now being proposed for the general good. It will mean tolerating that the judicial system, primarily concerned with the victims well-being, will renounce enforcing the Law, with the approval of psychiatrists and psychologists. This is an indispensable and disturbing book that should help to awaken our anaesthetised critical sense. Jacques Barillon is an internationally renowned lawyer specialising in criminal law. Paul Bensussan, a psychiatrist, sexologist and legal expert, specialises in sex crimes.
Alain Froment
Amazing Anatomy The Human Body and Evolution
A remarkable description of the human body, as seen through the history and evolution of the many living species that humans evolved from
Jean-François Gayraud, François Thual
Geostrategy of Crime
Crime has not escaped from the effects of globalisation — with dire results. Two experts examine here the threats to our present and future security.
Didier Tabuteau
Health as Political Model
This exemplary X-ray of French healthcare argues for a total overhaul of the system
Stella Baruk
Si 7 = 0. Quelles mathématiques pour l'école ?
Stella Baruk is known for her uncompromising criticism of the way mathematics is taught at school. She sees children's frequent aversion to the subject as a clear demonstration of the failure of current methods. Following her earlier book, L'Age du Capitaine, in which she denounced the meaningless mathematical problems that children were burdened with and enjoined to solve, she now addresses the difficulties encountered by the new generation of the captain's children. She has reproduced pages from the exercise books of primary school pupils, with a commentary underlining the confusion created by modern maths in the minds of children who are not yet familiar with mathematics. Her message is clear: the fault lies not in modern maths, but in the fact that the cart has been put before the horse. Modern maths was created to generalise operations and structures that recur in every aspect of mathematics, and modern maths cannot be correctly understood without the full mastery of those operations and structures. Yet, the teaching of mathematics has been turned on its head, with the abstract being taught before the concrete and the general before the specific - with the result that empty formalism is all that is being passed on. Baruk's very precise analyses, illustrated with specific examples, will help parents understand their children's mistakes and difficulties, so that they can help them overcome them. Stella Baruk is a mathematics teacher and pedagogical researcher.
Françoise Benhamou
The Star-System Economy
We live in an age that spends fortunes on its stars. But why do we get the impression that the fees that stars receive and their popularity correspond less and less to their talent? Why does stardom seem to have so little to do with creativity and quality? Françoise Benhamou is an economist.
Étienne Wasmer, Marc Ferracci
Modern State, Effective State
Citizens need a clearer picture of public spending — which makes evaluation absolutely necessary.
Gilles Antonowicz
Sexual Crimes The Reponse of the Judiciary
What is the value of the testimony of a minor who declares having been sexually abused by a family member? What procedures does the judiciary follow to try to prevent the risk of a false allegation? The author explains and comments on the judicial procedure for these sensitive cases, which are often long, complex and very trying. The author goes on to ask if the time has not come to reconsider the status of the victim in these penal proceedings. Gilles Antonowicz is a lawyer specialising in cases concerning the sexual abuse of minors.