Societal issues All books
Florence Burgat
The Animal, My Relation
On one hand, men exploit, manipulate and slaughter animals. On the other hand, they let animals interfere with their lives, pollute them, and sometimes dominate them. Since the classical Age, Man has sought to define himself in his opposition to animals. Claiming for himself the most noble faculties - consciousness, thought, esthetic sense, morality - he represses his own animal side, notably his sexuality. But Florence Burgat goes beyond this negative statement. She walks in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's steps, claiming that men, like animals are sensitive beings, liable to suffer. On this basis, she proposes a new morality. Florence Burgat is a philosopher, and works at the Laboratory of Social Anthropology of the College of France.
Nathalie Blanc
Animals in an Urban Environment
Those of you who live in an urban centre, do you think the rightful place of the animal is in the countryside ? Do you think that dogs are simply kept at the whim of lonely citizens ? That cats should not be allowed to roam the streets ? That there should be no more cockroaches to invade homes ? Yet, do you really want a city without nature ? Without green areas, but also without animals ? A sterilised city in other words.. Nathalie Blanc analyses here the role of the animal, and thus the living, in our urban societies. Nathalie Blanc is a researcher specialising in urban geography, at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.
José Moraïs
The Art of Reading
José Moraïs analyzes the different methods with which we learn to read and presents the various therapeutic possibilities offered to those who do not master the art of reading .
Dominique Schnapper
As Time Goes By A Chronical of 2001-2002
From a mythical meeting in the year 2000, to From our almost mythical appointment with the year 2000, to the presidential upheavals in 2003, this book presents the first expansive record of our entry into a new century. Through insightfully chronicling the passage of time, with both emotion and analysis, the author is able to present us with a picture of our contemporary world. Dominique Schnapper is a director of studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales.
Jean-Louis André
At the Heart of Urbanity
What should be done about neglected suburbs, the bedroom towns, dehumanized, and deregulated ? When we are faced with buildings in ruins, with wasteland and concrete deserts ? The answer is to stop trying to fix the obvious defects of these surburbs and instead concentrate on the heart of the town, in the common space, which must take on the changes made and symbolise an identity. Jean-Louis André, graduate of the Ecole normale supérieure, is a journalist. He has notably published with Ricardo Bofill, The Spaces of A Life.
Serge Lebovici
The Baby, the Psychoanalyst and the Metaphor Presented by Bernard Golse
This exceptional document, the last work of Serge Lebovici, traces the history of metaphor as a concept for philosophers, linguists,and psychoanalysts. It particularly shows why this notion constitutes the keystone of psychic ontogenesis and of all therapeutic activity. A psychoanalyst, and professor of child and adolescent psychology, Serge Lebovici was the president of the International Psychoanalytical Society.
Sylvie Cadolle
Being a Step-parent The Recomposition of the Family
More than one million children in France live permanently or occasionally with a step-parent. What place does a step-parent hold in the family of a child whose parents are divorced or separated? What role does he or she play? Is it sufficient to know how to love in order to succeed in reconstructing a family? This is the first French investigation into the relations between step-parents and step-children that allows both the adults and the children to freely express themselves. Sylvie Cadolle teaches philosophy and educational sociology.