Societal issues All books
Louis Roussel
Forgotten Childhood
Roussel points to a number of frightening signs among children today failure at school, depression, suicide, juvenile delinquency, violent behaviour and concludes that childhood itself is seriously threatened. The changes in family relations have played a determining role in affecting the lives of all children each and every one of them potential victims of the upheavals that shake our society. Such is the theory that Roussel presents in this book, as he traces more that 20 years of changes in the family and examines their impact on education. Louis Roussel is a scientific adviser for Frances national institute of demographic studies.
Michel Savy
New Spaces, New Movements Future Mobility
An innovative approach to such essential issues as work, housing and information
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.
Dominique Schnapper, Paul Saloma, Perrine Simon-Nahum
Thinking about anti-Semitism A Symposium on Anti-Semitism
Commentary from the latest reports on anti-Semitism in France, in order to go well beyond journalistic and political discourse. The current character of the issue, which is examined here with the resources of both history and philosophy. The scope of the analyses proposed by some of the most respected specialists on the issue.
Dominique Schnapper
Of Democracy in France
From providential democracy to extreme democracy, the concepts forged by D. Schnapper have now passed into contemporary language. A great voice for democracy (D. Schnapper, the daughter of Raymond Aron, is former member of the Conseil constitutionnel).
Michel Schneider
Big Mother The Psychopathology of Political Life
Listening, closeness, emergencies, love - politicians today play up to the mother. Leaders dare not lead, the citizens are now so child-like that they simply wait to be told what to do by the State : the Leisure State behaves like those mothers who cannot stand to think that their children can play by themselves, and insist on keeping them busy. Where are the fathers ? Is this the end of the paternal reference and the symbolic order of things ? A psychoanalyst, Michel Schneider was formerly a director of music and dance at the Ministry of Culture.
France Schott-Billmann
The Need to Dance
Village dances, the craze for Oriental and African dancing, the large number of rave parties - over the past few years, the joy of dancing seems to have been rediscovered in France. What does the desire to dance hide?
Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen, Jean-Paul Fitoussi
The Wealth of Nations and the Well-Being of Individuals Economic Performance and Social Progress
“If we do not want our future, our children’s future and that of succeeding generations to be strewn with financial, economic, social, ecological and, consequently, human catastrophes, we must change our way of life, how we consume and how we produce...
Dominique Servant
How Not to Crack Up at Work
What can be done, in a concrete fashion, to overcome work-related problems and to obtain professional satisfaction and fulfilment?
Monique Sicard
The Making of the Image
It was during the Renaissance that images and pictures were first used by anatomists, microscopists, and astronomers as scientific tools. In that era, scientific images served as a kind of inventory of the known world. In the 19th century, the popularization of scientific ideas gave science a new vigor. Photographic images gave science a new reality, explaining and legitimizing scientific concepts--movement, for example--to a fascinated public. In our days, the scientific image is often a construction--helping us to represent objects and ideas that, like fractals or black holes, cannot be defined through actual observation. Monique Sicard is Projects Director at CNRS Images Média.
Sébastien Soriano
The Future of Public Service
A decisive contribution to thinking about the sovereignty of society in the face of the era of networks and the digital world.
Manès Sperber
Being Jewish
A non-practicing Jew, Manès Sperber learned to read the Bible at the age of three and continued to re-read it until the end of his life. Neither religious, nor a militant Zionist, nor an aethiest, nor aligned with any cultural Judaism, he professes as his only faith a "religion of good memory." His is a Judaism lived as humanism and as an ethic, as a refusal of all idolatry, of exclusion of others, and a constant combat against hate of any kind. It is a profound attachment to the Israelite nation and a prudent attitude towards the State of Israel that Sperber illustrates in these brilliant essays prefaced by Elie Weisel, where analysis of Jewish thought and identity walk hand in hand with the eternal question: Why anti-semitism?
Christian Stoffaës
Public Services A Question of the Future
French public services need to be modernised. In their present position, they incarnate the Welfare State and its grand projects. They are now being challenged by the opening up of the market, the fall of the controlled economy, deregulation, and privatisations. An open economy now rules the network industries, such as energy, transport, telecommunications, and collective services. Can we really just leave isolated and without a future this cornerstone of our society which represents all at once the infrastructure of the competitive economy, great technical achievements, the republican conception of social equality and the cohesion of the country ? A result of the reflections of the Network Plan 2010 group, led by Christian Stoffaës, the director of the company Elecricité de France, this work identifies the currents of change, assesses the situation in other countries, and traces an outline of a significant project to reform the State. In co-edition with La Documentation française.
Jean-Pierre Sueur
Changing the City For a New Urbanity
Twenty years after France introduced its urban policy, the situation in the cities leaves much to be desired. Widespread problems include insecurity, violence, inequality, unemployment, pollution, poor housing or housing in hideously ugly tower blocks, traffic jams, and the emergence of ghettos. The author gives a critical reading of the various remedial urban policies introduced during the past few years and points to ways in which the underlying causes of todays urban problems may finally be confronted, so as to ultimately and truly change our cities. Jean-Pierre Sueur, a former government minister and member of Parliament, is the mayor of Orleans.
Alain Supiot
Solidarity An Enquiry Into a Legal Principle
A thorough enquiry into the meaning and future of the legal principle of solidarity
Irène Théry
From Marriage to Divorce Justice and Private Life
Can dual parental responsibility outside marriage be recognized as a principle by law? I. Théry believes that all controversies on divorce are basically debates on marriage. Our representations of the relationships between the individual and society, the private and public realms, are destabilized in this insecure period of unmarriage . The psycho-social drift of justice increases further when we consider the true sufferers of divorce court battles: the children.
Irène Théry
Filiation, Origins, Parenthood How Lawmakers Are Dealing with Recent Notions of Inter-generational Responsibility
One of the most sensitive social issues of the day, analysed by an acclaimed specialist on family and social transformations
Serge Tisseron
The Benefits of the Image
Should sex and violence be banned on our television screens ? Is there a danger that their presence can lead to them becoming common-place, or to delinquency ? In light of this current debate, Serge Tisseron argues that as soon as we become accustomed to a type of image, and it ceases to upset us, we invent another type which will once more allow us to confuse image and reality, and thus to shiver again with fear and anxiety. In a society which is flooded with images, it is thus essential to use them as best we can, and to avoid the dangers that are inherent in them. This book aims to contribute to this end. Serge Tisseron is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, doctor of psychology and research fellow at the University of Paris-X. For the past fifteen years, he has worked on the relations that viewers have with different types of images.
Maurice Tubiana
Education and Life
This book is a reflection on the alarming fact that France has the highest level of violent deaths (from suicide, drugs, and road accidents) in all Europe among young people between 18 and 22 years old. Tubiana analyses the pleasure principle which runs through our culture and our values, the Freudian principle that demands the immediate satisfaction of our impulses. This brings him to denounce postmodern individualism which does not make any room for the collective interest. Maurice Tubiana is a world-reknowned oncologist and member of the French Academy of Science and the Academy of Medicine.