The third and final volume in Pierre Nora's award-winning (for Volume I) REALMS OF MEMORY, which includes groundbreaking discussions of France's past, powerfully demonstrates how a nation can both recover and rediscover its identity through remembrance, how rewriting history can forge new paradigms of cultural identity, and how meanings attached to an event can be as significant as the event itself. 146 illustrations.
Thomas Piketty's follow-up to his bestselling work challenges us to rethink politics, ideology, and history in light of persistent inequality. He identifies the ideas that have perpetuated inequality for centuries and critiques the ineffective politics of both the right and left. Piketty asserts that our economy is not a natural phenomenon; rather, markets, profits, and capital are historical constructs shaped by choices. He delves into the material and ideological conflicts among social groups that have led to systems like slavery, serfdom, colonialism, communism, and hypercapitalism, profoundly affecting billions. Piketty argues that the true driver of human progress has been the quest for equality and education, rather than property rights or stability. He highlights that the extreme inequality that has emerged since the 1980s stems from a backlash against communism, compounded by ignorance and a shift toward the unproductive politics of identity. Understanding these dynamics allows us to envision a more equitable economic and political framework. Piketty advocates for a new "participatory" socialism, rooted in equality, social property, education, and the equitable distribution of knowledge and power.
The latest contribution to one of the most distinguished and important series in political thought in the world.
La 4ème de couverture indique : "La répartition des richesses est l'une des questions les plus débattues aujourd'hui. Pour les uns, les inégalités n'en finiraient pas de se creuser. Pour les autres, on assisterait à une réduction naturelle des écarts. Mais que sait-on vraiment de l'évolution des inégalités sur le long terme? Fruit de quinze ans de recherches et parcourant trois siècle et plus de vingt pays, cette étude renouvelle entièrement notre compréhension de la dynamique du capitalisme en situant sa contradiction fondamentale dans le rapport entre la croissance économique et le rendement du capital. Si la diffusion des connaissances apparaît comme la force principale d'égalisation des conditions sur le long terme, à l'heure actuelle, le décrochage des plus hautes rémunérations et, plus encore, la concentration extrême des patrimoines menacent la valeur de méritocratie et de justice sociale des sociétés démocratiques."
The second volume of A History of Private Life is a treasure-trove of rich and colorful detail culled from an astounding variety of sources. This absorbing "secret epic" constructs a vivid picture of peasant and patrician life in the eleventh to fifteenth centuries. All the mystery, earthiness and romance of the Middle Ages are captured in this panorama of everyday life. The evolving concepts of intimacy are explored--from the semi-obscure eleventh century through the first stirrings of the Renaissance world in the fifteenth century. Color and black-and-white illustrations
Jacques Le Goff is a prominent figure in the tradition of French medieval scholarship, profoundly influenced by the Annales school, notably, Bloch, Febvre, and Braudel, and by the ethnographers and anthropologists Mauss, Dumézil, and Lévi-Strauss. In building his argument for "another Middle Ages" (un autre moyen âge), Le Goff documents the emergence of the collective mentalité from many sources with scholarship both imaginative and exact.
