Category: Books

Discounting the Future. The Ascendancy of a Political Technology

A book by Liliana Doganova pubished by Zone Books

A pioneering exploration of the defining traits and contradictions of our relationship to the future through the lens of discounting.

Forest fires, droughts, and rising sea levels beg a nagging question: have we lost our capacity to act on the future? Liliana Doganova’s book sheds new light on this anxious query. It argues that our relationship to the future has been trapped in the gears of a device called discounting. While its incidence remains little known, discounting has long been entrenched in market and policy practices, shaping the ways firms and governments look to the future and make decisions accordingly. Thus, a sociological account of discounting formulas has become urgent.

Quand la mine déborde. Enquêtes sur la fabrique des territoires extractifs

Juliette Cerceau and Brice Laurent (Eds.)

At a time of energy and digital “transitions” and health and geopolitical crises, access to mineral raw materials is becoming a crucial issue forcing us to question mining activity.

The contributors to the book are Nassima Abdelghafour, Sylvia Becerra, Tessa Bonincontro, Juliette Cerceau, Liliana Doganova, Noémie Fayol, Yona Jébrak, Brice Laurent, Claude LeGouill, Pierre-Yves Le Meur, Florian Tena-Chollet and Roberta Rubino.

Genèse d’un autoritarisme numérique. Répressions et résistances sur internet en Russie, 2012-2022

Françoise Daucé, Benjamin Loveluck and Francesca Musiani (Eds.)

In the wake of the USSR’s collapse, the Russian Internet initially developed freely, leaving the initiative to numerous actors who invented digital tools tailored to suit their uses. However, since the early 2010s, the authoritarian turnaround at the top echelons of the Russian state has led to the deployment of a network of rights of way and constraints that have tightened on both actors and the country’s digital infrastructures. […]

Le soin des choses. Politiques de la maintenance

A book by Jérôme Denis and David Pontille published by La Découverte

What do a furnace, a car, a signpost, a smartphone, a cathedral, a work of art, a satellite, a washing machine, a bridge, a clock, a computer server, the body of an illustrious statesman, or a tractor have in common? Almost nothing, except that none of these things, small or large, precious or banal, lasts without some form of maintenance. Every object wears out, degrades, eventually breaks, or even disappears. However, do we really grasp the importance of maintenance? […]

Le masque sanitaire sous toutes ses coutures

A book edited by Franck Cochoy, Gérald Gaglio, Anaïs Daniau, with the collaboration of Madeleine Akrich, Cédric Calvignac, Roland Canu, Alexandre Mallard, Morgan Meyer

In 2020, when Covid fell on our heads, sanitary masks also fell on our noses. But are Covid and masks inextricably linked? Do masks have more distant origins? Has it now become a fashion item? Has the standard sanitary mask mutated into multiple “variants”? How is the mask apprehended, whether for children, the “firsts in line for chores”, caregivers or shopkeepers?

This richly layered book provides answers to these and many other questions. It draws on […]

Innover en temps de crise. Réactions et adaptations face à la crise Covid-19

Innovating in times of crisis. Reactions and adaptations to the Covid-19 crisis

Hervé Dumez, Benjamin Loveluck and Alexandre Mallard (Eds.)

Crises definitely give us food for thought – but not just about how to avoid them or how to get out of them. They challenge us in our ability to find solutions in the face of unprecedented difficulties, to rethink problems that we thought had been solved, or to accelerate developments that we had only sketched out. In short, they drive us to innovate.

Concealing for Freedom

The Making of Encryption, Secure Messaging and Digital Liberties

by Ksenia Ermoshina and Francesca Musiani

Concealing for Freedom: The Making of Encryption, Secure Messaging and Digital Liberties sets out to explore one of the core battlegrounds of Internet governance: the encryption of online communications. Current debates around encryption have fundamental implications for our individual liberties and collective presence on the Internet. Encryption of communications at scale and in increasingly usable ways has become a matter of public concern, especially since Edward Snowden’s 2013 revelations. A new cryptographic imaginary is taking hold, which sees encryption as a necessary precondition for the formation of networked publics.

European Objects

The Troubled Dreams of Harmonization

by Brice Laurent

How interventions based on objects—including chemicals, financial products, and consumer goods—offer a path to rethink European integration. […]