Category: Books

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.

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 […]

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. […]

Rethinking Music through Science and Technology Studies

Edited by Antoine Hennion & Christophe Levaux

This volume seeks to offer a new approach to the study of music through the lens of recent works in science and technology studies (STS), which propose that facts are neither absolute truths, nor completely relative, but emerge from an intensely collective process of construction. Applied to the study of music, this approach enables us to reconcile the human, social, factual, and technological aspects of the musical world, and opens the prospect of new areas of inquiry in musicology and sound studies. […]

Sur la trace des suspects

L’incorporation de la preuve et de l’indice à l’ère de la génétique

edited by Joëlle Vailly

We are pleased to announce the publication of this new book at Editions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme to which Vololona Rabeharisoa and Florence Paterson have contributed.

The use of genetic data in the police and justice system has developed spectacularly over the last thirty years. Based on interviews, observation of trials and the examination of documents, this book analyses the social and legal issues of these innovations in France. The authors study the daily practices of […]