101 BOOKS FOR THE SOCIAL SCIENCES ***sold***

Under the direction of Cyril Lemieux
Complete English translation by Adrian Morfee
(Éditions de l'EHESS, 352 pages, 2017)

This singular work takes up a singular challenge: to present a series of books that have left their mark on the construction of the social sciences since the end of World War II.

The editors of this work have invited several of the most well-respected researchers in the social sciences and adjacent fields to present the interest and profundity of each of the 101 books for a general readership. The result is a panorama that reveals the gaps, the lingering questions, and the work that remains, offering a new perspective on the major and lesser-known works that comprise the foundation of the field. The reader will also be able to trace the origins of social science theory and in what way they continue to evolve—a revelation of how profoundly interconnected even seemingly disparate disciplines are, which are too often considered in isolation.

101 Books for the Social Sciences also presents to an English-speaking public several lesser-known and obscure European thinkers (notably French) and their own readings of Anglo-American research.

The 101 authors reviewed have each been a major thinker in their respective disciplines over the last seven decades. They include:

1948 Sartre on engaged literature

1951 Arendt on the radical newness of totalitarianism

1957 Kantorowicz on the mysticism of the political

1961 Foucault on social upheaval and madness

1966 Douglas on discordance being at the heart of the symbolic order

1973 Duby on challenging the idea that history is a series of true events

1979 Bourdieu on the social construct of taste

1983 Guha on the political consciousness of the inferior class

1988 Strathern on gender as potential for social action

2000 Pomeranz on China’s “late” arrival to modernity

2005 Descola on introducing nature to the social sciences

2015 Tsing on life in the ruins of capitalism

Cyril Lemieux is a sociologist and Director of Research at L’École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), and teaches the sociology of media at SciencesPo Paris. He is a regular contributor to Le Monde, France-Culture and Liberation promoting Social Science studies.