Archives - Publications and Beyond

Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2023, 320 p.

This book discusses how human lives are equated with the material, and argues that pricing lives lies at the core of the political; in fact, as in Plato or Hobbes, and in the Weberian ethics of responsibility, measurement is considered to be one of its central features. Ariel Colonomos argues that this measure relies primarily on human lives and interests, and that the material equivalence to lives is twofold. The equivalence is a double equation, as we pay for lives and we pay with lives. This double equation constitutes the measurement upon which the political equilibrium of a society depends and is thus a key constitutive part of the political. The book adopts two approaches, both with an interdisciplinary perspective: one explanatory and the other normative. First, it explains the nexus between existential goods and material goods, drawing on a detailed analysis of several case studies from contemporary politics, both domestic and international. Second, it discusses normatively the material valuation of human lives and the human value of material goods. Value attribution and the question of the material equivalent to lives are of relevance not only for political theory and philosophy, but also for sociology, history, international relations, and legal studies.

Paris, Albin Michel, 2025, 272 p.

L’air du temps célèbre l’individu libre de ses choix et de son identité. Il est possible de changer de genre ou de religion, et même d’alterner les rôles selon les moments de la journée : lorsqu’il est question de classe ou d’apparence, sans doute. Mais peut-on se réclamer d’une autre race ? Rien n’interdit formellement de se dire Noir alors qu’on est Blanc (ou l’inverse), de jouer à l’autochtone ou même de s’inventer un passé de victime, rescapée de la Shoah ou d’un attentat meurtrier. Formellement, rien. Pourtant, en bousculant les frontières, notre époque si libre en reconstitue d’autres. Mieux, les races et les ethnies qui se dressent contre toute forme d’essentialisme disent que seuls ceux qui attestent de leur ascendance peuvent être des leurs. De l’identité, elles ne connaissent que l’origine. En ce sens, notre ère est bien celle des impostures. Celle de Coleman Silk, le héros de La tache de Philip Roth, qui se disait Blanc et Juif. Celle d’Hannah Arendt qui, parce que Juive, pensait pouvoir mieux comprendre la condition des Noirs. Celle des nombreux imposteurs qui, par amour ou par intérêt, ont joué à l’Indien. Celle des fausses victimes de la Shoah qui ont convaincu les lecteurs et les témoins les mieux informés de leur « belle » histoire. Les premiers cas éclairent l’aporie de l’air du temps, qui conjugue l’amour de la liberté et la fermeture sur soi. Les derniers rappellent que le culte de la liberté doit céder devant l’exigence de vérité.

Palgrave Macmillan (The Sciences Po Series in International Relations and Political Economy), 2025, 270 p.

This book offers several European perspectives on Indo-Pacific dynamics by a set of internationally recognized experts who have collaborated in the Franco-German Observatory of the Indo-Pacific. The observatory was established in 2021 by the Centre for International Studies (CERI) at Sciences Po, Paris and the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA), Hamburg and has since come to include many scholars and institutions from both countries. The book speaks to and updates existing scholarly discussions on Indo-Pacific dynamics, investigating the nexus of order(ing) and agency in that strategic space. The authors take US-China strategic competition as a contextual given and explore the Indo-Pacific as an interregnum, in terms of institutional dynamics and in terms of geo-narratives. The book also offers several case studies of middle and small power agency in the Indo-Pacific, examining the cases of Australia and Japan, India, the Philippines and Vietnam, and of Pacific Island Countries. A final chapter explores the perspectives of Chinese scholars on the Indo-Pacific as a strategic space.

London, Hurst & Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2025, 424 p.

Analyses of state power in Morocco have always been mired in exoticism or exceptionalism. The Kingdom is said to be a prototype of political immobility; a country caught in the authoritarian and conservative grip of its monarch, known as the ‘Commander of the Faithful’; a state in need of democratisation, but also a bastion of moderate Islam. Drawing on thirty years of fieldwork, interviews and extensive primary documentation, Béatrice Hibou and Mohamed Tozy reveal how demographic, political and cultural changes have transformed Morocco’s government and modes of domination, from its pre-colonial past to the present. Interrogating the ideas of ‘Empire’ and ‘Nation-state’ as particular forms of rule, they examine the legacy of the centuries-long Sharifian Empire, in relation to the contemporary neoliberal government. They show how imperial traditions and the modern state co-exist today, in an intricate tapestry of seemingly contradictory power relations, different understandings of legitimacy, and competing visions of authority, sovereignty and responsibility.