Acting Bodies and Social Networks


Book Description

This book analyzes the complex interactions of body, mind and microelectronic technologies. Internationally renowned scholars look into the nature of the mind - a combination of thought, perception, emotion, will and imagination - as well as the ever-increasing impact and complexity of microelectronic technologies.




Learning from Memory


Book Description

This challenging book, with excellent contributions from international social scientists, focuses on the link between body and memory that specifically refers to the use of digital technologies. Neuroscientists know very well that human beings automatically and unconsciously organize their experience in their bodies into spatial units whose confines are established by changes in location, temporality and the interactive elements that determine it. Our memories might be less reliable than those of the average computer, but they are just as capacious, much more flexible, and even more user-friendly. The aim of the present book is to outline, by the body, what we know of the sociology of memory. The authors and editors believe that an analysis at the sociological level will prove valuable in throwing light on accounts of human behavior at the interpersonal and social level, and will play an important role in our capacity to understand the neurobiological factors that underpin the various types of memory. This book is an ideal resource for advanced and postgraduate students in social sciences, as well as practitioners in the field of Information and Communication technologies. Scholarly and accessible in tone, Learning from Memory: Body, Memory and Technology in a Globalizing World will be read and enjoyed by members of the general public and the professional audience alike.




Performance, Movement and the Body


Book Description

Investigating a range of influential movement training practices, this ambitious book considers the significance of professional training to performers and their bodies. Performance training approaches are examined within their wider social and cultural contexts, illuminating their evolution in response to the changing context of theatre practice and production. Adopting a rigorous critical angle, Mark Evans' approach is at the cutting-edge of Theatre scholarship, drawing on interviews with recognised practitioners and considering the implications for movement and the body in the digital age. Engaging and enlightening, this is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students of Theatre, Drama and Performance wishing to understand and contextualise the theories behind performance training.




The Social Fabric of Cities


Book Description

Bringing together ideas from the fields of sociology, economics, human geography, ethics, political and communications theory, this book deals with some key subjects in urban design: the multidimensional effects of the spatial form of cities, ways of appropriating urban space, and the different material factors involved in the emergence of social life. It puts forward an innovative conceptual framework to reconsider some fundamental features of city-making as a social process: the place of cities in encounters and communications, in the randomness of events and in the repetition of activities that characterise societies. In doing so, it provides fresh analytical tools and theoretical insights to help advance our understanding of the networks of causalities, contingencies and contexts involved in practices of city-making. In a systematic attempt to bring urban analysis and research from the social sciences together, the book is organised around three vital yet relatively neglected dimensions in the social and material shaping of cities: (i) Cities as systems of encounter: an approach to urban segregation as segregated networks; (ii) Cities as systems of communication: a view of shared spaces as a means to association and social experience; (iii) Cities as systems of material interaction: explorations on urban form as an effect of interactivity, and interactivity as an effect of form. Visit the author’s website at: http://socialfabric.city/




Social Networks and Organizations


Book Description

`The authors should be congratulated for not only offering an excellent tour de force of cutting-edge work in social network analysis, but also charting some new possible territories for future organizational research′ - Environment and Planning Social Networks and Organizations provides a compact introduction to major concepts in the area of organizational social networks. The book covers the rudiments of methods, explores major debates, and directs attention to theoretical directions, including a vigorous critique of some taken-for-granted assumptions. The book is aimed at all of those who seek a lucid and lively treatment of social network approaches to organizational research, with a particular emphasis on the neglected area of interpersonal networks in organizations. In this book, Martin Kilduff and Wenpin Tsai offer new insights to those already familiar with network analysis, and motivate those interested in pursuing network research to embark on journeys of discovery. `This book is extremely timely. It provides a wonderful synthesis of the recently burgeoning literature in the area of organizations and social networks. It should be relevant at once for both the experienced network scholar as well as those entering this growing area′ - Ranjay Gulati, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University `Martin Kilduff and Wenpin Tsai have done a marvellous job of not only reviewing and integrating the diverse streams of literatures on social networks, but also of showing the enormous potential of this research approach that still lies untapped. Overall, this book will prove to be an invaluable resource for interested graduate students as well as for established scholars in the field′ - Sumantra Ghoshal, Professor of Strategic and International Management, London Business School `Research on social networks is already one of the most vibrant areas of organizational inquiry. How can it possibly become any more so? This book by Kilduff and Tsai opens up many new avenues for network research and theory-building. Whether you′re newly-interested in social networks or a veteran of the topic, you will benefit from Kilduff and Tsai′s marvellous contribution′ - Donald C Hambrick, Smeal College of Business Administration, The Pennsylvania State University




Introducing Social Networks


Book Description

This first-rate introduction to the study of social networks combines a hands-on manual with an up-to-date review of the latest research and techniques. The authors provide a thorough grounding in the application of the methods of social network analysis. They offer an understanding of the theory of social structures in which social network analysis is grounded, a summary of the concepts needed for dealing with more advanced techniques, and guides for using the primary computer software packages for social network analysis.




The Visual Worlds of Social Network Sites


Book Description

The central form of communication on social network sites (sns) is the communication with and through images. Accordingly, the present volume highlights images and image-based communication on sns, such as Facebook, and on nightlife platforms, such as Tilllate. First, the authors analyze the two central image categories in depth - profile images and photo albums. What follows is the portrayal of dramaturgical and staging strategies of the (semi) professional photography on the nightlife platforms, which leads to an evaluation of the importance of the international glamour photography as a parameter of private photographic self-expression. Other questions that the authors ponder in the volume are: Which functions and meanings do images have for the communications between users on social network sites? To what extent could certain design characteristics in the image-based communication on sns establish themselves as prototypical staging patterns? Which staging traditions are followed thereby? Which staging strategies are followed on different online platforms by the users' (self) visualizations?




The Accidental Billionaires


Book Description

NATIONAL BESTSELLER “The Social Network, the much anticipated movie…adapted from Ben Mezrich’s book The Accidental Billionaires.” —The New York Times Best friends Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg had spent many lonely nights looking for a way to stand out among Harvard University’s elite, competitive, and accomplished student body. Then, in 2003, Zuckerberg hacked into Harvard’s computers, crashed the campus network, almost got himself expelled, and was inspired to create Facebook, the social networking site that has since revolutionized communication around the world. With Saverin’s funding their tiny start-up went from dorm room to Silicon Valley. But conflicting ideas about Facebook’s future transformed the friends into enemies. Soon, the undergraduate exuberance that marked their collaboration turned into out-and-out warfare as it fell prey to the adult world of venture capitalists, big money, and lawyers.




The New Boundaries Between Bodies and Technologies


Book Description

The new boundaries between bodies and technologies constitute one of the most important developments in the last fifty years. Through technologies we not only change the relations between a natural given, the body, and a human-made artefact -- the technology but also change the ways we experience the world. How close are we to a world in which the abilities of machines are indistinguishable from those of the species that invented them? Our encounters with the new technologies change the cognitive processes and influences the modes of processing information. Moreover, it raises the question of the nature of human beings. Traversing body as emotive- being- in- the world and body as location culturally and socially constructed, there is a third dimension: the dimension of technological. Are we able to use these new dimension as a creative interface between the emotional brain, the acting body, and ICTS? In answering these questions, the book explores the action of bodies in technology, that is, how the sense of our bodies and of our orientation in the world are affected by information and communication technologies. It contributes therefore to the world-wide discussion and debates on the impact of technology, especially information technology, on the lives of human beings in the age of globalization, in particular to the present thinking of the relationship between technology and embodiment.




Research Methods in Social Network Analysis


Book Description

Since the publication of Herbert Spencer's Principles of Sociology in 1875, the use of social structure as a defining concept has produced a large body of creative speculations, insights, and intuitions about social life. However, writers in this tradition do not always provide the sorts of formal definitons and propositions that are the building blocks of modern social research. In its broad-ranging examination of the kind of data that form the basis for the systematic study of social structure, Research Methods in Social Network Analysis marks a significant methodological advance in network studies. As used in this volume, social structure refers to a bundle of intuitive natural language ideas and concepts about patterning in social relationships among people. In contrast, social networks is used to refer to a collection of precise analytic and methodological concepts and procedures that facilitate the collection of data and the systematic study of such patterning. Accordingly, the book's five sections are arranged to address analytical problems in a series of logically ordered stages or processes. The major contributors define the fundamental modes by which social structural phenomena are to be represented; how boundaries to a social structure are set; how the relations of a network are measured in terms of structure and content; the ways in which the relational structure of a network affects system actors; and how actors within a social network are clustered into cliques or groups. The chapters in the last section build on solutions to problems proposed in the previous sections. This highly unified approach to research design combined with a representative diversity of viewpoints makes Research Methods in Social Network Analysis a state-of-the-art volume.