Unpredictability and Presence


Book Description

This book applies a legal anthropological framework to high medieval Norwegian history. It formulates the question of state formation in a new and challenging way by showing how the king a substantial degree based his dominion on unpredictability and presence.




The Unpredictability of Gameplay


Book Description

The Unpredictability of Gameplay explores the many forms of unpredictability in games and proposes a comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding and categorizing non-deterministic game mechanics. Rather than viewing all game mechanics with unpredictable outcomes as a single concept, Mark R. Johnson develops a three-part typology for such mechanics, distinguishing between randomness, chance, and luck in gameplay, assessing games that range from grand strategy and MMORPGs to slot machines and card games. He also explores forms of unanticipated unpredictability, where elements of games fail to function as intended and create new forms of gameplay in the process. Covering a range of game concepts using these frameworks, The Unpredictability of Gameplay then explores three illustrative case studies: 1) procedural generation, 2) replay value and grinding, and 3) player-made practices designed to reduce the level of luck in non-deterministic games. Throughout, Johnson demonstrates the importance of looking more deeply at unpredictability in games and game design and the various ways in which unpredictability manifests while offering an invaluable tool for game scholars and game designers seeking to integrate unpredictability into their work.




Research Methodology in Strategy and Management


Book Description

Offers twelve chapters of discussion surrounding various tools and methods utilized by scholars and academics. This title covers a range of approaches for strategists, managers, and researchers.




Uncertain Futures


Book Description

Uncertain Futures considers how economic actors visualize the future and decide how to act in conditions of radical uncertainty. It starts from the premise that dynamic capitalist economies are characterized by relentless innovation and novelty and hence exhibit an indeterminacy that cannot be reduced to measurable risk. The organizing question then becomes how economic actors form expectations and make decisions despite the uncertainty they face. This edited volume lays the foundations for a new model of economic reasoning by showing how, in conditions of uncertainty, economic actors combine calculation with imaginaries and narratives to form fictional expectations that coordinate action and provide the confidence to act. It draws on groundbreaking research in economic sociology, economics, anthropology, and psychology to present theoretically grounded empirical case studies. These demonstrate how grand narratives, central bank forward guidance, economic forecasts, finance models, business plans, visions of technological futures, and new era stories influence behaviour and become instruments of power in markets and societies. The market impact of shared calculative devices, social narratives, and contingent imaginaries underlines the rationale for a new form of narrative economics.




Economic Geography


Book Description

A revised and updated edition of the leading introductory text on the geography of economic life, from the local to the global Economic Geography is an engaging and accessible introduction to the different ways modern economic geographers understand, analyze, and interpret economic processes. This comprehensive text addresses significant questions relevant to contemporary economic life, from the activities of transnational corporations to issues surrounding workplaces and consumption. It encourages readers to explore how spatial patterns, places, networks, and territories shape large-scale economic processes. Accessible, highly-illustrated material presents fresh insights from the field—complemented by relatable, real-world examples that help students understand the social, cultural, and political contexts underpinning global economic processes. Now in its third edition, this extensively revised and updated textbook retains the features and thematic structure that have proved popular with students and instructors alike, while adding exciting new content. New chapters explore how the global economy and global development are institutionalized and governed, the economic geographies of global climate change, economic practices outside the capitalist mainstream, the role of migrants in labour markets, global production networks, and more. Introduces economic geography with a thematic approach including major concepts, current debates, and case studies Revised and updated to enhance international coverage, including three entirely new chapters on international development, alternative economies, and global climate change Substantial new content on labour migration, global production networks, and recent intellectual trends such as evolutionary economic geography Highly illustrated with diagrams and photographs closely integrated into the text Pedagogical aids including key case studies, learning objectives, text boxes, chapter essay questions, summaries, and further reading Core geographical concepts – such as place, networks and territory – are closely integrated into all chapters. Economic Geography: A Contemporary Introduction is an invaluable source of up-to-date knowledge for students new to the field, for those requiring a solid foundation, as well as for a broader academic and public readership with interest in this area of study.




Sign, Method and the Sacred


Book Description

To what extent can semiotics illuminate key problems in religious studies, given the centrality of symbols, language, and other modes of signification in religion and theology? The volume explores semiotic methodologies for the study of religion, with an emphasis on their critical and creative reconfigurations. The contributors come from different specialties, such as cognitive science, ethnography, linguistics, communication studies, art studies, religious studies, philosophy of religion, and theology. Part One consists of chapters focusing on theoretical perspectives. Part two focuses on applications in texts and case studies while still considering methodological issues. Many specific traditions and perspectives are taken up, such as C. S. Peirce, A. J. Greimas and the Paris School, Juri Lotman’s semiotics of culture, Bruno Latour and material semiotics, linguistic anthropology, social semiotics, cognitive semiotics, embodied and enactive perspectives on language and mind, semiotics of the image and iconicity, multimodality, intertextuality, and semiotics of colors. The book provides readers with a succinct overview of how contemporary semiotics can be useful in understanding a broad array of topics in the study of religion.




Learning and Memory


Book Description

This volume presents the views and findings of behaviorally and biologically oriented investigators invited to participate in The University of Iowa's biennial learning and memory symposium. While chapters vary in their scope and depth of coverage, they are all amply referenced so that researchers, teachers, and students can obtain background information appropriate to their respective needs.




Managing in Uncertainty: Theory and Practice


Book Description

This book provides a new point of view on the subject of the management of uncertainty. It covers a wide variety of both theoretical and practical issues involving the analysis and management of uncertainty in the fields of finance, management and marketing. Audience: Researchers and professionals from operations research, management science and economics.




Crisis and Emergency Management in the Arctic


Book Description

This book sheds light on the management challenges of crisis and emergency response in an arctic environment. It explores how the complexity of the operational environment impacts on the risk of operations and addresses a need for tailor-made emergency response mechanisms. Through case studies of the arctic environment, the book illustrates how factors such as nature, geography, demographics and infrastructure increase the complexity of crises in the Arctic and present a significant danger to life and health, the environment and values in challenging Arctic waters. The case studies lay a special focus on contextual factors including conflicting interests and different stakeholder groups, as well as the institutional platforms influencing crisis response and emergency management. They also explore the implications for the managerial roles, the mode of operations, and the structuring of the organizations responsible for the emergency response. The necessity to facilitate cooperation across organizations and borders and a need for organizational flexibility in large scale operations are also emphasized. Written in an accessible style, this book will make for a useful resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students of disaster and emergency management, as well as for professionals involved in emergency services.




On Presence


Book Description

The Reverend Ralph Harper, a philosopher and theologian, has been credited with introducing existentialism to North America in 1948 with his work Existentialism: A Theory of Man. Forty years later, Harper delved deeper into the interior life of the human imagination in On Presence: Variations and Reflections. Winner of the 1992 Grawemeyer Award in Religion, On Presence is an insightful articulation of mankind's experience of presence. Drawing from philosophers like Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Marcel, theologians like Augustine, Aquinas, and Tillich, mystics like Meister Eckhart and John of the Cross, and novelists like Dostoevsky and Proust, this compelling work considers the transcendent and religious dimensions of the ordinary mysteries in everyday life.