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'This work is a magisterial introduction to the sociology of science. With science being imbricated in the very tissue of our political lives – with climate change, energy policy, biodiversity conservation and so forth – it is increasingly important that the rich lessons of the field of science studies be brought to a wider readership. This book achieves that goal with great style: it is both highly accessible and rigorously researched.' – Geoffrey C. Bowker, Santa Clara University, US More than ever before, science and technology play a significant role in modern society as evidenced by the development of nanotechnologies and the controversies surrounding GMOs and climate change. This...
Different theories, models and narratives of innovation compete for both legitimacy and authority. However, despite the variations, they all offer a consistent pro-innovation bias, dismissing resistance as irrational, and overlooking the value of non-users and collateral impacts. This book looks at innovation from a different perspective and asks, what has been left out? It offers a reflexive view and invites researchers to consider new avenues of research, through a critique of current representations of innovation.
A guide to the everyday working world of engineers, written by researchers trained in both engineering and sociology.
This stimulating book proposes the concept of staging as a tool for planning and facilitating design and innovation activities. Drawing on a predominantly Scandinavian tradition of participatory design research and sociotechnical perspectives from actor–network theory, it discusses how staging can enable co-design, sustainable transitions and social and radical innovation.
This insightful Handbook scrutinizes alternative concepts and approaches to the dominant economic or industrial theories of innovation. Providing an assessment of these alternatives, it questions the absence of these neglected types of innovation and suggests diverse theories.
This timely book takes an insightful look at rethinking innovation and how lessons can be learnt from what is a major turning point in our contemporary societies: the urgent need to reduce the use or consumption of certain substances and technologies due to the dangers they pose to our environments and current way of life. Using theoretical reflection and empirical work in a broad range of sectors including agriculture, food, health, religion, energy, packaging, markets and digital technology, eminent scholars utilise new perspectives to enrich our understanding of innovation processes and how these can be transformed.
The chapters in this book consist of selected papers that were presented at the 2nd International Conference and Poster Exhibition on Semiotics and Visual Communication at the Cyprus University of Technology in October 2015. They investigate the theme of the Conference, Culture of Seduction [the seduction of culture] and look at Seduction as in “deception”, not sexual enticement, but as a mechanism of attraction and appeal which has often been the case in many communication strategies and approaches used by mass and popular culture. Seduction has historic and increasing agency in visual communication—the urgency to entice viewers is ever more powerful in difficult economic times, in an increasingly hyper-real world – and designers are led to become exceedingly complicit in its strategies. The contributions here cover a range of approaches from theoretical aspects of seduction in verbal and nonverbal communication, public spaces, design and meaning, seductive strategies, and advertising design, as well as fashion representations and packaging design.
This volume aims to provide the reader with a broad cross-section of empirical research being carried out into engineers at work. The chapters provide pointers to other relevant studies over recent decades – an important aspect, we believe, because this area has only recently begun to coalesce as a field of study and up to now relevant empirical research has tended to be published across a range of academic disciplines. This lack of readily available literature might explain why contemporary notions of engineering have drifted far from the realities of practice and are in urgent need of revision. The principal focus is on what empirical studies tell us about the social and technical aspect...
The chapters presented in this book draw on ethnography as a methodology in a variety of disciplines, including education, management, design, marketing, ecology and scientific contexts, illustrating the value of a qualitative approach to research design. The chapters discuss the use of traditional ethnographic methods, such as immersion, observation and interview, as well as innovative ethnographical methods which have been influenced by the new digital culture. The latter challenges notions of identity, field and traditional culture such that people are able to represent themselves in the research process rather than be represented. New approaches to ethnography also examine the use and implication of images in representation as well as critically examining the role and impact of the researcher in the process.
Today, as in the past, public demonstrations are not only tools to prove, persuade, and promote, but also fundamental forms of social interaction and exchange. YouTube demos of makeup products by famous influencers, demonstrations of strength during street protests, demonstrations of military might in North Korea: public demonstrations are omnipresent in social life. Yet they are often perceived as isolated events, unworthy of systematic examination. In The Demonstration Society, Claude Rosental explores the underlying dynamics of what he calls a “demonstration society.” He shows how, both in today’s world and historically, public demonstrations constitute not only tools to prove, pers...