Download or read book The Knowledge Corrupters written by Colin Crouch and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-05-27 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In principle the advanced, market-driven world in which we now live is fuelled by knowledge, information and transparency, but in practice the processes that produce this world systematically corrupt and denigrate knowledge: this is the powerful and provocative argument advanced by Colin Crouch in his latest exploration of societies on the road to post-democracy. Crouch shows that executives in profit-maximizing corporations have incentives to ignore or distort knowledge, especially firms in the information business of the mass media themselves, as financial knowledge increasingly trumps the other kinds of knowledge that business needs. Firms also seek to take control of public knowledge and use it for their own ends, often at the cost of other stakeholders in society. Meanwhile the transfer of similar practices to professional public services undermines professional skills and ethics - especially when these services are out-sourced to the private sector. Attempts to extricate ourselves from these problems involve reshaping the complex and often conflicting relationships among citizens, professionals, managers and financiers. This new book by one of the most incisive critics of contemporary Western societies will be of interest to a wide range of readers, from students to policy-makers and those who work in the public and private sectors.

Download or read book The Knowledge Corrupters written by Colin Crouch and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-12-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In principle the advanced, market-driven world in which we now live is fuelled by knowledge, information and transparency, but in practice the processes that produce this world systematically corrupt and denigrate knowledge: this is the powerful and provocative argument advanced by Colin Crouch in his latest exploration of societies on the road to post-democracy. Crouch shows that executives in profit-maximizing corporations have incentives to ignore or distort knowledge, especially firms in the information business of the mass media themselves, as financial knowledge increasingly trumps the other kinds of knowledge that business needs. Firms also seek to take control of public knowledge and use it for their own ends, often at the cost of other stakeholders in society. Meanwhile the transfer of similar practices to professional public services undermines professional skills and ethics - especially when these services are out-sourced to the private sector. Attempts to extricate ourselves from these problems involve reshaping the complex and often conflicting relationships among citizens, professionals, managers and financiers. This new book by one of the most incisive critics of contemporary Western societies will be of interest to a wide range of readers, from students to policy-makers and those who work in the public and private sectors.

Download or read book The Anthropocene and its Future written by Karl Bruckmeier and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Risky Expertise in Chinese Financialisation written by Giulia Dal Maso and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-11-05 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on the subjectivities of stock market investors to explore tensions within the Chinese state’s engagement in contemporary financial capitalism. It adopts a genealogical method to investigate how the production of foreign-trained financial experts (haigui) and informal experts (sanhu) points to paradoxes in China’s efforts to cultivate financial expertise. Chinese financialisation relates to the state’s project of financialising human capital in reaction to a contractualised labour market and the vanishing welfare state. Through ethnographic inquiry, Dal Maso shows the Chinese stock markets are crucial to the new redistributive regime where wage labour risks losing its primacy. Here, one can observe how the relationship between money and wages in China is being reworked and witness the development of a new economic order in which the state’s legitimacy becomes increasingly dependent on its capacity to jiushi–to rescue the market in times of crisis.

Download or read book The Value of Everything written by Mariana Mazzucato and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2018-09-11 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern economies reward activities that extract value rather than create it. This must change to ensure a capitalism that works for us all. Shortlisted for the FT & McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award A scathing indictment of our current global financial system, The Value of Everything rigorously scrutinizes the way in which economic value has been accounted and reveals how economic theory has failed to clearly delineate the difference between value creation and value extraction. Mariana Mazzucato argues that the increasingly blurry distinction between the two categories has allowed certain actors in the economy to portray themselves as value creators, while in reality they are just moving around existing value or, even worse, destroying it. The book uses case studies-from Silicon Valley to the financial sector to big pharma-to show how the foggy notions of value create confusion between rents and profits, reward extractors and creators, and distort the measurements of growth and GDP. In the process, innovation suffers and inequality rises. The lesson here is urgent and sobering: to rescue our economy from the next inevitable crisis and to foster long-term economic growth, we will need to rethink capitalism, rethink the role of public policy and the importance of the public sector, and redefine how we measure value in our society.

Download or read book Reading the Canon written by Philipp Löffler and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2017-03-02 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘Reading the Canon’ explores the relation between the production of literary value and the problem of periodization, tracing how literary tastes, particular reader communities, and sites of literary learning shape the organization of literature in historical perspective. Rather than suggesting a political critique of the canon, this book shows that the production of literary relevance and its tacit hierarchies of value are necessary consequences of how reading and writing are organized as social practices within different fields of literary activity. ‘Reading the Canon’ offers a comprehensive theoretical account of the conundrums still defining contemporary debates about literary value; the book also features a series of historically-inflected author studies—from classics, such as Shakespeare and Thomas Pynchon, to less likely figures, such as John Neal and Owen Johnson—that illustrate how the idea of literary relevance has been appropriated throughout history and across a variety of national and transnational literary institutions.

Download or read book Capital and Ressentiment written by Joseph Vogl and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2022-10-27 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The proliferation of social media has provided ideal conditions in which feelings of anger and frustration can be expressed and shared, forming a deep pool of ressentiment that is being drawn upon and exploited by populist and authoritarian leaders. In his new book, Joseph Vogl shows how this dynamic is rooted in the fusing of finance capital and information in a new form of information capitalism that is reshaping the affective economy of our societies. The capital accumulation strategies of powerful new platforms and social media are pushing people into fragmented, opposing, and conflictual communities where ressentiment is nurtured and grows. The feelings of grievance and rejection generated by capitalism are redirected into attacks on migrants, foreigners, and others, thereby deflecting their critical potential, and bolstering the system that is their source. It is the cunning of ressentiment that provides the key to understanding why, despite the profusion of communication in our social media age, global finance and information capital can be neither understood nor attacked as a totalizing power. This brilliant analysis of the ways in which information capitalism is transforming the affective economy of our societies will be of great interest to anyone concerned with the forces that are shaping our societies today.

Download or read book Local Social Innovation to Combat Poverty and Exclusion written by Stijn Oosterlynck and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2019-11-27 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on more than 30 case studies in eight different countries, this book explores the governance dynamics of local social innovations in the field of poverty reduction. The diverse team of contributors reflects on the trajectory of social innovation in European governance. They illustrate how different governance dynamics and welfare mixes enable or hinder poverty reduction strategies and analyse how such dynamics involve a diversity of actors, instruments and resources at different spatial scales. The contributions are based on research motivated by the standstill in the fight against poverty in Europe and the anxiety that conventional macro-social policies are insufficient to deal with the current challenges.

Download or read book Democratic Professionalism in Public Services written by Jane Lethbridge and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2019-06-05 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democratic professionalism is an approach that enables public service professionals to work more democratically with clients, patients, students and other public service users. This book explores what it means to act in a democratic way and provides practical guidance which will help public service professionals ensure users are at the centre of public services delivery, drawing from examples of different public services around the world. It considers the conflicts and tensions of being an activist and a professional and provides a vision for a future democratic professionalism.

Download or read book The Crisis for Young People written by Andy Green and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-06-28 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book provides an original and challenging analysis of one of the most pressing social issues of our times: intergenerational inequality. Based on recent mixed-method research, it explores the extent and scope of generational divides through an up-to-date analysis of the changing opportunities for young people in Britain across different life domains. A central question addressed is whether current changes are best understood as growing inequalities within and across age groups, or whether we face a genuine intergenerational decline over the life course of this and future generations of youth. Andy Green’s controversial manifesto for intergenerational equity includes replacing higher education fees with a tax on graduates of all ages; the introduction of capital gains tax on sales of first homes; voting at 16, and a new charter of rights for private tenants.

Download or read book Complexity written by Chris Mowles and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-29 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book interprets insights from the complexity sciences to explore seven types of complexity better to understand the predictable unpredictability of social life. Drawing on the natural and social sciences, it describes how complexity models are helpful but insufficient for our understanding of complex reality. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the book develops a complex theory of action more consistent with our experience that our plans inevitably lead to unexpected outcomes, explains why we are both individuals and thoroughly social, and gives an account of why, no matter how clear our message, we may still be misunderstood. The book investigates what forms of knowledge are most helpful for thinking about complex experience, reflects on the way we exercise authority (leadership) and thinks through the ethical implications of trying to co-operate in a complex world. Taking complexity seriously poses a radical challenge to more orthodox theories of managing and leading, based as they are on assumptions of predictability, control and universality. The author argues that management is an improvisational practice which takes place in groups in a particular context at a particular time. Managers can influence but never control an uncontrollable world. To become more skilful in complex group dynamics involves taking into account multiple points of view and acknowledging not knowing, ambivalence and doubt. This book will be of interest to researchers, professionals, academics and students in the fields of business and management, especially those interested in how taking complexity seriously can influence the functioning of businesses and organizations and how they manage and lead.

Download or read book Post Truth Fake News and Democracy written by Johan Farkas and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-12-12 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The new edition of Post-Truth, Fake News and Democracy offers an updated overview and critical discussion of contemporary discourses around truth, misinformation, and democracy, while also mapping cutting-edge scholarship. Through in-depth analyses of news articles, commentaries, academic publications, policy briefs, and political speeches, the book engages with the underlying normative ideas that shape how fake news is being addressed across the globe. Doing so, it provides an innovative, critical contribution to contemporary debates on democracy, post-truth, and politics. Three new chapters: Chapter 2 provides an outline of the scholarly field of research into fake news; Chapter 5 examines how issues of fake news and (mis)information have become intertwined with contemporary crisis events; and Chapter 9 presents democratic alternatives to post-truth solutionism. A new foreword by Professor Sarah Banet-Weiser. Fully updated examples and studies from contemporary events, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States Capitol attack, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Extended discussions on the causes of democratic decline, currently proposed solutions to fake news, and democratic alternatives to our current predicament. Interesting, informative, and well documented, Post-Truth, Fake News and Democracy continues its commitment to understand and engage with the current state and future of democracy.

Download or read book Sociology in the Twenty First Century written by Simon Susen and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-10-17 with total page 623 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines key trends, debates, and challenges in twenty-first-century sociology. To this end, it focuses on significant issues surrounding the nature of sociology (‘What is sociology?’), the history of sociology (‘How has sociology evolved?’), and the study of sociology (‘How can or should we make sense of sociology?’). These issues have been, and will continue to be, essential to the creation of conceptually informed, methodologically rigorous, and empirically substantiated research programmes in the discipline. Over the past years, however, there have been numerous disputes and controversies concerning the future of sociology. Particularly important in this respect are recent and ongoing discussions on the possibilities of developing new – and, arguably, post-classical – forms of sociology. The central assumption underlying most of these projects is the contention that a comprehensive analysis of the principal challenges faced by global society requires the construction of a sociology capable of accounting for the interconnectedness of social actors and social structures across time and space. This book provides a cutting-edge overview of crucial past, present, and possible future trends, debates, and challenges shaping the pursuit of sociological inquiry. ‘Simon Susen – one of the most knowledgeable scholars in the contemporary social sciences – examines the key challenges with which sociology is confronted today. This book is a must-read for professional sociologists as well as for those studying the subject.’ – Luc Boltanski, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France ‘Simon Susen provides a balanced update on sociology’s theoretical, methodological, and institutional resources as well as challenges in today’s complicated local and global social worlds. Fortunately, he has innovative and practical recommendations for ensuring the cutting-edge relevance of sociological thinking. This book is an excellent choice for undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as for the general reader.’ – Sandra Harding, University of California, Los Angeles, USA ‘A comprehensive and judicious account of the intellectual and material state of sociology, based on omnivorous reading and incisive analysis. The writing is beautifully clear, and the book is a major contribution to the self-understanding of the discipline.’ – William Outhwaite, Newcastle University, UK

Download or read book Brexit written by William Outhwaite and published by Anthem Press. This book was released on 2017-02 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Soon after the UK referendum in June 2016, sociologists and other social scientists began to evaluate the implications of the decision both for the UK and, more importantly, for the European Union, Europe and the world. Some of these consequences were immediately evident. The vote revealed cleavages across the UK on a regional and class basis, paralleled, for example, in the support in France for the extreme-right Front National versus the Socialist Party. In the UK, there has been a revival of a kind of class politics, in which working-class voters swing right rather than left. The regional divisions are hard to explain: the most deprived areas of the UK, which have benefited substantially from EU development aid, were often those most hostile to UK membership of the EU. In the rest of Europe, the vote has opened up as a serious prospect what was previously only a pipe-dream of the political fringes: withdrawal from the EU itself. Although one can put this in the context of the Union’s failure to attract the support of enough voters in Norway and Switzerland for membership, the shock effect is incomparably greater. The UK was always a semi-detached member state, with opt-outs from Schengen and the euro, but it still carried substantial weight in the formation of EU policy. Although one of the immediate responses has been a rise in support for the EU across much of Europe, Brexit has massively strengthened the forces of (mostly right-wing) populist insurgent politics, adding withdrawal to the more local themes of migration and ‘islamization’ which play out in different variations across Europe. Brexit aims to trace the implications of the UK’s projected withdrawal from the EU, locating short-term political fluctuations in a broader historical and social context of the transformation of European and global society. It provides a forum for leading Eurosociologists (broadly defined), working inside and outside the UK, to rethink their analyses of the European project and its prospects, as well as to reflect on the likely implications for the UK.

Download or read book Regional Economic Integration and Global Competition in the Post COVID 19 Era European Union Eurasian Economic Union and the Belt and Road Initiative written by Karnaukhova, Oxana and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2022-04-22 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The globalized world has witnessed the development of a number of economic integration projects, including at least two Eurasian projects: the Eurasian Union and the Belt and Road Initiative. These initiatives blur the European Union Global Strategy adjusted in 2016 to be an attempt to reconsider and enhance the role and place of the European Union as the leader in the global arena. These initiatives must be studied and considered further to understand the numerous benefits, opportunities, and challenges they face. Regional Economic Integration and Global Competition in the Post-COVID-19 Era: European Union, Eurasian Economic Union, and the Belt and Road Initiative provides insight into the reasons and consequences of the discrepancy in the legal restrictions, institutional policies, and mutual skepticism on the economic integration progress. The text is also useful in defining and promoting a regional strategy of economic integration and the creation of mutual trust. Covering a range of topics such as international trade, environmental risk management, and globalization, this reference work is ideal for policymakers, government officials, strategic decision makers, practitioners, researchers, scholars, academicians, instructors, and students.

Download or read book The Metric Society written by Steffen Mau and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2019-02-25 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In today’s world, numbers are in the ascendancy. Societies dominated by star ratings, scores, likes and lists are rapidly emerging, as data are collected on virtually every aspect of our lives. From annual university rankings, ratings agencies and fitness tracking technologies to our credit score and health status, everything and everybody is measured and evaluated. In this important new book, Steffen Mau offers a critical analysis of this increasingly pervasive phenomenon. While the original intention behind the drive to quantify may have been to build trust and transparency, Mau shows how metrics have in fact become a form of social conditioning. The ubiquitous language of ranking and scoring has changed profoundly our perception of value and status. What is more, through quantification, our capacity for competition and comparison has expanded significantly – we can now measure ourselves against others in practically every area. The rise of quantification has created and strengthened social hierarchies, transforming qualitative differences into quantitative inequalities that play a decisive role in shaping the life chances of individuals. This timely analysis of the pernicious impact of quantification will appeal to students and scholars across the social sciences, as well as anyone concerned by the cult of numbers and its impact on our lives and societies today.

Download or read book The SAGE Handbook of Political Sociology 2v written by William Outhwaite and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2017-10-30 with total page 1855 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The SAGE Handbook of Political Sociology offers a comprehensive and contemporary look at this evolving field of study. The focus is on political life itself and the chapters, written by a highly-respected and international team of authors, cover the core themes which need to be understood in order to study political life from a sociological perspective, or simply to understand the political world. The two volumes are structured around five key areas: PART 1: TRADITIONS AND PERSPECTIVES PART 2: CORE CONCEPTS PART 03: POLITICAL IDEOLOGIES AND MOVEMENTS PART 04: TOPICS PART 05: WORLD REGIONS This future-oriented and cross-disciplinary handbook is a landmark text for students and scholars interested in the social investigation of politics.