Vicente Berdayes - Böcker

As computers become more prevalent throughout society, the issue of computer-human interaction has become paramount to computer scientists and professionals furthering the computerization of organizations. Computers, Human Interaction, and Organizations revisits important theoretical and conceptual issues that have not been resolved in discussions of the increasing computerization of society. The authors here move beyond the technical issues relating to computerization to examine the social and political nature of information and computer technology using contemporary critical theory. This unique volume, therefore, offers a serious reflection on the proper scope and nature of computerization and the proper adjustment to and utilization of these instruments.According to the authors, without the guiding use of theory, computer use will be misguided and socially disruptive. Without a critical analysis of the issues involved in computer-human interaction, the current push to have computers support intimate interaction among workers and other groups may never come to fruition. By contrast, recognizing the computer as an expression of the technological worldview allows one to recognize the limits as well as the promise of these instruments and to define the proper scope of computerization. The authors of this volume help the reader understand the social nature of computer technology and the limits of its application while circumscribing socially responsible uses of the new technology.

The human body has recently emerged as a central concept of social theory. Social scientists, philosophers, and scholars in other disciplines now routinely argue that abstract concepts such as class and gender should be understood by examining how they are expressed in the body's everyday practices. Such an approach has humanized social theory by emphasizing the role that concretely situated human beings play in acting out or redefining social norms. How will this emphasis on human embodiment transform methods of social inquiry? The volume takes up this question by examining how the recognition of human embodiment entails reworking standard models of social research. Individual chapters focus on such topics as communication theory, ethics, policy science, globalization and cultural changes, gerontology, and pedagogical practice.

The human body has recently emerged as a central concept of social theory. Social scientists, philosophers, and scholars in other disciplines now routinely argue that abstract concepts such as class and gender should be understood by examining how they are expressed in the body's everyday practices. Such an approach has humanized social theory by emphasizing the role that concretely situated human beings play in acting out or redefining social norms. How will this emphasis on human embodiment transform methods of social inquiry? The volume takes up this question by examining how the recognition of human embodiment entails reworking standard models of social research. Individual chapters focus on such topics as communication theory, ethics, policy science, globalization and cultural changes, gerontology, and pedagogical practice.

This compelling volume analyzes the wide-scale societal impact of neoliberal economic policy on contemporary life and behavior. Synthesizing perspectives from politics and economics with insights from psychology and linguistics, it argues that market-driven public institutions promote antisocial thinking, discourage critical reflection, and inure individuals to inequity and cruelty. Chapters cite the ubiquity of violence in modern society, from the marketing of the military to impersonal mass upheavals in the job market, as devaluing human worth and thus self-worth. But the editors also assert that these currents are not terminal, and the book concludes by identifying conditions potentially leading to a more civil and egalitarian future.  Included in the coverage:   The language of current economics: social theory, the market, and the disappearance of relationships.Neoliberalism and education: the disfiguration of students.Slicing up societies: commercial media and the destruction of social environments.Neoliberalism and the transformation of work.Economics, the network society, and the ontology of violence.A new economic order without violence. Given the centrality of economic events on the global stage, Neoliberalism, Economic Radicalism, and the Normalization of Violence stands out as botha springboard for discussion and a call to action, to be read by political and cultural economists, political scientists, and sociologists.