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Author: Graeme Snooks
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2002-09-11
Total Pages: 548
ISBN-13: 1134775709
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book discusses the nature and process of change in human society over the past two million years. The author draws on economic, historical and biological concepts to examine the driving forces of change and looks to likely developments in the future. This analysis produces some very thought-provoking and controversial conclusions.
Author: Harry F. Dahms
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
Published: 2012-10-29
Total Pages: 313
ISBN-13: 1781900345
DOWNLOAD EBOOKEmphasis is placed in Continental European social theory, and on the importance of political analyses to theorizing modern societies. This title focuses on dynamic processes that gave way to illuminate structural features of modern social life.
Author: Graeme Snooks
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2002-09-11
Total Pages: 510
ISBN-13: 1134775717
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book discusses the nature and process of change in human society over the past two million years. The author draws on economic, historical and biological concepts to examine the driving forces of change and looks to likely developments in the future. This analysis produces some very thought-provoking and controversial conclusions.
Author: Asish Ghosh
Publisher: Springer
Published: 2015-04-06
Total Pages: 252
ISBN-13: 3319107356
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book is a study of the interactions between different types of systems, their environment, and their subsystems. The author explains how basic systems principles are applied in engineered (mechanical, electromechanical, etc.) systems and then guides the reader to understand how the same principles can be applied to social, political, economic systems, as well as in everyday life. Readers from a variety of disciplines will benefit from the understanding of system behaviors and will be able to apply those principles in various contexts. The book includes many examples covering various types of systems. The treatment of the subject is non-mathematical, and the book considers some of the latest concepts in the systems discipline, such as agent-based systems, optimization, and discrete events and procedures.
Author: J. A. Scott Kelso
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 1995
Total Pages: 368
ISBN-13: 9780262611312
DOWNLOAD EBOOKforeword by Hermann Haken For the past twenty years Scott Kelso's research has focused on extending the physical concepts of self- organization and the mathematical tools of nonlinear dynamics to understand how human beings (and human brains) perceive, intend, learn, control, and coordinate complex behaviors. In this book Kelso proposes a new, general framework within which to connect brain, mind, and behavior.Kelso's prescription for mental life breaks dramatically with the classical computational approach that is still the operative framework for many newer psychological and neurophysiological studies. His core thesis is that the creation and evolution of patterned behavior at all levels--from neurons to mind--is governed by the generic processes of self-organization. Both human brain and behavior are shown to exhibit features of pattern-forming dynamical systems, including multistability, abrupt phase transitions, crises, and intermittency. Dynamic Patterns brings together different aspects of this approach to the study of human behavior, using simple experimental examples and illustrations to convey essential concepts, strategies, and methods, with a minimum of mathematics. Kelso begins with a general account of dynamic pattern formation. He then takes up behavior, focusing initially on identifying pattern-forming instabilities in human sensorimotor coordination. Moving back and forth between theory and experiment, he establishes the notion that the same pattern-forming mechanisms apply regardless of the component parts involved (parts of the body, parts of the nervous system, parts of society) and the medium through which the parts are coupled. Finally, employing the latest techniques to observe spatiotemporal patterns of brain activity, Kelso shows that the human brain is fundamentally a pattern forming dynamical system, poised on the brink of instability. Self-organization thus underlies the cooperative action of neurons that produces human behavior in all its forms.
Author: Judith A. Howard
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2006-11-02
Total Pages: 352
ISBN-13: 9780521030151
DOWNLOAD EBOOKSociologists generally study macrolevel institutions and social processes with little reference to the individual. Psychologists, on the other hand, tend to study individual-level processes with little reference to society. This volume, featuring contributions from influential scholars in US social psychology, brings the link between the individual and society into focus. The chapters in the volume are distinguished by their concentration on either cognitive, affective or behavioural processes. These analyses eschew the traditional psychological approach to individual-level processes and instead offer intriguing accounts of how thought, emotion and action are embedded in social context and are central to the dynamic between self and society. Together, the 14 chapters present a synthesis of theory and research that are a major force in stimulating and influencing investigations of the link between the individual and the larger society.
Author: Nigel Clark
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Published: 2011
Total Pages: 273
ISBN-13: 0761957243
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe relationship between social thought and earth processes is in its infancy. This book offers to make good the defect by exploring how human induced changes impact upon planetary processes.
Author: Elizabeth Shove
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-09-17
Total Pages: 328
ISBN-13: 1351106155
DOWNLOAD EBOOKInfrastructures in Practice shows how infrastructures and daily life shape each other. Power grids, roads and broadband make modern lifestyles possible – at the same time, their design and day-to-day operation depends on what people do at home and at work. This volume investigates the entanglement of supply and demand. It explains how standards and 'normal' ways of living have changed over time and how infrastructures have changed with them. Studies of grid expansion and disruption, heating systems, the internet, urban planning and office standards, smart meters and demand management reveal this dynamic interdependence. This is the first book to examine the interdependence between infrastructures and the practices of daily life. It offers an analysis of how new technologies, lifestyles and standards become normalised and fall out of use. It brings together diverse disciplines – history, sociology, science studies – to develop social theories and accounts of how infrastructures and practices constitute each other at different scales and over time. It shows how networks and demands are steered and shaped, and how social and political visions are woven into infrastructures, past, present and future. Original, wide-ranging and theoretically informed, this book puts the many practices of daily life back into the study of infrastructures. The result is a fresh understanding of how resource-intensive forms of consumption and energy demand have come about and what is needed to move towards a more sustainable lower carbon future.
