This work considers the question of how the direct involvement of social scientists in the practices they study can lead to the production of interesting sociological knowledge. It draws together two activities that are often seen as belonging to different realms: intervening in practices and furthering sociological understanding of them.OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.
A longtime community organizer outlines a way to reverse the fifty-year decline in social mobility and economic progress. Michael Gecan, a longtime community organizer, offers in this book a disturbing conclusion: the kinds of problems that began to afflict large cities in the 1970s have now spread to the suburbs and beyond. The institutional cornerstones of American life are on an extended …
In this work, Matthias Gross examines the relationship between ignorance and surprise, proposing a conceptual framework for handling the unexpected and offering case studies of ecological design that demonstrate the advantages of allowing for surprises and including ignorance in the design and negotiation processes.OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.
How plant and animal species conservation became part of urban planning in Berlin, and how the science of ecology contributed to this change.Although nature conservation has traditionally focused on the countryside, issues of biodiversity protection also appear on the political agendas of many cities. One of the emblematic examples of this now worldwide trend has been the German city of Berlin,…
Today at least twenty-five major U.S. cities have pursued some form of sustainability initiative. Although many case studies and "how-to" manuals have been published, there has been little systematic comparison of these cities' programs and initiatives. In this book Kent Portney lays the theoretical groundwork for research on what works and what does not, and why. Distinguishing cities on the b…
"The book focuses on a strategic choice by the North American wing of the global climate movement: to ally themselves with place-based interests, including Indigenous groups, to block new coal plants, coal port expansion, fracking, and more recently, oil sands pipelines. The strategy by climate activists to target fossil fuel infrastructure has been effective at movement building and driving po…
Does the information on the Web offer many alternative accounts of reality, or does it subtly align with an official version? In Information Politics on the Web, Richard Rogers identifies the cultures, techniques, and devices that rank and recommend information on the Web, analyzing not only the political content of Web sites but the politics built into the Web's infrastructure. Addressing the …
An interdisciplinary account of the environmental history and changing landscape of New York City.In this innovative account of the urbanization of nature in New York City, Matthew Gandy explores how the raw materials of nature have been reworked to produce a "metropolitan nature" distinct from the forms of nature experienced by early settlers. The book traces five broad developments: the expan…
In Artificial Experts, Collins explains what computers can't do, but he also studies the ordinary and extraordinary things that they can do. He argues that the machines we create are limited because we cannot reproduce in symbols what every community knows, yet we give our machines abilities by the way we embed them in our society. He unfolds a compelling account of the difference between human…
Water lies at the intersection of landscape and infrastructure, crossing between visible and invisible domains of urban space, in the tanks and buckets of the global South and the vast subterranean technological networks of the global North. In this book, Matthew Gandy considers the cultural and material significance of water through the experiences of six cities: Paris, Berlin, Lagos, Mumbai, …