Jane Jacobs: Dark Age Ahead (2004)
Filed under book | Tags: · community, culture, economy, education, politics, science, sociology, technology
In this indispensable book, urban visionary Jane Jacobs–renowned author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities and The Economy of Cities–convincingly argues that as agrarianism gives way to a technology-based future, we stand on the brink of a new dark age, a period of cultural collapse. Jacobs pinpoints five pillars of our culture that are in serious decay: community and family; higher education; the effective practice of science; taxation, and government; and the self-regulation of the learned professions. The corrosion of these pillars, Jacobs argues, is linked to societal ills such as environmental crisis, racism, and the growing gulf between rich and poor.
But this is a hopeful book as well as a warning. Drawing on her vast frame of reference–from fifteenth-century Chinese shipbuilding to Ireland’s cultural rebirth–Jacobs suggests how the cycles of decay can be arrested and our way of life renewed. Invigorating and accessible, Dark Age Ahead is not only the crowning achievement of Jane Jacobs’ career, but one of the most important works of our time.
Publisher Random House, 2004
ISBN 1400062322, 9781400062324
Length 241 pages
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Walter W Powell – Neither Market Nor Hierarchy: Network Forms of Organization (1990)
Filed under paper | Tags: · economics, networks, organization, sociology
Seminal paper examining networks as a governance mechanism, which won the American Sociological Association’s Max Weber Prize.
in: Barry M. Staw and L. L. Cummings (eds.): Research in Organizational Behavior Vol. 12. Pp. 295-336 (1990).
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Comment (0)Nigel Thrift: Non-Representational Theory: Space, Politics, Affect (2007)
Filed under book | Tags: · affect, anthropology, cultural studies, everyday, geography, life, non-representational theory, politics, social theory, sociology, space
“This book presents a distinctive approach to the politics of everyday life. Ranging across a variety of spaces in which politics and the political unfold, it questions what is meant by perception, representation and practice, with the aim of valuing the fugitive practices that exist on the margins of the known. It revolves around three key functions.
It introduces the rather dispersed discussion of non-representational theory to a wider audience; provides the basis for an experimental rather than a representational approach to the social sciences and humanities; and begins the task of constructing a different kind of political genre.”
Publisher Routledge, 2007
International library of sociology
ISBN 0415393213, 9780415393218
325 pages