This fourth edition has been wholly rewritten and restructured. While retaining its wealth of information about the founding figures of sociology it also includes much new material on contemporary social theory and particularly the challenge to sociology posed by the rise of post-structuralism with its questioning of the whole enlightenment project. New features include: * a concise introduction to the major debates of the twentieth century * information on thinkers of the nineteenth and early twentieth century whose relevance to modern social thought is only now being recognised, e.g. Nietszche, Saussure, Simmel * key debates placed in historical and philosophical context * connections drawn between post-structuralist thinkers like Foucault and Derrida and the founding figures of sociology: Marx, Weber and Durkheim * easy to read format * four wholly new chapters tracing developments in social theory from structuralism to postmodernism.
This book has two purposes. First, to introduce the study of work and the workplace as a method for informing the design of computer systems to be used at work. We primarily focus on the predominant way in which the organization of work has been approached within the field of human-computer interaction (HCI), which is from the perspective of ethnomethodology. We locate studies of work in HCI within its intellectual antecedents, and describe paradigmatic examples and case studies. Second, we hope to provide those who are intending to conduct the type of fieldwork that studies of work and the workplace draw off with suggestions as to how they can go about their own work of developing observations about the settings they encounter. These suggestions take the form of a set of maxims that we have found useful while conducting the studies we have been involved in. We draw from our own fieldwork notes in order to illustrate these maxims. In addition we also offer some homilies about how to make observations; again, these are ones we have found useful in our own work. Table of Contents: Motivation / Overview: A Paradigmatic Case / Scientific Foundations / Detailed Description / Case Study / How to Conduct Ethnomethodological Studies of Work / Making Observations / Current Status
We make decisions every day. Yet we are sometimes perplexed by these decisions and the decisions of others. To complicate things further, we live in an age where there are more things to choose from than ever before the Internet is transforming our choices and making us more accountable for them: what we choose is recorded, modelled and used to predict our future behaviour. So are we in a position to make better choices today than we were a decade ago? Certainly there are some who believe so. Psychologists claim we are subject to hidden mental processes that lead us to one thing rather than another; economists offer predictions about what people will buy; and some philosophers claim that our choices echo our evolutionary past. Are these claims merited? Do they reflect the beginnings of a new science of choice? This book offers a critical overview of these and other claims, showing where they are justified and where they are exaggerated. It will be an essential reference for anyone interested in whether science can help us to understand both the ways people make choices in their everyday lives and how these may be changing.
Praise for the First Edition: `Totally reliable... the authors have produced a book urgently needed by all those charged with introducing students to the classics... quite indispensable′ - Times Higher Education Supplement This is a fully updated and expanded new edition of the successful undergraduate text. Providing a lucid examination of the pivotal theories of Marx, Durkheim and Weber, the authors submit that these figures have decisively shaped the discipline. They show how the classical apparatus is in use, even though it is being directed in new ways in response to the changing character of society. Written with the needs of undergraduates in mind, the text is essential reading for students in sociology and social theory.
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