Libros

This collection focuses on the interrelation of architecture and society. It examines the extent to which the insights of science and technology studies can be used to analyse the role of architecture in and for social life. The book's case studies deal with various aspects of social life: ethics, neighbourhood life, aging, perceptions and interpretations of the built environment, participation in design processes, interaction with and the adaptation of architecture.

Architecture, Materiality and Society examines the question of whether architecture – and thus materiality as a whole – has agency. The book concludes with a thorough analysis of studies carried out so far on the interdependence of architecture and society, both from the field of science and technology studies and urban studies. Finally, it proposes a theoretical and methodological approach on how to research architecture's agency within society.

Social media has accelerated communication, expanded business horizons and connected millions of individuals who otherwise would never have met. But not everything social media touches turns to gold–much of it is brass. Social networking sites are used by scammers, criminals and sexual predators, and many people now self-diagnose illness based on misinformation shared online. Businesses make great claims about social media as a marketing tool but few show any real returns. We communicate through social media but are we really saying anything? Is social media doomed to be a conduit of narcissism or can it become a channel for responsible communication? Can social networking overcome its manifold violations of privacy? Must we sacrifice our identities in order to tweet or ""friend"" our associates? This book examines some of the legal and ethical issues surrounding social media, its impact on civil discourse and its role in suicides, murders and criminal enterprise.

Trouble is afoot in Digital Culture and Nerdland. These are, Alexander I. Stingl claims, not the engine of freedom and democracy that they once were hailed to be – this much is already clear in the wake of the snooping and surveillance crises that broke in recent years. Digitalization is but another version of the coloniality of power and being that has been at work for decades and centuries. He poses the question, whether Digital Age possess the legitimacy that 'digitalization' has claimed. His response is critically realistic, but he doesn't stop at a critique for criticism's sake. Inspired by the ideas of decolonial scholars, feminist science studies, current biological and neuro-cognitive research, and sociologists capable of reflection and self-criticism, Stingl attempts to 'break' the canvas of sociology and show that adding a third, decolonial dimension to the two-dimensional sociological imagination is indeed possible. He illustrates that it is possible that class-rooms, free speech on internet, and the inequalities in the production and distribution of a new form of social capital – digital cultural health care capital – can be subjected to a decolonial perspective along a sociological line of inquiry, if sociologists allow for relations with other disciplines and scholarship to be integrative conversations. The goal of this book is not to offer results or closed arguments but to create, instead, platforms for thinking further, opening new lines of inquiry, and to argue that it is not enough to identify problems or to attempt solve the problems with politics or best practice solutions. Instead, he proposes, we must learn to identify and make use of the opportunities that are produced by any problem. Stingl's conclusion is, in short, that a sociology that takes the decolonial challenge and critique seriously, can not be a sociological (sub)discipline or a sociology of (a) problem, but it must be a sociology of opportunities.