Sociology
Group Cognition: Computer Support for Building Collaborative Knowledge
Innovative uses of global and local networks of linked computers make new ways of collaborative working, learning, and acting possible. In Group Cognition Gerry Stahl explores the technological and social reconfigurations that are needed to achieve computer-supported collaborative knowledge building—group cognition that transcends the limits of individual cognition. Computers can provide active media for... »
Policing Organized Crime
When criminal activity is as straightforward as a child’s game of cops and robbers, the role of the police is obvious, but today’s bad guys don’t always wear black. In fact, the most difficult criminals to cope with are those who straddle the gray divide between licit and illicit activity. Many of these nefarious... »
e-Transformation: Enabling New Development Strategies
Could information and communication technology (ICT) become the transformative tool for a new style of global development? Could ICT promote knowledge-based, innovation-driven, and smart, adaptive, participatory development? As countries seek a way out of the present period of economic contraction, they are trying to weave ICT into their development strategies, in the same way... »
Nonviolence and Peace Psychology
Recent trends and events worldwide have increased public interest in nonviolence, pacifism, and peace psychology as well as professional interest across the social sciences. Nonviolence and Peace Psychology assembles multiple perspectives to create a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the concepts and phenomena of nonviolence than is usually seen on the subject. Through... »
Complexity and Spatial Networks
This book offers a panoramic view of recent advances in spatial complexity, in order to enhance our understanding of complex spatial networks by simplicity in terms of both the basic driving forces of systemic impacts and the modelling of such systems. Simple models mapping out the evolution of complex networks are undoubtedly a key... »
The Number Sense: How the Mind Creates Mathematics
Our understanding of how the human brain performs mathematicalcalculations is far from complete. But in recent years there have been manyexciting scientific discoveries, some aided by new imaging techniques–whichallow us for the first time to watch the living mind at work–and others byingenious experiments conducted by researchers all over the world. There arestill perplexing... »
Acting in an Uncertain World
Controversies over such issues as nuclear waste, genetically modified organisms, asbestos, tobacco, gene therapy, avian flu, and cell phone towers arise almost daily as rapid scientific and technological advances create uncertainty and bring about unforeseen concerns. The authors of Acting in an Uncertain World argue that political institutions must be expanded and improved to... »
Climate Change and Armed Conflict
This book examines the evolution of the relationship between climate change and conflict, and attempts to visualize future trends. Owing to the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, current trends in climate change will not appreciably alter over the next half century even if drastic action is taken now. Changes in climate will produce... »
The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature
Referring to Lewis Carroll’s Red Queen from Through the Looking-Glass, a character who has to keep running to stay in the same place, Matt Ridley demonstrates why sex is humanity’s best strategy for outwitting its constantly mutating internal predators. The Red Queen answers dozens of other riddles of human nature and culture — including why men propose... »
Aristotle and the Science of Nature
Andrea Falcon’s work is guided by the exegetical ideal of recreating the mind of Aristotle and his distinctive conception of the theoretical enterprise. In this concise exploration of the significance of the celestial world for Aristotle’s science of nature, Falcon investigates the source of discontinuity between celestial and sublunary natures and argues that the... »