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Bringing together contributors from Europe, North America and Australia, this book questions the purpose and outcomes of speculation in practical settings.
In the context of interrelated and complex global challenges, speculation is not just useful but necessary. The chapters in this book present a cross-disciplinary dialogue of people that are developing work in speculation and interrogates its practices and ethical and political charges. Through these discussions, the book explores the potential of speculation in addressing issues such as climate change, urban futures and new political practices.
The concept of smart cities holds environmental promises: that digital technologies will reduce carbon emissions, air pollution and waste, and help address climate change.
Drawing on academic scholarship and two case studies from Manchester and Helsinki, this timely and accessible book examines what happens when these promises are broken, as they prioritise technological innovation rather than environmental care. The book reveals that smart cities’ vision of sustainable digital future obfuscates the environmental harms and social injustices that digitisation inflicts. The framework of “broken promises”, coined by the authors, centres environmental questions in analysing imaginaries and practices of smart cities.
This is a must read for anyone interested in the connections between digital technologies and environment justice.
This innovative interdisciplinary collection confronts the worldwide challenge of women's under-representation in science through an interrogation of the field of physics and its gender imbalance.
Leading physicists and sociologists from across Europe collaborate to adopt a comparative approach. They draw on theoretical perspectives and empirical evidence to explore the reasons behind low participation levels, from entering the field to sustaining a career, emphasising the importance of social perspectives over biological explanations.
Evaluating policy solutions implemented in various European contexts, this book offers key insights into the world of women physicists and sheds light on their life stories.
Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
This book presents emerging themes and future directions in the interdisciplinary field of critical data studies, loosely themed around the notion of shifting response-abilities in a datafied world.
In each chapter an interdisciplinary group of scholars discuss a specific theme, ranging from questions around data power and the configuring of data subjects to the intersection of technology and the environment.
The book is an invaluable dialogue between disciplines that introduces readers to cutting edge arguments within the field. It will be a key resource for scholars and students who require a guide to this rapidly evolving area of research.
Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence
Transhumanism is a philosophy which advocates for the use of technology to radically enhance human capacities.
This book interrogates the promises of transhumanism, arguing that it is deeply entwined with capitalist ideology. In an era of escalating crisis and soaring inequality, it casts doubt on a utopian techno-capitalist narrative of unending progress. In critiquing the transhumanist project, the book offers an alternative ethical framework for the future of life on the planet.
As the debates around the advancement of AI and corporate-led digital technologies intensify, this is an important read for academics as well as policy makers.
Available Open Access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
This book delves into the complex and controversial realm of fertility care. It analyses the clash between evidence-based medicine and market dynamics in fertility treatments, with a unique focus on "add-on" treatments. It reveals how these contentious treatment options are now common practice and how they lead to an emerging market for hope.
With an interdisciplinary approach, this is an essential resource for readers in the fields of science and technology studies and medical sociology.
Dissecting 45 million tweets from the period that followed the Brexit referendum, this book presents an extensive analysis of social media manipulation.
The book examines emerging changes in partisan politics, nationalist and populist values, as well as broader societal changes that are feeding into polarization and echo-chamber communication. It pulls the curtain back on the techniques employed to interfere with, and potentially distort, the public discussion.
Making complex data accessible to non-technical audiences, this unique post-mortem of the Brexit referendum contributes to our understanding of social media disinformation in the UK and beyond.
This interdisciplinary collection rethinks the political economy of the digital market by asking what came before platforms and suggesting what might come after them.
By unpacking the concept of ‘platform economies’ into locally embedded variations of digital markets, the book identifies what is new about contemporary platforms and what is characteristic of wider historical, social and economic currents.
The diverse team of authors employ various analytical approaches, including in-depth ethnographic studies, and theoretical and analytical reconceptualisations of platforms and the industries they encompass.
Tapping into current themes including the decolonisation of the internet, this book offers a timely assessment of the implications of emerging reconfigurations between technology, information, society and markets.
“Corporate purpose” has become a battleground for stakeholders’ competing desires. Some argue that corporations must simply generate profit; others suggest that we must make them create social change.
Leading organization studies scholar Timothy Kuhn argues that this “either-or” thinking dramatically oversimplifies matters: today’s corporations must be many things, all at once.
Kuhn offers a bold new Communicative Theory of the Firm to highlight the authority that creates corporations’ identities and activities. The theory provides a roadmap for navigating that battleground of competing desires to produce more responsive corporations.
Drawing on communicative and new materialist theorizing, along with three insightful case studies, this book thoroughly redefines our understandings of what corporations are “for.”
Recent decades have witnessed the creation of new types of property systems, ranging from data ownership to national control over genetic resources. This trend has significant implications for wealth distribution and our understanding of who can own what.
This book explores the idea of ownership in the realm of plant breeding, revealing how plants have been legally and materially transformed into property. It highlights the controversial aspects of turning seeds, plants and genes into property and how this endangers the viability of the seed industry.
Examining ownership not simply as a legal concept, but as a bundle of laws, practices and technologies, this is a valuable contribution that will interest scholars of intellectual property studies, the anthropology of markets, science and technology studies and related fields.