Manuel Castells – one of the world's pre-eminent social scientists – has drawn together a stellar group of contributors to explore the patterns and dynamics of the network society in its cultural and institutional diversity. The book analyzes the technological, cultural and institutional...

The concept of globalization has become ubiquitous in social science and in the public consciousness and is often invoked as an explanation for a diverse range of changes to economies, societies, politics and cultures - both as a positive liberating force and as a wholly negative one. Whilst our...

Some problems in our understanding of innovation can be addressed by thinking of innovation as a social process. This can be done by using the idea of technology as applied social science. To explore this idea, an approach called 'technography' is introduced. Sources of resistance to innovation...

There is a need to develop an analytic framework that can help decision making about the nature and style of interactive research activity in social science. Substantial intellectual resources for doing this can be found in science and technology studies which offer insight into the social basis...

Different societies use different mechanisms to assist people or organizations achieve cooperation. The purpose of this paper is to compare three different approaches to achieving cooperation. They are a contractual approach widely used in Anglo-Saxon societies, a trust approach more common in...

Summary This article considers the extent to which we are addicted to particular ways of configuring the world and responding in a culturally appropriate way. It suggests that the original Tame and Wicked problems typology of Rittell and Webber (1973) can be usefully expanded to provide a...