Science, Technology and Society
The Tensions of Algorithmic Thinking
Automation, Intelligence and the Politics of Knowing
In this pioneering book, David Beer redefines emergent algorithmic technologies as the new systems of knowing. He examines the acute tensions they create and how they are changing what is known and what is knowable.
Disrupted Urbanism
Situated Smart Initiatives in African Cities
The ‘smart city’ is often promoted as a technology-driven solution to complex urban issues. Drawing on original research conducted in urban African settings, this book provides a much-needed alternative view, exploring how ‘home-grown’ digital disruption, driven and initiated by local actors, upending the mainstream corporate narrative.
Expertise in Crisis
The Ideological Contours of Public Scientific Controversies
As the crisis of expertise continues to be a global issue, this book shows that it is not a ‘scientific’ controversy, but an ideological dispute with believers on both sides. If the advocates of consensus science acknowledge the uncertainties of even the best science, it is possible to open a pathway towards communication between world views.
Work and Alienation in the Platform Economy
Amazon and the Power of Organization
Drawing on interviews with Amazon workers and original empirical data, this book explores how different working conditions estrange and alienate workers, and how, despite these, workers find ways to organize and express their agency. This is an important analysis of work on the digital shop floor for the scholars of platform economy.
The Production of Everyday Life in Eco-Conscious Households
Compromise, Conflict, Complicity
Drawing on qualitative fieldwork, this book sheds much-needed light on how sustainability-oriented households balance priorities and get things done in day-to-day life, offering crucial insights about eco-conscious living at an individual level.
What Is Cybersecurity For?
Cybersecurity is one of the key practical and political challenges of our time. This book explains the complexities of global information systems, the challenges of providing security to users, societies, states and the international system, and the multitude of competing players and ambitions in this arena.
Egalitarian Digital Privacy
Image-based Abuse and Beyond
This book considers the social, legal and technological features of unauthorised dissemination of intimate images. With a focus on private law theory, the book defines the appropriate scope of liability of platforms and viewers. Through its analysis, it develops a new theory of egalitarian digital privacy.
How to Build a Stock Exchange
The Past, Present and Future of Finance
Exploring the development of stock exchanges, markets and the links with states, in this book Roscoe offers a cautionary tale about the drive of financial markets towards expropriation, capture and exclusion and wonders what the future for finance might be, and how we might get there.
Dealing in Uncertainty
Insurance in the Age of Finance
This book conducts an in-depth investigation of one of the largest and longest-established insurance industries in Europe: British life insurance. The author draws on over 40 oral history interviews to trace how the sector is changed since the 1970s, a period characterised by rampant financialisation and neoliberalisation.
Queering Science Communication
Representations, Theory, and Practice
Written by leading experts, this collection examines representations of queerness in popular science and media, asks what it means for the field to ‘queer’ science communication theories and research agendas and offers practical examples and case studies for fostering radical inclusivity and equity in the science communication field.
The Life of a Number
Measurement, Meaning and the Media
Drawing on case studies, this book examines how politicians, academics and journalists gave meaning to data during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Lawson sheds light on the distinct nature of the pandemic that led to the increased politicization of data and how it permanently changed the way we view health and society more broadly.
The Digital Health Self
Wellness, Tracking and Social Media
Putting the spotlight on neoliberalism as a pervasive tool that dictates wellness as a moral obligation, this book critically analyses how users navigate relationships between self-tracking technologies, social media and health management.