David Beer

This book explores the possibility of drawing upon a punk ethos to inspire sociology and to cultivate a vibrant future for the discipline. Aiming to fire the sociological imaginations of sociologists at any stage of their careers, from new students to established professors, it uses punk to think creatively about what sociology is and how it might be conducted. Following a succinct outline of the disciplinary and social challenges that sociology faces today, the book then applies the punk ethos to sociological knowledge, communication and terrain. The concept of punk sociology is developed through a series of riffs, each of which directly applies key features of the punk ethos to sociology. Punk Sociology encourages sociologists to avoid the temptation to play it safe. Instead it calls for us to be bold, open, inventive, and to produce raw, stripped back and fearless work that adheres to a do-it-yourself ethic.

Punk Sociology

Nicholas Gane

Digital media are rapidly changing the world in which we live. This book addresses six key concepts that are pivotal for understanding the impact of new media on contemporary society and culture: information, network, interface, interactivity, archive and simulation. Each concept is considered through a range of examples.

The Key Concepts

New Media

David Beer¿s A Grand Affair transforms the way we see hotels. From the first step through the front door into the lobby, on to the bars, guest rooms, spas, swimming pools, and even the private apartments above, he provides an insider¿s view of what makes for a successful hotel, whether modest or grand luxe.A Grand Affair is an elaboration of the lectures that Beer, an architect and designer, gave at the Harvard Graduate School of Design for many years, enlivened by delightful, quirky anecdotes about the adventures and misadventures he experienced while traveling the world to work on projects.He sits next to Princess Diana¿s sacrosanct corner table at The Ritz Restaurant in London, admires the extravagant hats worn by ladies around the Cipriani pool in Venice (illustrating the fact that not all swimming pools are meant for a swim), and proves that you do not have to be an emperor to have a swinging time in the imperial suite at Le Grand Hotel in Rome, even when you¿re on a budget.He takes the reader to a balcony far above the Aegean Sea on Mount Athos where he drinks wine with the monks of Simonopetra, and to a third-class car on the Orient Express where he travels standing-room-only from Paris to Rome. After one too many martinis at the old Ritz Bar in Paris he misses the wedding of the ambassador¿s daughter at the Madeleine. He enjoys the Duchess of Windsor¿s favorite drink, Dubonnet and gin, in her apartment at the Waldorf Towers; sits alongside Ingrid Bergman on a terrace in Taormina; and in a Palm Desert club is bemused when Mamie Eisenhower shows him her vast collection of pastel-colored slacks, neatly arrayed in an immense walk-in closet.A rich and provocative book, A Grand Affair will not only beguile those who love staying in hotels but also chronicle the exciting life David Beer led during the golden age of travel, when it was still possible to visit the world¿s great sites with nary a tourist in sight.

An Architect's Lifelong Passion for Hotels, Simple and Splendid

A Grand Affair

This book explores the quirks of digital culture. Through a series of short punchy chapters, it uses these quirks as momentary glimpses into the hidden dynamics of our swirling, highly mediated and often unfathomable cultural experiences.

The Quirks of Digital Culture

This book draws upon the work of Georg Simmel to explore the limits, tensions and dynamism of social life through a close analysis of the works produced in the final years of his life and reveals what they might still offer some 100 years later. Focusing on the relationships between worlds, lives and fragments in these works, David Beer opens up a conceptual toolkit for understanding life as both an individual experience and as a deeply social phenomenon. Taking the reader through artistic and musical forms of inspiration, to the problems of culture and on to the conceptual understanding of lived experience, the book illuminates the richness of Simmel’s ideas and thinking. This sophisticated dialogue with Simmel’s lesser known later works will provide fresh insights for students and scholars of cultural and social theory and pave the way for a reinvigorated engagement with his ideas.

Worlds, Lives, Fragments

Georg Simmel’s Concluding Thoughts

Michael Anderle

A lifetime of breeding... ...and the Gigante were slaves. Could they be freed? Alistair made a single wrong assumption and now he, Thoreaux, and Caesar battle for their lives in a cruel set of games designed to weed out the weak. Losing means death. The game's giants aren't the only threat. The corporation's CEO is hunting them too. Faced with the horrible reality of an entire race born into servitude, Alistair now only has one option. Find a way to free them... ...or die trying.

Prometheus Wakes

A significant new way of understanding contemporary capitalism is to understand the intensification and spread of data analytics. This text is about the powerful promises and visions that have led to the expansion of data analytics and data-led forms of social ordering. It is centrally concerned with examining the types of knowledge associated with data analytics and shows that how these analytics are envisioned is central to the emergence and prominence of data at various scales of social life. This text aims to understand the powerful role of the data analytics industry and how this industry facilitates the spread and intensification of data-led processes. As such, The Data Gaze is concerned with understanding how data-led, data-driven and data-reliant forms of capitalism pervade organisational and everyday life. Using a clear theoretical approach derived from Foucault and critical data studies the text develops the concept of the data gaze and shows how powerful and persuasive it is. It’s an essential and subversive guide to data analytics and data capitalism.

David Beer

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