Acting Bodies and Social Networks analyzes the complex interactions of body, mind and microelectronic technologies. Internationally renowned scholars look into the nature of the mind - a combination of thought, perception, emotion, will and imagination - as well as the ever-increasing impact and complexity of microelectronic technologies. The proliferation of these technologies facilitates a profound change in the boundaries between bodies and technologies. These technologies expand the temporal and spatial existence of humans; today, people can instantly communicate all over the world and overcome time and space restraints by using the latest available microelectronic technologies. The first volume, The Body as Social Icon, examines how memory is affected by the new technology and the related theoretical issues while the second, Mapping Bodies in a Networked Space, deals with the influence of the new technologies on everyday life practices. At the "information portal," the brain's capacity is loosing its ability to retain information. In 2004, a number of well known neuroscientists, including Nobel laureate Eric Kandel, wrote a review about the ethical dilemma computer technologies raise, stating that "humanity's ability to alter its own brain function might well shape history as powerfully as the development of metallurgy in the Iron Age." By introducing the concept of acting body, this book contributes to discussion concerning the future development of Homo sapiens. We consider the acting body as a bridge between technology and working memory, which entails a radical change in our approach to the social sciences.

Body and Time is an innovative and concise survey of penetrating essays, conceptualizing the body as a physiological system embedded in a social network. In its complex and multilayered structure, it is aligned to and overlaps with other related functions. Contributors to this publication are members of the International Sociological Association Research Committee 54 - `The Body in the Social Sciences', and their contributions specifically refer to the RC54 Mid-Term Conference - `The Mobile Interface and Social Change', held at `Sapienza', University of Rome, 6 December, 2012.What distinguishes the architecture of the book is that, collectively, it constitutes a challenge to the digital media paradigm in which the body is treated simply as a two dimensional icon of space and time; a relatively `free form' with all kinds of narratives generated by the multimedia.Order in sequence should, indeed, be the key phrase incorporating four incisive problems dealt with in the thirteen chapters forming the `body' of the book: identity, temporality, hierarchy and territoriality. In short, the volume demonstrates how fundamentally different ways of experiencing time are also determined by the differing cultural use of bodily rhythms - a `two-sided narration' namely, of space and time. Central to the understanding of this interdependence is the study of interpersonal synchronization - increasing knowledge through the investigation of how rhythm, music, chants, dance, prayer and other harmonizing practices support social integration.This book will attract wide interest, especially from students, researchers and academics in the social sciences, neurosociology, digital studies and further afield.

This volume introduces sociological knowledge to social reality in various fields that are especially significant for Southern European societies, such as education, migration, social cohesion and political participation. It provides the reader with an understanding of the new and radical challenges that Europe has been called to face, and complements academic research with new conceptualisations of sociology which solve social public problems in specific territorial contexts. The book focuses on the body as the vector of social cohesion policies in the awareness that cohesion revolves around the ability of all people - not just migrants - to manage conflict and change. With these aims, the empowered body is suggested as a means able to build up the timescales of memory as time-windows open to the ethic boundaries of human life. In today's world, the question of empowerment crosses borders, not only geographic but also cognitive, linguistic and cultural ones. Refuting the longstanding notion that culture alone is responsible for group behaviour, this book confronts the "moving up" and "getting on" characterizing current immigration policies, specifically in Europe and the Mediterranean area and, in general, around the world. Methodologically, all contributions here pay attention to the powerful connection between the individual lives and the historical and socio-economic contexts in which these lives unfold. The brilliant analyses here suggest, at least, the "borderlands" as the agent making the movement of policy.

The new boundaries between bodies and technologies constitute one of the most important developments in the last fifty years. Through technologies we not only change the relations between a natural given, the body, and a human-made artefact -- the technology but also change the ways we experience the world. How close are we to a world in which the abilities of machines are indistinguishable from those of the species that invented them? Our encounters with the new technologies change the cognitive processes and influences the modes of processing information. Moreover, it raises the question of the nature of human beings. Traversing body as emotive- being- in- the world and body as location culturally and socially constructed, there is a third dimension: the dimension of technological. Are we able to use these new dimension as a creative interface between the emotional brain, the acting body, and ICTS? In answering these questions, the book explores the action of bodies in technology, that is, how the sense of our bodies and of our orientation in the world are affected by information and communication technologies. It contributes therefore to the world-wide discussion and debates on the impact of technology, especially information technology, on the lives of human beings in the age of globalization, in particular to the present thinking of the relationship between technology and embodiment.