While other academic disciplines claim a focus around specific subject matter, sociologists think of their field as an approach to understanding the often invisible forces and social contexts that shape the way people conduct their lives. How these forces and contexts are structured is central to sociology. But how do sociologists analyze these invisible structures? This book contributes to our understanding by bringing together a remarkable set of master essays about modern sociology written by some of the leading figures of the field. Each author describes a vision of sociological inquiry or offers an example of research that illustrates approaches and problems encountered in doing sociological work. The collection is rounded out with a prologue by Kai Erikson, an epilogue by Paul DiMaggio, and an extraordinary autobiographical essay by Robert K. Merton. The book is introduced by its editor as a set of reflections, a gathering of visions. But the range of topics and the variety of authors represented make it a valuable introduction to sociology as a discipline and as a way of thinking.

This is the sixth edition of the BBVA's annual series, dedicated to exploring and disseminating the key issues of our time. Esteemed scholars from around the world examine the internet as an agent of change, incorporating the most current knowledge on the subject into their essays while using accessible language. They address the impact of the internet on a social, cultural, economic, political and scientific level, but also how it affects people's daily lives: their relationship habits, leisure and work. Yochai Benkler (Harvard Law School), Federico Casalegno (MIT), Manuel Castells (University of Southern California), Edward Castronova (Indiana University), David Crystal (Bangor University), Zaryn Dentzel (Tuenti), Paul DiMaggio (Princeton University), Lucien Engelen (Radboud University Medical Centre), David Gelertner (Yale University), Peter Hirshberg, Mikko Hypponen (F-Secure Corporation), Thomas Malone, Evgeny Morozov, Michael Nielsen, Dan Schiller , Neil Selwyn (Monash University), Juan Ignacio Vazquez (Universidad de Deusto) and Patrik Wikstrom (Queensland University of Technology).

Students of management are nearly unanimous (as are managers themselves) in believing that the contemporary business corporation is in a period of dizzying change. This book represents the first time that leading experts in sociology, law, economics, and management studies have been assembled in one volume to explain the varying ways in which contemporary businesses are transforming themselves to respond to globalization, new technologies, workforce transformation, and legal change. Together their essays, whose focal point is an emerging network form of organization, bring order to the chaotic tumble of diagnoses, labels, and descriptions used to make sense of this changing world.

Following an introduction by the editor, the first three chapters--by Walter Powell, David Stark, and Eleanor Westney--report systematically on change in corporate structure, strategy, and governance in the United States and Western Europe, East Asia, and the former socialist world. They separate fact from fiction and established trend from extravagant extrapolation. This is followed by commentary on them: Reinier Kraakman affirms the durability of the corporate form; David Bryce and Jitendra Singh assess organizational change from an evolutionary perspective; Robert Gibbons considers the logic of relational contracting in firms; and Charles Tilly probes the deeper historical context in which firms operate. The result is a revealing portrait of the challenges that managers face at the dawn of the twenty-first century and of how the diverse responses to those challenges are changing the nature of business enterprise throughout the world.