Opening the Black Box: The Work of Watching (Routledge Advances in Sociology)

Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras are a prominent, if increasingly familiar, feature of urbanism. They symbolize the faith that spatial authorities place in technical interventions for the treatment of social problems. CCTV was principally introduced to sterilize municipalities, to govern conducts and to protect properties. Vast expenditure has been committed to these technologies without a clear sense of how precisely they influence things. CCTV cameras might appear inanimate, but Opening the Black Box shows them to be vital mediums within relational circulations of supervision. The book principally excavates the social relations entwining the everyday application of CCTV. It takes the reader on a journey from living beneath the camera, to working behind the lens. Attention focuses on the labour exerted by camera operators as they source and process distanced spectacles. These workers are paid to scan monitor screens in search of disorderly vistas, visualizing stimuli according to its perceived riskiness and/or allurement. But the projection of this gaze can draw an unsettling reflection. It can mean enduring behavioural extremities as an impotent witness. It can also entail making spontaneous decisions that determine the course of justice. 
Opening the Black Box, therefore, contemplates the seductive and traumatic dimensions of monitoring telemediated ‘riskscapes’ through the prism of camera circuitry. It probes the positioning of camera operators as ‘vicarious’ custodians of a precarious social order and engages their subjective experiences. It reveals the work of watching to be an ambiguous practice: as much about managing external disturbances on the street as managing internal disruptions in the self.

Opening the Black Box (Routledge Advances in Sociology)

Politics & Social Sciences

Smith, Gavin

Social Sciences

Routledge

Dynamics and Relativity

A new title in the Manchester Physics Series, this introductory text emphasises physical principles behind classical mechanics and relativity. It assumes little in the way of prior knowledge, introducing relevant mathematics and carefully developing it within a physics context. Designed to provide a logical development of the subject, the book is divided into four sections, introductory material on dynamics, and special relativity, which is then followed by more advanced coverage of dynamics and special relativity. Each chapter includes problems ranging in difficulty from simple to challenging with solutions for solving problems.  Includes solutions for solving problems Numerous worked examples included throughout the book Mathematics is carefully explained and developed within a physics environment Sensitive to topics that can appear daunting or confusing

Dynamics and Relativity (Manchester Physics Series)

Science & Math

Forshaw, Jeffrey R.

Physics

John Wiley&Sons, Inc.

A new title in the Manchester Physics Series, this introductory text emphasises physical principles behind classical mechanics and relativity. It assumes little in the way of prior knowledge, introducing relevant mathematics and carefully developing it within a physics context. Designed to provide a logical development of the subject, the book is divided into four sections, introductory material on dynamics, and special relativity, which is then followed by more advanced coverage of dynamics and special relativity. Each chapter includes problems ranging in difficulty from simple to challenging with solutions for solving problems. 
<ul>
<li>Includes solutions for solving problems</li> <li>Numerous worked examples included throughout the book</li> <li>Mathematics is carefully explained and developed within a physics environment</li> <li>Sensitive to topics that can appear daunting or confusing</li> </ul>

Forshaw, Jeffrey

wiley

Livelihood and Resistance: Peasants and the Politics of Land in Peru

Livelihood and Resistance examines a Peruvian highland community where rural resistance has been endemic for over a century. Gavin Smith explores the way in which the villagers' daily economic interests and their political struggles contribute to their social and political identity.

History

Americas

University of California Press

Livelihood and Resistance examines a Peruvian highland community where rural resistance has been endemic for over a century. Gavin Smith explores the way in which the villagers' daily economic interests and their political struggles contribute to their social and political identity.

This superb historical and ethnographic study of the political economy of the Vega Baja region of Spain, one of the European Union’s Regional Economies,” takes up the difficult question of how to understand the growing alienation ordinary working people feel in the face of globalization. Combining rich oral histories with a sophisticated and nuanced structural understanding of changing political economies, the authors examine the growing divide between government and its citizens in a region that has in the last four decades been transformed from a primarily agricultural economy to a primarily industrial one. Offering a new form of ethnography appropriate for the study of suprastate polities and a globalized economy, Immediate Struggles contributes to our understanding of one region as well as the way we think about changing class relations, modes of production, and cultural practices in a newly emerging Europe. The authors also consider how phenomena such as the informal economy” and black market” are not marginal to the normal operation of state and economic institutions but are intertwined with both.

Immediate Struggles: People, Power, and Place in Rural Spain

Narotzky, Susana

Europe

This superb historical and ethnographic study of the political economy of the Vega Baja region of Spain, one of the European Union’s “Regional Economies,” takes up the difficult question of how to understand the growing alienation ordinary working people feel in the face of globalization. Combining rich oral histories with a sophisticated and nuanced structural understanding of changing political economies, the authors examine the growing divide between government and its citizens in a region that has in the last four decades been transformed from a primarily agricultural economy to a primarily industrial one. Offering a new form of ethnography appropriate for the study of suprastate polities and a globalized economy, Immediate Struggles contributes to our understanding of one region as well as the way we think about changing class relations, modes of production, and cultural practices in a newly emerging Europe. The authors also consider how phenomena such as the “informal economy” and “black market” are not marginal to the normal operation of state and economic institutions but are intertwined with both.

Veteran

Three hundred years in our future, in a world of alien infiltrators, religious hackers, a vast convoying nation of Nomads, city sized orbital elevators, and a cyborg pirate king who believes himself to be a mythological demon Jakob is having a bad day: "Nothing gets in the way of a hangover like being reactivated by your old C.O and told to track down an alien killing machine. The same kind of killing machine that wiped out my entire squad. And now it's in my hometown. My name is Jakob Douglas, ex-special forces. I fought Them. Just like we've all been doing for 60 bloody years. But I thought my part in that was done with. My boss has other ideas. If I didn't find the infiltrator then he'd let the Grey Lady loose on me. And believe me; even They've got nothing on her. So I took the job. It went to shit even faster than normal. And now I'm on the run with this teenage hacker who's had enough of prostitution. The only people I can rely on want to turn the internet into God. And now it turns out that They aren't quite what we'd all thought. I've been to the bottom of the sea and the top of the sky and beyond trying to get to the truth. And I still can't get far enough away from the Grey Lady. All things considered I'd rather be back at home deep in a whiskey bottle." Veteran is a fast paced, intricately plotted violent SF Thriller set in a dark future against the backdrop of a seemingly never ending war against an unknowable and implacable alien enemy.

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Science Fiction

Gollancz

The high-powered sequel to Veteran sees an unlikely hero make an even more unlikely return to take the reader back into a vividly rendered bleak future. But a bleak future where there are still wonders: man traveling out into the universe, Bladerunneresque cities hanging from the ceilings of vast caverns, aliens that we can barely comprehend. Gavin Smith writes fast-moving, incredibly violent SF thrillers but behind the violence and the thrills lies a carefully thought out story and characters who have far more to them than first meets the eye. Never one to avoid controversy, Gavin Smith nevertheless invites you to think beyond the initial shock of what you have just read. But in the meantime? Another fire-fight, another chase, and another flight of imagination.

War in Heaven

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Thrillers & Suspense

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Smith, Gavin. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Smith, Gavin

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Smith, Gavin. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Opening the Black Box (Routledge Advances in Sociology)

Dynamics and Relativity (Manchester Physics Series)

Dynamics and Relativity

Livelihood and Resistance: Peasants and the Politics of Land in Peru

Livelihood and Resistance: Peasants and the Politics of Land in Peru

Immediate Struggles: People, Power, and Place in Rural Spain

Immediate Struggles: People, Power, and Place in Rural Spain

Veteran

Veteran

War in Heaven