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Today, interest in networks is growing by leaps and bounds, in both scientific discourse and popular culture. Networks are thought to be everywhere - from the architecture of our brains to global transportation systems. And networks are especially ubiquitous in the social world: they provide us with social support, account for the emergence of new trends and markets, and foster social protest, among other functions. Besides, who among us is not familiar with Facebook, Twitter, or, for that matter, World of Warcraft, among the myriad emerging forms of network-based virtual social interaction? It is common to think of networks simply in structural terms - the architecture of connections among objects, or the circuitry of a system. But social networks in particular are thoroughly interwoven with cultural things, in the form of tastes, norms, cultural products, styles of communication, and much more. What exactly flows through the circuitry of social networks? How are people's identities and cultural practices shaped by network structures? And, conversely, how do people's identities, their beliefs about the social world, and the kinds of messages they send affect the network structures they create? This book is designed to help readers think about how and when culture and social networks systematically penetrate one another, helping to shape each other in significant ways.

"Administrative Culture" published on by Oxford University Press.

The poor performance of the political system in Romania, still marked by disaffection and pervasive corruption, may be shaped by the lack of control from the citizens. Much more responsible towards its electoral basis, the Romanian political system would be more legitimate. The political performance and legitimacy would in turn make citizens more satisfied and eager to defend democratic values. The happy circle of civic control, responsivness, satisfaction and political performance may be started somehow. The research paper is an attempt to evaluate political culture in urban Romania as a source of political legitimacy and performance. We focus on the civic culture, this special association of knowledge and feelings about the political system that settle citizens to political communication, partisanship, social cooperation, political competence and, in the end, political action. By analysing survey data, we outline a meager civic culture in Romania, but also the hope for a future civic competence.

Emphasising the contradictions of fandom, Matt Hills outlines how media fans have been conceptualised in cultural theory. Drawing on case studies of specific fan groups, from Elvis impersonators to X-Philes and Trekkers, Hills discusses a range of approaches to fandom, from the Frankfurt School to psychoanalytic readings, and asks whether the development of new media creates the possibility of new forms of fandom. Fan Cultures also explores the notion of ""fan cults"" or followings, considering how media fans perform the distinctions of 'cult' status

"Social scientists seek to develop systematic ways to understand how people make meaning and how the meanings they make shape them and the world in which they live. But how do we measure such processes? Measuring Culture is an essential point of entry for both those new to the field and those who are deeply immersed in the measurement of meaning. Written collectively by a team of leading qualitative and quantitative sociologists of culture, the book considers three common subjects of measurement-people, objects, and relationships-and then discusses how to pivot effectively between subjects and methods. Measuring Culture takes the reader on a tour of the state of the art in measuring meaning, from discussions of neuroscience to computational social science. It provides both the definitive introduction to the sociological literature on culture as well as a critical set of case studies for methods courses across the social sciences"--

Intro -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Contents -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- Chapter 1: Introduction -- 1.1 The Emergence of the Culture Concept in Management and Organizational Research -- 1.2 Japanese Management Practices -- 1.3 The Culture Concept´s Rise and Set-Back -- 1.4 Resurged Interest in Organizational Culture -- 1.5 Overview of the Book Chapters -- References -- Chapter 2: What Is Culture in the Context of Organizations? -- 2.1 The Concept of Culture Applied to Organizations -- 2.1.1 Culture as an Organizational Variable -- 2.1.2 Culture as a Metaphor -- 2.1.3 Organizational Culture as a Dynamic Construct -- 2.2 Definition and Characteristics of Culture in the Context of Organizations -- 2.2.1 Culture Is the Property of a Group -- 2.2.2 Culture Consists of Basic Beliefs and Manifestations -- 2.2.3 The Different Levels of Culture -- 2.2.4 Culture Influences Organizational Members´ Perception, Thinking, Behaviors, and Emotions -- 2.2.5 Culture Is Based on Experience and Learned -- 2.2.6 Culture Drops out of Awareness -- 2.2.7 Culture Is Passed on to New Organizational Members -- 2.3 Functions of Culture in Organizations -- 2.3.1 Order -- 2.3.2 Orientation -- 2.3.3 Stabilization -- 2.3.4 Meaning -- 2.3.5 Complexity Reduction -- 2.3.6 Organizational Adaptation -- 2.3.7 Internal Coordination -- 2.3.8 Motivation and Identification -- 2.4 Organizational Culture and Related Concepts -- 2.4.1 Organizational Culture Vs. Organizational Climate -- 2.4.2 Organizational Culture Vs. Organizational Identity -- 2.4.3 Organizational Culture Vs. Image, Reputation, and Branding -- 2.5 Some Misconceptions about the Culture Concept Applied to Organizations -- 2.5.1 Myth 1: Not all Organizations Have a Culture -- 2.5.2 Myth 2: Organizational Culture Is Humanization of Work -- 2.5.3 Myth 3: Organizational Culture Refers to Civilization.

"Memory in Culture is an introduction to one of the most exciting new interdisciplinary fields of research: cultural memory studies. Who was Maurice Halbwachs, and what are the "social frameworks of memory"? What can Aby Warburg's work tell us about the "memory of art"? How do Pierre Nora's lieux de mémoire connect history and memory? Where does the ancient art of memory meet the neurosciences? How do media shape our most personal memories? And can remembrance become globalized? Memory in Culture addresses these and many other questions about the socio-cultural dimensions of remembering, offeringa unique overview of the history and theory of memory studies. With the concise presentation of key concepts from history, sociology, political sciences, anthropology, psychology, literary, art and media studies, it documents current international and interdisciplinary memory research in an unprecedented way."--Pub. desc.

At the end of the Second World War, the countries of Western Europe found themselves in a state of economic and physical ruin and, in the cases of Germany, Italy and France, in a position of, at best, moral and political ambiguity and, at worst, outright bankrupcy. Only Britain emerged from the war with its political regime intact and its moral purpose vindicated, although paradoxically its economy was to prove the most severely wounded. Perhaps because of the very scale of the disaster, however, Western Europe embarked upon a process of reconstruction, aided financially by the Marshall Plan, which embodied grandiose ambitions for a radical rebirth. The Italian Communist Party's weekly magazine, for example, was called Rinascita, whilst the French Communist weekly Les Lettres Françaises celebrated a 'new French "renaissance", encompassing political life, urban redevelopment and a whole range of cultural development, which was seen, in the early days of the Liberation, as the legitimate reward and goal of the Resistance'. In Germany, the recognition of 1945 as constituting a Nullpunkt or Stunde Null, made possible the Kahlschlag, or clean sweep which would propel the new Republic towards democracy and prosperity. Even in Britain, there was the sense of the dawning of a new era, and if the Festival of Britain, in 1951, looked back to the Great Exhibition a century earlier and celebrated traditional British qualities, whilst also flexing the nation's industrial and military muscles, with the death of King George VI and the accession of his daughter, the country embarked, quite literally and self-consciously, on a 'New Elizabethan' age.

Although controversial, science studies has emerged in the 1990s as a significant culture area within anthropology. Various histories inform the cultural analysis of science, both outside and within anthropology. A shift from the study of gender to the study of science, the influence of postcolonial critiques of the discipline, and the impact of cultural studies are discussed in terms of their influence upon the cultural analysis of science. New ethnographic methods, the question of "ethnosciences" and multiculturalism, and the implosion of informatics and biomedicine all comprise fields of recent scholarship in the anthropology of science. Debates over modernism and postmodernism, globalization and environment, and the status of the natural inform many of these discussions. The work of Escobar, Hess, Haraway, Martin, Rabinow, Rapp, and Strathern are used to highlight new directions within anthropology concerning both cultures of science and science as culture.