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1. |
Record Nr. |
UNINA9910583578703321 |
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Autore |
Josephson Paul R |
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Titolo |
Would Trotsky Wear a Bluetooth? : Technological Utopianism under Socialism, 1917-1989 |
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Pubbl/distr/stampa |
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Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010 |
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ISBN |
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Descrizione fisica |
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1 online resource (352 p.) |
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Soggetti |
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History of engineering and technology |
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Lingua di pubblicazione |
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Formato |
Materiale a stampa |
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Livello bibliografico |
Monografia |
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Sommario/riassunto |
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After visiting Russia in 1921, the journalist Lincoln Steffens famously declared, "I have seen the future, and it works." Steffens referred to the social experiment of technological utopianism he found in the Soviet Union, where subway cars and farm tractors would carry the worker and peasant-figuratively and literally-into the twentieth century. Believing that socialism and technology together created a brave new world, Boleslaw Bierut of Poland and Kim Il Sung of North Korea-and other leaders-joined Russia's Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky in embracing big technology with a verve and conviction that rivaled the western world's.Paul R. Josephson here explores these utopian visions of technology-and their unanticipated human and environmental costs. He examines the role of technology in communist plans and policies and the interplay between ideology and technological development. He shows that while technology was a symbol of regime legitimacy and an engine of progress, the changes it spurred were not unequivocally positive. Instead of achieving a worker's paradise, socialist technologies exposed the proletariat to dangerous machinery and deadly pollution; rather than freeing women from exploitation in family and labor, they paradoxically created for them the dual-and exhausting-burdens of mother and worker. The future did not work. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 marked the end of communism's self-proclaimed glorious quest to "reach and surpass" the West. Josephson's intriguing study of how technology both helped and hindered this effort asks new |
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and important questions about the crucial issues inextricably linked with the development and diffusion of technology in any sociopolitical system. |
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2. |
Record Nr. |
UNINA9910953332903321 |
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Autore |
Thompson M (Michael), <1937-> |
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Titolo |
Organising & disorganising : a dynamic and non-olinear theory of institutional emergence and its implications / / Michael Thompson |
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Pubbl/distr/stampa |
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Devon, U.K., : Triarchy Press, 2008 |
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ISBN |
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Edizione |
[1st ed.] |
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Descrizione fisica |
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1 online resource (170 p.) |
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Soggetti |
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Organizational behavior |
Organizational sociology |
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Lingua di pubblicazione |
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Formato |
Materiale a stampa |
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Livello bibliografico |
Monografia |
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Note generali |
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Description based upon print version of record. |
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Nota di bibliografia |
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Includes bibliographical references (p. 149-157). |
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Nota di contenuto |
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""COVER""; ""COVER2""; ""COVER3""; ""COVER4""; ""CONTENTS""; ""A Week in Norway and an Afternoon at the London School of Economics""; ""Clumsiness: Why Isn�t it as Easy as Falling off a Log?""; ""Not Starting in the Obvious Place""; ""Solidarities: the Units of Analysis""; ""In Praise of Bias""; ""No Such Thing as an Organisation""; ""Man and Nature as a Single but Complex System""; ""Surprise and its Invisible College""; ""Heinz Minus Seven: The Fifty Varieties of Social Science""; ""Cultural Theory Without Grid and Group"" |
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Sommario/riassunto |
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There are five ways of organising: the hierarchical, the egalitarian, the individualistic, the fatalistic and the autonomous. Each approach is a way of disorganising the other four: without the other four, it would have nothing to organise itself against. In Organising and Disorganising, Michael Thompson gives a detailed explanation of the dynamics of these five fundamental arrangements that underlie 'Cultural Theory'. We may believe that our perspective is the right one and that any interaction with opposing views is a messy and unwelcome contradiction. So why should egalitarians engage with individualists, or hierachists with egalitarians? Using a range of |
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examples and analogies, the author shows how the best outcomes depend upon an essential argumentative process, which encourages subversions that are constructive whilst discouraging those that are not. In this way each approach gets more of what it wants and less of what it doesn't want. Michael Thompson calls these best outcomes 'Clumsy Solutions'. The lively style of its presentation and its rigorous attention to detail makes this book suitable for a wide audience - from managers and academic theorists to those who are responsible for effective and enlightened action on challenging global issues. |
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