There is a growing body of work examining the ‘consequences’, or more accurately the inter-relationships between information and communications technologies (ICTs) and society at the microsocial (individual, household) level. The vast majority of this work has so far been focused on the US and the subsequent publications have consequently provided predominantly US-centred analyses. This book will re-dress this balance by providing analyses of the situation in Europe and is associated states and placing the analyses in the context of both European and International research and policy debates. The book uses data from a range of European countries as well as comparisons with Asia and the USA. Students and academics from a range of disciplines including sociology, business and management and new media will find this book to be a valuable addition to their reading lists…. More >>

Information and Communication Technologies in Society: E-Living in a Digital Europe

This book explores Japanese investment in Europe and Southeast Asia, in relation to the automobile industry…. More >>

Production Networks in Asia and Europe: Skill Formation and Technology Transfer in the Automobile Industry

The early modern genre of historia connected the study of nature and the study of culture from the early Renaissance to the eighteenth century. The ubiquity of historia as a descriptive method across a variety of disciplines—including natural history, medicine, antiquarianism, and philology—indicates how closely intertwined these scholarly pursuits were in the early modern period. The essays collected in this volume demonstrate that historia can be considered a key epistemic tool of early modern intellectual practices.

Focusing on the actual use of historia across disciplines, the essays highlight a distinctive feature of early modern descriptive sciences: the coupling of observational skills with philological learning, empiricism with erudition. Thus the essays bring to light previously unexamined links between the culture of humanism and the scientific revolution.

The contributors, from a range of disciplines that echoes the broad scope of early mode… More >>

Historia: Empiricism and Erudition in Early Modern Europe

In 1945, the United States was not only the strongest economic and military power in the world; it was also the world’s leader in science and technology. In American Hegemony and the Postwar Reconstruction of Science in Europe, John Krige describes the efforts of influential figures in the United States to model postwar scientific practices and institutions in Western Europe on those in America. They mobilized political and financial support to promote not just America’s scientific and technological agendas in Western Europe but its Cold War political and ideological agendas as well.

Drawing on the work of diplomatic and cultural historians, Krige argues that this attempt at scientific dominance by the United States can be seen as a form of “consensual hegemony,” involving the collaboration of influential local elites who shared American values. He uses this notion to analyze a series of case studies that describe how the U.S. administration, senior officers in the Rock… More >>

American Hegemony and the Postwar Reconstruction of Science in Europe