Drawing on Polanyi, Austin and Lacan, Marie Pellegrin-Rescia and Yair Levi offer a powerful critique of the language and categories of thought that dominate the contemporary intellectual and political landscape. The general tendency to dichotomize concepts such as left and right, social and economic, globalization and anti-globalization, is, they argue, a consequence of our subservience to the primacy of the rational economic agent. The authors offer a selection of case-studies of co-operatives, which are shown to be paradoxical entities in a worldview in which the social exists only as a metaphor for a space concerned with the damage caused by the economic. Through an analysis of experiences in achieving civil accord in South Africa and in establishing a new town in the mountains of Sicily, they offer a new political orientation in a world of uncertainty. In doing so they attempt an answer to one of the most intriguing questions of our time: should we accept as a fait-accompli the way our society is conceived and shaped, or can we have a say in the matter and assume the ethical responsibility involved?

This book is the first to directly address the question of how to bridge what has been termed the "great divide" between the approaches of systems developers and those of social scientists to computer supported cooperative work--a question that has been vigorously debated in the systems development literature. Traditionally, developers have been trained in formal methods and oriented to engineering and formal theoretical problems; many social scientists in the CSCW field come from humanistic traditions in which results are reported in a narrative mode. In spite of their differences in style, the two groups have been cooperating more and more in the last decade, as the "people problems" associated with computing become increasingly evident to everyone. The authors have been encouraged to examine, rigorously and in depth, the theoretical basis of CSCW. With contributions from field leaders in the United Kingdom, France, Scandinavia, Mexico, and the United States, this volume offers an exciting overview of the cutting edge of research and theory. It constitutes a solid foundation for the rapidly coalescing field of social informatics. Divided into three parts, this volume covers social theory, design theory, and the sociotechnical system with respect to CSCW. The first set of chapters looks at ways of rethinking basic social categories with the development of distributed collaborative computing technology--concepts of the group, technology, information, user, and text. The next section concentrates more on the lessons that can be learned at the design stage given that one wants to build a CSCW system incorporating these insights--what kind of work does one need to do and how is understanding of design affected? The final part looks at the integration of social and technical in the operation of working sociotechnical systems. Collectively the contributors make the argument that the social and technical are irremediably linked in practice and so the "great divide" not only should be a thing of the past, it should never have existed in the first place.

COOP 2012 is the tenth COOP conference, marking twenty years from the first conference in 1992. In this special anniversary edition we asked researchers and practitioners to reflect on what have been the successes and the failures in designing cooperative systems, and what challenges still need to be addressed. We have come a long way in understanding the intricacies of cooperation and in designing systems that support work practices and collective activities. These advances would not have been possible without the concerted effort of contributions from a plethora of domains including CSCW, HCI, Information Systems, Knowledge Engineering, Multi-agent systems, organizational and management sciences, sociology, psychology, anthropology, ergonomics, linguistics, etc. The COOP community is going from strength to strength in developing new technologies, advancing and proposing new methodological approaches, and forging theories.

As the globe shrinks, it is more important than ever to search for and discover ways for diverse groups to coexist peacefully. This salient, well-researched text offers a practical guide for understanding and learning the skills and knowledge needed to participate effectively in cooperative argumentationa model for deliberative community. Developing the capacity to engage meaningfully and successfully in cooperative argumentation across differences prepares individuals for ethical and effective deliberation in diverse twenty-first-century contexts. The authors use a wide variety of examples to illustrate concrete proposals for cultivating moral abilities, cognitive skills, and communicative virtues.

The two-volume set CCIS 1491 and 1492 constitutes the refereed post-conferenceproceedings of the 16th CCF Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, ChineseCSCW 2021, held in Xiangtan, China, November 26–28, 2021. The conference was held in a hybrid mode i.e. online and on-site in Xiangtan due to the COVID-19 crisis. The 65 revised full papers and 22 revised short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 242 submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: Volume I: Collaborative Mechanisms, Models, Approaches, Algorithms and Systems; Cooperative Evolutionary Computation and Human-like Intelligent Collaboration; Domain-Specific Collaborative Applications; Volume II: Crowd Intelligence and Crowd Cooperative Computing; Social Media and Online Communities.

Businesses are looking for methods to incorporate social entrepreneurship in order to generate a positive return to society. Social enterprises have the ability to improve societies through altruistic work to create sustainable work environments for future entrepreneurs and their communities. Social Entrepreneurship: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications is a useful scholarly resource that examines the broad topic of social entrepreneurship by looking at relevant theoretical frameworks and fundamental terms. It also addresses the challenges and solutions social entrepreneurs face as they address their corporate social responsibility in an effort to redefine the goals of today’s enterprises and enhance the potential for growth and change in every community. Highlighting a range of topics such as the social economy, corporate social responsibility, and competitive advantage, this multi-volume book is ideally designed for business professionals, entrepreneurs, start-up companies, academics, and graduate-level students in the fields of economics, business administration, sociology, education, politics, and international relations.

"This book serves as a critical source to emerging issues and solutions in data mining and the influence of social factors"--Provided by publisher.