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Mindfield : the complete first volume
\"The CIA has created an elite team of telepathic agents dedicated to fighting domestic terrorism. But as Connor and the rest of his crew take to the streets, can they handle the dark thoughts buried inside the minds of 'we the people?' As Connor struggles to cope with his frightening new abilities, he soon discovers the hard way that too much information can be a very bad thing!\"--Amazon.com.
Book
The sense of agency in joint action: An integrative review
When people perform joint actions together, their individual actions (e.g., moving one end of a heavy couch) must be coordinated to achieve a collective goal (e.g., moving the couch across the room). Joint actions pose unique challenges for understanding people’s sense of agency, because each person engaged in the joint action can have a sense of agency not only at the individual level (a sense that “I moved my end of the couch” or “My partner moved their end of the couch”), but also at the collective level (a sense that “We moved the couch together”). This review surveys research that has examined people’s sense of agency in joint action, including explicit judgments of agency, implicit measures of agency, and first-hand accounts of agency in real-world settings. The review provides a comprehensive summary of the factors that influence individual- and collective-level agency in joint action; reveals the progress that has been made toward understanding different forms of collective-level agency in joint action, including the sense that agency is shared among co-actors and the sense that co-actors are acting as a single unit; and synthesizes evidence concerning the relationships between different measures of implicit agency and individual- versus collective-level agency in joint action. The review concludes by highlighting numerous outstanding questions and promising avenues for future research.
Journal Article
The History of Labour Intermediation
Searching for a job has been an everyday affair in both modern and past societies, and employment a concern for both individuals and institutions. The case studies in this volume investigate job search and placement practices in European countries, Australia, and India in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The contributors explore how looking for work becomes a means by which participants (individuals, placement agents, trade unions, municipalities, administrations, state authorities, and schools) articulated specific interests, perspectives, and agendas. Taking an exploratory approach, the chapters illustrate different approaches to the history of employment and job searching, ranging from organizational and regulatory histories to the analysis of practices and autobiographical accounts. In the process, they uncover the interrelations of search practices and attempts to arrange placement services.
eBook
The CIA and the politics of US intelligence reform
\"Examining the political foundations of American intelligence policy, this book develops a new theory of intelligence adaptation to explain the success or failure of major reform efforts since World War II. Durbin draws on careful case histories of the early Cold War, the Nixon and Ford administrations, the first decade after the Cold War, and the post-9/11 period, looking closely at the interactions among Congress, executive branch seniors, and intelligence officials. These cases demonstrate the significance of two factors in the success or failure of reform efforts: the level of foreign policy consensus in the system, and the ability of reformers to overcome the information advantages held by intelligence agencies. As these factors ebb and flow, windows of opportunity for reform open and close, and different actors and interests come to influence reform outcomes. Durbin concludes that the politics of US intelligence frequently inhibit effective adaptation, affecting America's security and the civil liberties of its citizens\"-- Provided by publisher.
BOOK
Public participation in environmental assessment and decision making
Federal agencies have taken steps to include the public in a wide range of environmental decisions. Although some form of public participation is often required by law, agencies usually have broad discretion about the extent of that involvement. Approaches vary widely, from holding public information-gathering meetings to forming advisory groups to actively including citizens in making and implementing decisions.
Proponents of public participation argue that those who must live with the outcome of an environmental decision should have some influence on it. Critics maintain that public participation slows decision making and can lower its quality by including people unfamiliar with the science involved.
This book concludes that, when done correctly, public participation improves the quality of federal agencies' decisions about the environment. Well-managed public involvement also increases the legitimacy of decisions in the eyes of those affected by them, which makes it more likely that the decisions will be implemented effectively. This book recommends that agencies recognize public participation as valuable to their objectives, not just as a formality required by the law. It details principles and approaches agencies can use to successfully involve the public.
eBook
The Cold War and the United States Information Agency : American propaganda and public diplomacy, 1945-1989
\"Published at a time when the U.S. government's public diplomacy is in crisis, this book provides an exhaustive account of how it used to be done. The United States Information Agency was created, in 1953, to \"tell America's story to the world\" and, by engaging with the world through international information, broadcasting, culture, and exchange programs, became an essential element of American foreign policy during the Cold War. Based on newly declassified archives and more than 100 interviews with veterans of public diplomacy, from the Truman administration to the fall of the Berlin Wall, Nicholas J. Cull relates both the achievements and the endemic flaws of American public diplomacy in this period.\"--From publisher description.
BOOK
Agency in historical institutionalism
Institutionalism gives priority to structure over agency. Yet institutions have never developed and operated without the intervention of interested groups. This paper develops a conceptual framework for the role of agency in historical institutionalism. Based on recent contributions following the coalitional turn and drawing on insights from sociological institutionalism, it argues that agency plays a key role in the creation and maintenance of social coalitions that stabilize but also challenge institutions. Without such agency, no coalition can be created, maintained, or changed. Similarly, without a supporting coalition, no contested institution can survive. Yet, due to collective action problems, such coalitional work is challenging. This coalitional perspective offers a robust role for agency in historical institutionalism, but it also explains why institutions remain stable despite agency. In addition, this paper forwards several portable propositions that allow for the identification of who is likely to develop agency and what these actors do.
Journal Article
A Dependent Structure of Interdependence: Structure and Agency in Relational Perspective
In this article I argue for a relational approach to the agency–structure problem. Structure has three dimensions from this perspective but, at its most fundamental, it is a network comprising social actors (human and corporate) and the relations connecting them. Defined thus structure has measurable properties which generate both opportunities and constraints for actors and which shape processes, such as diffusion, which affect and implicate them. Agency is integral to this model. Actors are the nodes of the network and their relations are built, maintained, modified and broken by way of their interactions. However, I argue that the human organism only fully becomes a social actor by way of interaction. In effect, both agency and structure are emergent properties of social interactions/relations which act back upon and shape those interactions/relations. In addition to resolving theoretical problems this approach has the advantage of facilitating empirical analysis of structure.
Journal Article