...an engaging book: part diary, part manifesto. The Guardian
A round-the-world bicycle tour with one of the most original artists of our day. Urban bicycling has become more popular than ever as recession-strapped, climate-conscious city dwellers reinvent basic transportation. In this wide-ranging memoir, artist/musician and co-founder of Talking Heads David Byrne--who has relied on a bike to get around New York City since the early 1980s--relates his adventures as he pedals through and engages with some of the world's major cities. From Buenos Aires to Berlin, he meets a range of people both famous and ordinary, shares his thoughts on art, fashion, music, globalization, and the ways that many places are becoming more bike-friendly. Bicycle Diaries is an adventure on two wheels conveyed with humor, curiosity, and humanity.For over thirty years, besides making music, David Byrne has focused his unique genius upon forms as diverse as the archaeology of music as we know it, architectural photography and the uses of PowerPoint. Now he presents his most personal work to date, a collection of drawings exploring the form of the tree diagram.
Arboretum is an eclectic blend of science, automatic writing, self-analysis and satire. A journey through irrational logic - the application of scientific rigour and form to irrational premises, proceeding from careful nonsense to unexpected sense.
The tree diagram is a form that might reveal more about yourself than you dreamed possible.
From former Talking Heads frontman and multimedia visionary David Byrne and revered bestselling author, illustrator, and artist Maira Kalman--an inspiring celebration in words and art of the connections between us all.
Don't miss the Spike Lee film of the Broadway hit American Utopia--on HBO.Chaos and complexity are the new buzz words in both science and contemporary society. The ideas they represent have enormous implications for the way we understand and engage with the world. Complexity Theory and the Social Sciences introduces students to the central ideas which surround the chaos/complexity theories. It discusses key concepts before using them as a way of investigating the nature of social research. By applying them to such familiar topics as urban studies, education and health, David Byrne allows readers new to the subject to appreciate the contribution which complexity theory can make to social research and to illuminating the crucial social issues of our day.
This expanded and updated edition of Complexity Theory and the Social Sciences: The State of the Art revisits the use of complexity theory across the social sciences and demonstrates how complexity informs approaches to various contemporary issues in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, widening social inequality, and impending social and ecological catastrophe wrought by global warming.
The book reviews complexity theory in the practice of the social sciences and at their interface with ecological science. It outlines how social theory can be reconciled with complexity thinking and presents a review of the way research can be done using complexity theory. The book suggests how complexity theory can be used to understand and evaluate governance processes, particularly with regard to social inequality and the climate crisis. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is also examined through a complexity lens, reviewing how complexity thinking has been employed in relation to the pandemic and how implementing a complexity framework can transform health and social care. The book concludes with a call to action and the use of complexity theory to inform critical thinking in the education system.
This textbook will be immensely useful to students and researchers interested in social research methods, social theory, business and organization studies, health, education, urban studies, and development studies.
This expanded and updated edition of Complexity Theory and the Social Sciences: The State of the Art revisits the use of complexity theory across the social sciences and demonstrates how complexity informs approaches to various contemporary issues in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, widening social inequality, and impending social and ecological catastrophe wrought by global warming.
The book reviews complexity theory in the practice of the social sciences and at their interface with ecological science. It outlines how social theory can be reconciled with complexity thinking and presents a review of the way research can be done using complexity theory. The book suggests how complexity theory can be used to understand and evaluate governance processes, particularly with regard to social inequality and the climate crisis. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is also examined through a complexity lens, reviewing how complexity thinking has been employed in relation to the pandemic and how implementing a complexity framework can transform health and social care. The book concludes with a call to action and the use of complexity theory to inform critical thinking in the education system.
This textbook will be immensely useful to students and researchers interested in social research methods, social theory, business and organization studies, health, education, urban studies, and development studies.
As featured in The New York Times, T Magazine, and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon
The phenomenally creative musician and filmmaker David Byrne presents new artwork that explores daily life in surprising ways, with unique reflections on shared human experiences - a book for our time from a highly influential artist
Through striking and humorous figurative drawings, the iconic artist and musician David Byrne depicts daily life in intriguing ways. His illustrations, created while under quarantine, expand on the dingbat, a typographic ornament used to illuminate or break up blocks of text, to explore the nuances of life under lockdown and evoke the complex, global systems the pandemic cast in bright light. Edited and designed by Alex Kalman in close collaboration with Byrne, this unique book reflects on shared experiences and presents history as a story that is continually undergoing revision.
Inequality in a Context of Climate Crisis after COVID uses a complex realist approach to examine the crisis of three interconnected problems: economic inequality, climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Widely acknowledged as the key driver of political discontent and social instability, economic inequality across high and middle-income countries is profoundly interconnected with climate change. Both of these issues are now set within the particularly acute context of COVID-19 and its aftermath. Confronting the crisis of these inherently interwoven issues is now the major problem for all political and governance systems. This book uses a complex realist frame of reference to understand the character of social-cultural-economic-political-ecological systems. It gives us a vocabulary and modes of thinking to confront these societal challenges and inform future action.
Contributing to our thinking about dynamic social systems, this text deploys complex realism to understand our trajectory towards increasing inequality. It puts complexity to work in addressing fundamental social issues in a context of climate crisis after COVID-19. This book will be of interest to students and scholars across the social sciences, in particular to those studying social inequality, climate change, heterodox economics, complex systems, and Master's students in prgrammes with an applied focus. It will be of use to policymakers and practitioners.
The transition to twenty-first century post-industrial capitalism from the 'welfare' industrial capitalism of the twentieth century, has affected the ways in which class is lived in terms of relational inequality and the factors that structure identity. Class After Industry takes a complex realist approach to the dynamics of individual lives, places, the social structure and analyses their significance in terms of class. A wide range of quantitative and qualitative studies are drawn on to explore how 'life after industry' shapes class, and the consequent potential for social change. The book will be of interest across the social sciences and beyond, to those concerned with how class forms might translate into political action.
What does the future hold for the welfare state in the post-industrial 21st century? Political and economic forces are threatening the taxation regimes of highly globalised, capitalist societies, prompting an urgent debate around the function of the welfare state and how we pay for it.
In a challenge to current policy and thinking, David Byrne and Sally Ruane deploy the concepts and analytical tools of Marxist political economy to better understand these developments, and the possibilities they present for social change.
Using the SNP in Scotland as an illustrative case study, current debates are related to a critical understanding of the relationship between taxation and spending, issues that are fundamental to early 21st century politics and the future of the welfare state.
Cities are changing at a rate unparalleled since the industrial revolution and more than half the population of the world now lives in cities compared with less than a quarter in 1950. Construction is booming in and around cities, but the downside to these developments is that cities of the postindustrial world appear to have greater social divisions.
Understanding the Urban examines the contemporary nature and possible futures of cities in a postindustrial and globalized world. Theoretical debates and empirical research from a range of disciplines are brought together to provide an understanding of cities both as complex systems and as the product of collective human action. This well structured and lively text draws extensively on political, economic and cultural examples from developing and developed countries to explore key topics such as:Cities are changing at a rate unparalleled since the industrial revolution and more than half the population of the world now lives in cities compared with less than a quarter in 1950. Construction is booming in and around cities, but the downside to these developments is that cities of the postindustrial world appear to have greater social divisions.
Understanding the Urban examines the contemporary nature and possible futures of cities in a postindustrial and globalized world. Theoretical debates and empirical research from a range of disciplines are brought together to provide an understanding of cities both as complex systems and as the product of collective human action. This well structured and lively text draws extensively on political, economic and cultural examples from developing and developed countries to explore key topics such as: