What's valuable?Market competition provides one kind of answer. Competitions offer another. On one side, competition is an ongoing and seemingly endless process of pricings; on the other, competitions are discrete and bounded in time and location, with entry rules, judges, scores, and prizes. This book examineswhat happens when ever more activities in domains of everyday life are evaluated and experienced in terms of performance metrics.Unlike organized competitions, such systems are ceaseless and without formal entry. Instead of producing resolutions, their scorings create addictions. To understand these developments, this book explores discrete contests (architectural competitions, international music competitions, and worldpress photo competitions); shows how the continuous updating of rankings is both a device for navigating the social world and an engine of anxiety; and examines the production of such anxiety in settings ranging from the pedagogy of performance in business schools to struggling musicians coping withnew performance metrics in online platforms. In the performance society, networks of observation - in which all are performing and keeping score - are entangled with a system of emotionally charged preoccupations with one's positioning within the rankings. From the bedroom to the boardroom,pharmaceutical companies and management consultants promise enhanced performance. This assemblage of metrics, networks, and their attendant emotional pathologies is herein regarded as the performance complex.

The Performance Complex: Competition and Competitions in Social Life

Business & Money

Stark, David

Economics

Oxford University Press

The numbers of farms and farmers on the Great Plains are dwindling. Disappearing even faster are the farm places―the houses, barns, and outbuildings that made the rural landscape a place of habitation. Nancy Warner's photographs tell the stories of buildings that were once loved yet have now been abandoned. Her evocative images are juxtaposed with the voices of Nebraska farm people, lovingly recorded by sociologist David Stark. These plainspoken recollections tell of a way of life that continues to evolve in the face of wrenching change. Warner's spare, formal photographs invite readers to listen to the cadences and tough-minded humor of everyday speech in the Great Plains. Stark's afterword grounds the project in the historical relationship between people and their land. In the tradition of Wright Morris, this combination of words and images is both art and document, evoking memories, emotions, and questions for anyone with rural American roots.

This Place, These People: Life and Shadow on the Great Plains

Arts & Photography

Photography & Video

Columbia University Press

Practicing Sociology

Imaging Strategies in Oncology Edited by Daniel Vanel and David Stark This practical book is designed to give advice on how to select the most effective imaging modalities for every form of cancer. The strategies and criteria for deciding between the modalities are summarized in algorithms in each chapter. Illustrated with over 700 state-of-the-art images, including MR, CT, ultrasound, mammograms and plain film, Imaging Strategies in Oncology will act as an invaluable diagnostic aid for all health care specialists committed to the detection and management of cancer. Editorial Board Scott Atlas, MD, Associate Professor of Radiology, University of Pennsylvania Medical School, Philadelphia, USA Murray Dalinka, MD, Professor of Radiology, University of Pennsylvania Medical School, Philadelphia, USA Igor Laufer, MD, Professor of Radiology, University of Pennsylvania Medical School, Philadelphia, USA Anthony Mancuso, MD, Professor of Radiology, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, USA

Imaging Strategies in Oncology

Medical Books

Medicine

wiley

Postsocialist Pathways: Transforming Politics and Property in East Central Europe (Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics)

Is there a distinctly East European capitalism? This volume analyzes democratization and economic change in the postsocialist societies of East Central Europe. It demonstrates that the collapse of communism was not the same across the region and that the differences in how the pieces fell shaped the building blocks used for reconstructing political systems and restructuring economies in the region. Among the key concepts are the importance of social networks in the economies and of deliberative institutions in the polity that include the interests of subordinate groups in policymaking.

Bruszt, Laszlo

Cambridge University Press

For a decade renowned event designers David Stark and Avi Adler have been creating the art and fashion world's most talked-about parties, with flower arrangements that completely break the mold. Their easy-to-follow formulas show how a rummage through a hardware store, the attic, or even the refrigerator can transform everyday ingredients—colored gravel, feather boas, office supplies, and more—into glamorous, one-of-a-kind floral designs.

Wild Flowers: Projects and Inspirations

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Adler, Avi

Crafts & Hobbies

Clarkson/Potter

The Sense of Dissonance: Accounts of Worth in Economic Life

What counts? In work, as in other areas of life, it is not always clear what standards we are being judged by or how our worth is being determined. This can be disorienting and disconcerting. Because of this, many organizations devote considerable resources to limiting and clarifying the logics used for evaluating worth. But as David Stark argues, firms would often be better off, especially in managing change, if they allowed multiple logics of worth and did not necessarily discourage uncertainty. In fact, in many cases multiple orders of worth are unavoidable, so organizations and firms should learn to harness the benefits of such "heterarchy" rather than seeking to purge it. Stark makes this argument with ethnographic case studies of three companies attempting to cope with rapid change: a machine-tool company in late and postcommunist Hungary, a new-media startup in New York during and after the collapse of the Internet bubble, and a Wall Street investment bank whose trading room was destroyed on 9/11. In each case, the friction of competing criteria of worth promoted an organizational reflexivity that made it easier for the company to change and deal with market uncertainty. Drawing on John Dewey's notion that "perplexing situations" provide opportunities for innovative inquiry, Stark argues that the dissonance of diverse principles can lead to discovery.

Princeton University Press

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Books by Stark, David