This work approaches the modern phenomenon of online dating, examining the ways people make use of its technical and social potential. In particular, the users' mate preferences, choices, strategies, and interactions are analyzed using the innovative method of click-stream observations and web-questionnaire data. For the purpose of these analyses, two major theories are used - an explicit theory of individual mate choice, and the more general relational theory developed by Pierre Bourdieu, which helps to highlight the social structures both underlying and resulting from mating online. Results show that online dating is not a partner marker free from social structure, but that the traditional social conditions found offline are also reproduced in this virtual setting. In contrast to the picture drawn by media discourse and advertising, online dating represents a partner market which fulfills the promise of happiness in a socially differential way.

The digital transition of our economies is now entering a phase of broad and deep societal impact. While there is one overall transition, there are many different sectoral transformations, from health and legal services to tax reports and taxi rides, as well as a rising number of transversal trends and policy issues, from widespread precarious employment and privacy concerns to market monopoly and cybercrime. They all are fertile ground for researchers, as established laws and regulations, organizational structures, business models, value networks and workflow routines are contested and displaced by newer alternatives. This Research Handbook offers a rich and interdisciplinary synthesis of some of the current thinking on the digital transformations underway.

Online dating has become a widespread feature of modern social life. In less than two decades, seeking partners through commercial intermediaries went from being a marginal and stigmatized practice to being a common activity. How can we explain this rapid change and what does it tell us about the changing nature of love and sexuality? In contrast to those who praise online dating as a democratization of love and those who condemn it as a commodification of intimacy, this book tells a different story about how and why online dating became big. The key to understanding the growing prevalence of digital dating lies in what Marie Bergström calls “the privatization of intimacy.” Online dating takes courtship from the public to the private sphere and makes it a domestic and individual practice. Unlike courtship in traditional settings such as school, work, and gatherings of family and friends, online dating makes a clear distinction between social and sexual sociability and renders dating much more discrete. Apparently banal, this privatizing feature is fundamental for understanding both the success and the nature of digital matchmaking. Bergström also sheds light on the persisting inequalities of intimate life, showing that online dating is neither free nor fair: it has its winners and losers and it differs significantly according to gender, age and social class. Drawing on a wide range of empirical material, this book challenges what we think we know about online dating and gives us a new understanding of who, why, and how people go online to seek sex and love.

This fourth volume of The Class Structure of Capitalist Societies finishes the series by exploring how class infuses people’s past and present efforts to juggle family, work and leisure. Previous volumes in the series have examined the shape, history and cultural expressions of class structures in capitalist societies as well as their typical intersections with gender, race/ ethnicity, family and more. Now, drawing on in depth interviews with men and women from the US, Sweden and Germany, this instalment endeavours to show how class actually ‘works out’ in people’s biographies and circumstances, and how, thereby, it is given singular form in their lives. Key to understanding how class works and how it is singularised, the book demonstrates, is its interplay with pressures and interests tied up with family, paid employment and leisure. New concepts and tools, it argues, are necessary to accommodate this multiplicity and, as a result, explain people’s lives more fully, advance our understanding of class and even progress the capacities of sociology as a discipline. The volume will be of major interest to scholars of class, family, work, gender and culture, but it will also appeal to anyone interested in social theory and the progress of sociology.

What is the role of sociological theory in the information age? What kinds of theories are best suited to analyzing the social uses of digital technologies, and for using digital technologies in new ways to study the social? This book contributes to several ongoing conversations on how the social sciences can best adapt to contemporary information technologies and information societies. Focusing on practical or ‘usable theory,’ it surveys the challenges and opportunities of conducting social science in the information age, as well as the theoretical solutions that sociologists have developed and applied over the last two decades. With specific attention to three theoretical approaches in digital social research—critical theory, forensic theory and Bourdieusian theory—the author provides an overview of the history and main tenets of each, surveys its use in sociological research, and evaluates its successes and limitations. Taking a long-term view of theoretical development in evaluating schools of thought and considering their productivity in analyzing and using contemporary digital communication technologies, this book thus treats theory as a tool for empirical research and the development of theory as inseparable from research practice. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology and social theory with interests in research methods, the development of theory and digital technologies.

The second volume of The Class Structure of Capitalist Societies maps the distribution of social powers and associated properties and lifestyles in unparalleled detail by examining the results of a brand-new survey delivered in Sweden, Germany and the US. Continuing the cross-national investigation of the shape and effects of class systems across capitalist nations, the analyses in Volume 2 are embedded in a novel sociological theory of international relations, sustained reflections on the relationship between national standing and class structure and extensive reconstruction of the histories of class in each of the three nations studied. The ultimate conclusion, however, is that not only that the fundamental structure of class today the same across the three cases, for all their unique cultural and historical features, but their translation into differences of taste, practice and symbolic violence, always cross-cut by gender, follow highly familiar patterns too. This volume will appeal to scholars and advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in sociology, politics and demography and is essential reading for all those interested in social class across the globe.

This book continues the Class Structure of Capitalist Societies series by exploring the place of class among a confluence of factors in shaping people’s lives, loves and lifestyles across three nations. Previous volumes in the series examined the shape, history and cultural expressions of class structures. Now, grappling with themes usually put under the labels of ‘intersectionality’ and ‘work-life balance’ and bridging literatures seldom brought together, this volume uses an innovative mix of statistical techniques to untangle the messy nexus of factors – class, age, gender, race/ethnicity, intimate relations, political context and more – underpinning everyday routines, spaces, possessions, practices, (im)possibilities and self-perceptions in the US, Germany and Sweden. In the process it advances the specific vision of class and social relations developed by Pierre Bourdieu, pursuing the case, above all, that conceptual and methodological progress is necessary to fully recognise and explore the multiplicity of desires, dispositions and demands at play in people’s lives. The volume will be of major interest to scholars of class, culture, gender and family but will appeal to anyone interested in the interplay of identities and pressures implicated in contemporary experiences and inequalities.

e-Engineering and digital enterprise technology are becoming the catalysts and prime enablers for the most radical changes in industry since the industrial revolution. Advances in e-Engineering and Digital Enterprise Technology includes international papers from experts and practitioners in industry and academia providing an information exchange on all aspects of engineering and management. Providing significant contributions from practitioners , researchers, educators, and end-users, the reader will find information on the latest innovations and techniques, including, e-Engineering systems e-supply chains and e-logistics Web based CAD/CAM/CAPP Virtual and collaborative engineering Web based modelling and simulations Mass customization and customer driven engineering Tele-operation and tele-robotics. On-line education and industrial training Vital reading for leading-edge system developers, researchers, innovators, and early adopters within industry, government, and academia who are in search of excellence.

Class is not only amongst the oldest and most controversial of all concepts in social science, but also a topic which has fascinated, amused, incensed and galvanized the general public. But what exactly is a ‘class’? How do sociologists study and measure it, and how does it correspond to everyday understandings of social difference in the twenty-first century? In a time when inequality has dramatically returned to the social scientific and political agenda, this accessible and lively book explores these questions and more. It takes readers through the key theoretical traditions in class research, the major controversies that have shaken the field and the continuing effects of class difference, class struggle and class inequality across a range of domains. This new edition covers the latest research and scholarship and includes extended discussions of race, the rise of national populism, and the reconfigurations of class in a global age. This book will appeal to students and scholars across the social sciences and anyone wanting to get a handle on this provocative concept.

Queering Desire explores, with unprecedented interdisciplinary scope, contemporary configurations of lesbian, bi, queer women’s, and non-binary people’s experiences of identity and desire. Taking an intersectional feminist and trans-inclusive approach, and incorporating new and established identities such as non-binary, masculine of centre (MOC), butch, and femme, this collection examines how the changing landscape for gender and sexual identities impacts on queer culture in productive and transformative ways. Within queer studies, explorations of desire, longing, and eroticism have often neglected AFAB, transfeminine, and non-binary people’s experiences. Through 25 newly commissioned chapters, a diverse range of authors, from early career researchers to established scholars, stage conversations at the cutting edge of sexuality studies. Queering Desire advances our understanding of contemporary lesbian and queer desire from an inclusive perspective that is supportive of trans and non-binary identities. This innovative interdisciplinary collection is an excellent resource for scholars, undergraduate, and postgraduate students interested in gender, sexuality, and identity across a range of fields, such as queer studies, feminist theory, anthropology, media studies, sociology, psychology, history, and social theory. In foregrounding female and non-binary experiences, this book constitutes a timely intervention.