An increasing number of activities in everyday life are being evaluated and experienced in terms of performance metrics. This book examines this assemblage of networks of observation -- in which all are performing and keeping score -- and their attendant emotional pathologies across various industries and occupations.

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 examines what 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 world press 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 with new 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.

Two key performances by Paul Robeson shed light on the Cold War era

Actor and singer Paul Robeson's performances in Othello, Show Boat, and The Emperor Jones made him famous, but his midcentury appearances in support of causes ranging from labor and civil rights to antilynching and American warmongering made him notorious. When Robeson announced at the 1949 Paris Peace Conference that it was "unthinkable" for blacks to go to war against the Soviet Union, the mainstream American press declared him insane. Notions of Communism, blackness, and insanity were interchangeably deployed during the Cold War to discount activism such as Robeson's, just a part of an array of social and cultural practices that author Tony Perucci calls the Cold War performance complex. Focusing on two key Robeson performances---the concerts in Peekskill, New York, in 1949 and his appearance before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1956---Perucci demonstrates how these performances and the government's response to them are central to understanding the history of Cold War culture in the United States. His book provides a transformative new perspective on how the struggle over the politics of performance in the 1950s was also a domestic struggle over freedom and equality. The book closely examines both of these performance events as well as artifacts from Cold War culture---including congressional documents, FBI files, foreign policy papers, the popular literature on mental illness, and government propaganda films---to study the operation of power and activism in American Cold War culture.

This volume highlights current research and developments on organizations and (their) performance against the background of ubiquitous complexity. It investigates some of the challenges and trends dominating the complex world of nowadays and the ways organizations are dealing with them in their continuous search for performance. The papers in the volume cover a series of hot and/or emerging topics (i.e. sustainable development, corporate social responsibility, green marketing, digital revolution, social media, global trade, intangible assets, economic intelligence and innovation). Built on an interdisciplinary perspective and a multi-level approach―global (trade, power, sustainable development), regional (EU, BRICS), national (country-based systems, cultures, policies, practices), industry (airlines, pharma, luxury, retailing, banking, tourism), local (communities, destinations), and organization (entrepreneurship, MNEs, public organizations: national and local)―the volume uniquely addresses issues of high interest for researchers, practitioners and policymakers.

An increasing number of activities in everyday life are being evaluated and experienced in terms of performance metrics. This book examines this assemblage of networks of observation -- in which all are performing and keeping score -- and their attendant emotional pathologies across various industries and occupations

WOOOOOO! Are you ready for this, WWE Universe? For the first time ever, WWE's illustrious father-daughter duo "Nature Boy" Ric Flair and Charlotte come together to tell their legendary story. Ric Flair is a 16-time World Champion and two-time WWE Hall of Fame Inductee. His four-decades long career is recognized as one of the greatest of all time, but with success comes a price. Despite his effortless brilliance in front of the cameras, his life away from the cameras includes personal struggles, controversy and family tragedy. Through his bond with Charlotte, he's becoming the father he needs to be while rediscovering the legend he has always been. Charlotte grew up in the shadow of her famous father, "the dirtiest player in the game," but now she is poised to take the Flair name to new heights. As the inaugural WWE Women's Champion, Charlotte has had an impressive career, and she's just getting started. With the (dare we say it) flair of the "Nature Boy" running through her blood, Charlotte is destined for greatness. Find out how she embraced her heritage and battled her own challenges through her rise to the top of WWE. For these two Champions, sports entertainment is simply SECOND NATURE.

In the 1920s, Mexican composer Julián Carrillo (1875-1965) developed a microtonal system he metaphorically called El Sonido 13 (The 13th Sound). Although his pioneering role as one of the first proponents of microtonality gave him a cult figure status among European avant-garde circles in the 1960s and 1970s, his music and legacy have remained largely ignored by scholars and critics. This book explores his ideas not only in relation to the historical moments of their inception but also in relation to the various cultural projects that kept them alive and resignified them into the 21st century.