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Change is often brought about by an organization’s old ways being shown to be ineffective and inefficient in the currrent market environment. For most organizations this is usually found out too late in today’s rapid pace of Internet speed change. Organizations must approach change just as the most successful “techno‐individuals” have, by constantly reinventing and making minor changes, so they are always positioned for the next wave of change in the marketplace. Their workforces then view change as a phenomenon to embrace and not fear. It is normal to change if one is always doing it. Organizations must ask themselves “What do we need to change to be a fierce and flexible force in our marketplace?” “How have we changed this week? How must we change next week?”.

Ever since Mead, sociology has maintained a deep divide between human and non human animals. In effect, Mead constructed humans as having capacities that he saw lacking in animals. Recent research on animals has challenged the traditional ideas of Mead and others by providing evidence of animal intelligence, adaptability, selfawareness, emotionality, communication and culture. This paper examines the human‐animal relationship as presented in Introductory Sociology Textbooks to see if this new research on animals has allowed us to move beyond Mead. We find outdated information and confused thinking on such topics as the relationship between language and culture, the development of the self in animals, and the role of instinct, socialization and culture in animal behavior. We conclude that, with few exceptions, the main function of the treatment of animals in these texts is to affirm the hard line that sociology has always drawn between humans and other species.

Society’s relations to animals pose possible blind spots in sociological theory that may be revealed and illuminated by studying systems of human‐animal interaction. By investigating whether and how animals enter into key processes that shape self and society we may determine the ways in which animals might be included in the core subject matter of sociology. An earlier discussion of the role of animals in sociology initiated by Weber is reviewed. Issues that debate raised about the extent of linguistically‐mediated human‐animal intersubjectivity are updated. It is in principle difficult to rule out animal languages, and some animals have acquired human language. But sociology may follow a more fecund empirical route by examining successful human‐animal performances produced by enduring interspecies relationships. Following this route, this paper specifically argues that the human self should be seen to take root in the available mixed species community. To show this, the work of G.H. Mead is revisited and corrected in light of recent work on early human development, and conceptual analyses of language, the body, and the self. The formation of the self is not dependent on only linguistic exchanges; a nonverbal nonhuman other can contribute to the self‐reflective sense of being a human self. Based on this reasoning, examples of studies of humans with wild and domestic animals illustrate the potential for a human‐animal sociology.

Online news‐retrieval services have undergone rapid evolution in the past year. Public awareness of microcomputer‐based services available in homes and offices has increased tremendously. Both BRS and DIALOG have segmented their products to include separate, less expensive access for home micro‐computer users; both new services include some access to indexing of current‐events topics. The demise of the New York Times Information Service (NYTIS) as an independent vendor has left the marketing of its databases to Mead Data Central's NEXIS system. The void caused by the withdrawal of NYTIS has posed problems for its former users, and created opportunities for expansion of news‐retrieval services available on the large utilities. Additional databases have been introduced in the past year to cater to specialized audiences and markets. This paper summarizes the new developments which have occurred since publication of the author's survey of news‐retrieval systems in Reference Services Review one year ago.

In this chapter, Jeffrey Togman recounts how Home, an ethnographic film, which he directed, came to be made. While directing the film, Togman fluctuated between the various classical roles of the participant observer – complete observer, observer as participant, participant as observer, and complete participant. The camera and the microphone allow the researcher to record information in quantities and at speeds than are exponentially larger and faster than what can be accomplished by conventional note-taking, but the equipment is also more obtrusive and disruptive. The tyranny of the camera demands that the director puts it in a “real” place, and thus, it is the nature of ethnographic films to challenge generalizing, predictive theories of human behavior. Togman also presents the findings of his filmic project, stripped of its visual elements. The film's main character, Sheree Farmer, a single mother of six children, tries to get her family out of public housing in Newark, New Jersey. With the help of Mary Abernathy, a former fashion executive turned community activist, Sheree endeavors to purchase her own home. As Sheree struggles to clear her credit and qualify for a mortgage, it becomes clear that she faces more than material obstacles to becoming a homeowner.

Photographs have been used in ethnography for some time now; Pink (2001, p. 49) has argued that the camera has become a ‘mandatory element’ of the ‘ethnographer's toolkit’. Photographs were primarily used in ethnographic studies as mere illustrations or to add authenticity to the written text (Davies, 1999). But as time has progressed, the photograph has moved from the ‘sidelines’ of ethnography to claim a more central position. One of the first studies to use the visual as a central method in the ethnographic process was the study ‘Balinese Character’ completed by Bateson and Mead (1942). Davies (1999) reports that their use of the visual was central to the research process; it was as much a part of the collection of data as it was the analysis and the final written report. Pink (2001) suggests that due to these advances in visual research it is now possible to speak of a ‘visual ethnography’.