This article discusses the contribution of Peter Sloterdijk’s theory of spheres to organization theory. Specifically, I apply Sloterdijk’s sphereological notion of foam to obtain a new perspective on organizations. It is argued that a foam-theoretical approach provides a simultaneous focus on organizational dynamics of affective imitation, on the spatial and architectural dimensions of organizations and, finally, on the politics of organizational atmospheres. The article opens with a brief introduction to Sloterdijk’s sphere theory and then proceeds by applying his notion of foam to organizations. This includes a comparison between the foam-theoretical angle and existing perspectives in organization theory. Next I discuss Sloterdijk’s analyses of the spatiality of foam. In the final part of the article, I argue for taking seriously the politics and management of organizational atmospheres.

This article explores the relationship between bodily rhythms and market rhythms in two distinctly different financial market configurations, namely the open-outcry pit (prevalent especially in the early 20th century) and present-day high-frequency trading. Drawing on Henri Lefebvre's rhythmanalysis, we show how traders seek to calibrate their bodily rhythms to those of the market. We argue that, in the case of early-20th-century open-outcry trading pits, traders tried to enact a total merger of bodily and market rhythms. We also demonstrate how, in the 1920s and '30s, market observers began to respond to a widely perceived problem, namely that market rhythms might be contagious and that some form of separation of bodily and market rhythms might therefore be needed. Finally, we show how current high-frequency trading, despite being purely algorithmic, does not render the traders' bodies irrelevant. Yet high-frequency trading does change the role of the body rather than seeking to attune their bodies to the markets, high-frequency traders seek to calibrate their bodies to their algorithms. While the article demonstrates the usefulness of deploying Lefebvre's rhythmanalysis in analyses of financial markets, it also suggests that high-frequency trading in particular might produce new types of market rhythms that, contra Lefebvre, do not revolve around traders' bodies.

The Flash Crash of 6 May 2010 has an interesting status in discussions of high-frequency trading, i.e. fully automated, superfast computerized trading: it is invoked both as an important illustration of how this field of algorithmic trading operates and, more often, as an example of how fully automated trading algorithms are prone to run amok in unanticipated frenzy. In this article, I discuss how and why the Flash Crash is being invoked as a significant event in debates about high-frequency trading and algo-financial markets. I analyze the mediatization of the event, as well as the variety of eventalizations of the Flash Crash, i.e. the different ways in which the Flash Crash is being mobilized as an illustrative event. I further critically discuss the impact often associated 2 with the Flash Crashand on that basis, inquire into why the event nonetheless attracts so much attention. I suggest that a key reason why the Flash Crash is widely discussed is that eventalizations of 6 May 2010 evoke familiar tropes about the fear of technology and the fear of herding. Finally, and given their emphasis on herding, I argue that the Flash Crash eventalizations may contribute to economic sociology discussions about resonance in quantitative finance.

To investigate the response to endurance training on physiological characteristics, 10 Nandi town boys and 14 Nandi village boys 16.5 and 16.6 years of age, respectively, from western Kenya performed 12 weeks of running training. The study was performed at altitude ( $ 2000 m.a.s.l. $ 595 mm Hg). Training heart rate and speed were registered during every training session throughout the entire training period. While town and village boys trained at similar heart rates (172.1 vs. 172.5 beats min À 1 ), the training speed of the town boys was 9% lower compared with the village boys (12.4 vs. 13.6 km h À 1 , Po0.001). Significant increases in VO 2max were observed in the town boys (from 50.3 to 55.6 mL kg À 1 min À 1 , Po0.001) and in village boys (from 56.0 to 59.1 mL kg À 1 min À 1 , Po0.002). Significant decreases in submaximal heart rate (from 172.4 to 160.3 beats min À 1 (Po0.005)), blood lactate (from 2.7 to 1.4 mmol L À 1 (Po0.005)) and ammonia concentration (from 102.0 to 71.4 lmol L À 1 (Po0.01)) at 9.9 km h À 1 were observed in the town boys, while similar decreases in heart rate (from 170.2 to 159.2 beats min À 1 (Po0.001)), blood lactate (from 2.4 to 1.4 mmol L À 1 (Po0.001)) and ammonia concentration (from 102.5 to 72.7 lmol L À 1 (Po0.001)) at 10.9 km h À 1 were observed in the village boys. The oxygen cost of running was decreased from 221.5 to 211.5 mL kg À 1 km À 1 (Po0.03) in the town boys and from 220.1 to 207.2 mL kg À 1 km À 1 (Po0.01) in the village boys. The 5000 m performance time of the town boys was significantly greater than that of the village boys (20.25 vs. 18.42 min (P 5 0.01)). It is concluded that no difference was observed in trainability with respect to VO 2max , running economy, submaximal heart rate, and submaximal blood lactate and ammonia concentration between Kenyan Nandi town and village boys. The higher performance level of the village boys was likely due to a higher VO 2max of these boys.

When sociology emerged as a discipline in the late nineteenth century, the problem of crowds constituted one of its key concerns. It was argued that crowds shook the foundations of society and led individuals into all sorts of irrational behaviour. Yet crowds were not just something to be fought in the street, they also formed a battleground over how sociology should be demarcated from related disciplines, most notably psychology. In The Politics of Crowds, Christian Borch traces sociological debates on crowds and masses from the birth of sociology until today, with a particular focus on the developments in France, Germany and the USA. The book is a refreshing alternative history of sociology and modern society, observed through society's other, the crowd. Borch shows that the problem of crowds is not just of historical interest: even today the politics of sociology is intertwined with the politics of crowds.

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This article challenges the negative image that, since the late 19th century, has been associated with crowds, and it does so by focusing on a number of bodilyanatomic aspects of crowd behavior. I first demonstrate that the work of one of the leading crowd psychologists, Gustave Le Bon, instigated a racist body politics. As a contrast to Le Bon's political program, I examine Walt Whitman's poetry and argue that the crowd may embody a democratic vision that emphasizes the social and political import of sexuality and body-to-body contact. Further, I dispute classical crowd theory's idea of an antagonistic relationship between crowds and individuality. Following Elias Canetti, I claim instead that the bodily compression of crowds in fact liberates individuals and creates a democratic transformation. The analysis results in a rehabilitation of crowds and briefly suggests how a reinterpretation of crowd behavior may inform current debates in social theory.A number of interventions in current social and political theory center on the old relationship between the many and the singular that is articulated with the notion of crowds. In his recent book, On Populist Reason (2005), for example, Ernesto Laclau takes recourse to classical crowd theory from Gustave Le Bon to Sigmund Freud and employs the latter's group psychology to analyze contemporary populism. Another illustration of the present interest in crowds and crowd theory is Jeffrey Schnapp's (2005) intriguing collection of political posters, covering the time span from 1914 to 1989. Schnapp convincingly demonstrates how visual representations of crowds have not only drawn upon theoretical models; these models have themselves been transformed and enacted in sophisticated political propaganda all over the world. 1 A final index of crowd theory's recent revival is the attempt by Johann P. Arnason and David Roberts to change the fact that the work of one of this tradition's most original thinkers, Elias Canetti, is still "virtually ignored as a contribution to social theory" (2004:79).It is not my intention here to speculate on the causes of this resurgence of crowd theory. The aim of this article is rather to buttress this development by challenging two of the crucial reasons why crowds were feared in the late 19th century, namely, that crowds allegedly destabilize society and undermine individuality. In this article, I approach the claims about the crowd's two destabilizing tendencies by focusing on the bodily-anatomic aspects of crowds. This allows me, on the one hand, to pinpoint classical assumptions and concerns and, on the other hand, to offer a new *

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