Deborah Lupton - Böcker

We are living in a world in which the existence of risk is constantly debated, misinformation and disinformation are rife and spread quickly and easily through online media, and where governments and institutions continue to avoid taking decisive action even when there is general agreement that a serious threat exists. Understanding how people, social groups and social organizations understand, respond to and act on threats, hazards and dangers is more important than ever. In Risk, Deborah Lupton asserts the ongoing importance of the analysis of risk in our age of permacrisis and mounting scepticism about experts and science, calling for a ‘re-turn’ to risk theory in the social sciences.The book outlines the three major approaches to risk in social and cultural theory, devoting a chapter to each. The first approach draws upon the work of Mary Douglas to articulate the cultural/symbolic perspective on risk. The second approach is that of the risk society perspective, based on the writings of Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens. The third approach covered is that of the governmentality perspective, which builds on Michel Foucault’s work. Three other chapters examine in detail the relationship between concepts of risk and concepts of selfhood and the body, the notion of Otherness and how this influences the ways in which people respond to and think about risk, and the pleasures of voluntary risk-taking, including discussion of edgework. An entirely new chapter has been added to this edition, focusing on the risks posed by misinformation and denial in the context of climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic. This chapter discusses the politics of post-truth cultures and the powerful networks of actor and organizations that together work to challenge science and manufacture dissent against attempts to tackle these crises.This new edition of Risk is an essential introduction to the topic of risk for students and academics in the social sciences and humanities.

A prevailing excitement can be discerned in the medical and public health literature and popular media concerning the apparent ‘disruptive’ or ‘revolutionary’ potential of digital health technologies. Most of the wider social implications are often ignored or glossed over in such accounts. Critical approaches from within the social sciences that take a more measured perspective are important – including those that focus on risk. The contributors to this volume examine various dimensions of risk in the context of digital health. They identify that digital health devices and software offer the ability to configure new forms of risk, in concert with novel responsibilities. The contributions emphasise the sheer volume of detail about very personal and private elements of people’s lives, emotions and bodies that contemporary digital technologies can collect. They show that apps and other internet tools and forums provide opportunities for health and medical risks to be identified, publicised or managed, but also for unvalidated new therapies to be championed. Most of the authors identify the neoliberal ‘soft’ politics of digital health, in which lay people are encouraged (‘nudged’) to engage in practices of identifying and managing health risk in their own interests, and the victim-blaming that may be part of these discourses. This book was originally published as a special issue of Health, Risk and Society.

Self-tracking practices are part of many health and medical domains. The introduction of digital technologies such as smartphones, tablet computers, apps, social media platforms, dedicated patient support sites and wireless devices for medical monitoring has contributed to the expansion of opportunities for people to engage in self-tracking of their bodies and health and illness states. The contributors to this book cover a range of self-tracking techniques, contexts and geographical locations: fitness tracking using the wearable Fitbit device in the UK; English adolescent girls’ use of health and fitness apps; stress and recovery monitoring software and devices in a group of healthy Finns; self-monitoring by young Australian illicit drug users; an Italian diabetes self-care program using an app and web-based software; and ‘show-and-tell’ videos uploaded to the Quantified Self website about people’s experiences of self-tracking. Major themes running across the collection include the emphasis on self-responsibility and self-management on which self-tracking rationales and devices tend to rely; the biopedagogical function of self-tracking (teaching people about how to be both healthy and productive biocitizens); and the reproduction of social norms and moral meanings concerning health states and embodiment (good health can be achieved through self-tracking, while illness can be avoided or better managed). This book was originally published as a special issue of the Health Sociology Review.

Since its emergence in early 2020, the COVID-19 crisis has affected every part of the world. Well beyond its health effects, the pandemic has wrought major changes in people’s everyday lives as they confront restrictions imposed by physical distancing and consequences such as loss of work, working or learning from home and reduced contact with family and friends. This edited collection covers a diverse range of experiences, practices and representations across international contexts and cultures (UK, Europe, North America, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand). Together, these contributions offer a rich account of COVID society. They provide snapshots of what life was like for people in a variety of situations and locations living through the first months of the novel coronavirus crisis, including discussion not only of health-related experiences but also the impact on family, work, social life and leisure activities. The socio-material dimensions of quotidian practices are highlighted: death rituals, dating apps, online musical performances, fitness and exercise practices, the role of windows, healthcare work, parenting children learning at home, moving in public space as a blind person and many more diverse topics are explored. In doing so, the authors surface the feelings of strangeness and challenges to norms of practice that were part of many people’s experiences, highlighting the profound affective responses that accompanied the disruption to usual cultural forms of sociality and ritual in the wake of the COVID outbreak and restrictions on movement. The authors show how social relationships and social institutions were suspended, re-invented or transformed while social differences were brought to the fore. At the macro level, the book includes localised and comparative analyses of political, health system and policy responses to the pandemic, and highlights the differences in representations and experiences of very different social groups, including people with disabilities, LGBTQI people, Dutch Muslim parents, healthcare workers in France and Australia, young adults living in northern Italy, performing artists and their audiences, exercisers in Australia and New Zealand, the Latin cultures of Spain and Italy, Asian-Americans and older people in Australia. This volume will appeal to undergraduates and postgraduates in sociology, cultural and media studies, medical humanities, anthropology, political science and cultural geography.

Since its emergence in early 2020, the COVID-19 crisis has affected every part of the world. Well beyond its health effects, the pandemic has wrought major changes in people’s everyday lives as they confront restrictions imposed by physical distancing and consequences such as loss of work, working or learning from home and reduced contact with family and friends. This edited collection covers a diverse range of experiences, practices and representations across international contexts and cultures (UK, Europe, North America, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand). Together, these contributions offer a rich account of COVID society. They provide snapshots of what life was like for people in a variety of situations and locations living through the first months of the novel coronavirus crisis, including discussion not only of health-related experiences but also the impact on family, work, social life and leisure activities. The socio-material dimensions of quotidian practices are highlighted: death rituals, dating apps, online musical performances, fitness and exercise practices, the role of windows, healthcare work, parenting children learning at home, moving in public space as a blind person and many more diverse topics are explored. In doing so, the authors surface the feelings of strangeness and challenges to norms of practice that were part of many people’s experiences, highlighting the profound affective responses that accompanied the disruption to usual cultural forms of sociality and ritual in the wake of the COVID outbreak and restrictions on movement. The authors show how social relationships and social institutions were suspended, re-invented or transformed while social differences were brought to the fore. At the macro level, the book includes localised and comparative analyses of political, health system and policy responses to the pandemic, and highlights the differences in representations and experiences of very different social groups, including people with disabilities, LGBTQI people, Dutch Muslim parents, healthcare workers in France and Australia, young adults living in northern Italy, performing artists and their audiences, exercisers in Australia and New Zealand, the Latin cultures of Spain and Italy, Asian-Americans and older people in Australia. This volume will appeal to undergraduates and postgraduates in sociology, cultural and media studies, medical humanities, anthropology, political science and cultural geography.

This book shows how creative methods, drawing on innovative arts-based and design-based approaches, can be employed in health education contexts. It takes a very broad view of ‘health education’, considering it as applying not only in school settings but across the lifespan, and as including physical education and sexuality education as well as public health campaigns, health activist initiatives and programmes designed for training educators and health professionals. The chapters outline a series of case studies contributed by leaders in the field, describing projects using a wide variety of creative methods conducted in a variety of global contexts. These include a rich constellation of arts-based and design-based methods and artefacts: sculptures, dance, walking and other somatic movement, diaries, paintings, drawings, zines, poems and other creative writing, body maps, collages, stories, films, photographs, theatre performances, soundscapes, potions, rock gardens, brainstorming, debates, secret ballots, murals and graffiti walls. There are no rules or guidelines outlined in these contributions about ‘how to do’ creative approaches to health education. However, the methods in the case studies the authors describe are explained in detail so that they can be adopted or re-invented in other contexts. More importantly, these contributions provide inspiration. They demonstrate what can be done in the field of health education (however it is defined) to go beyond the often stultifying and conventional boundaries it has set for itself. Creative Approaches to Health Education demonstrates that creative approaches can be used to inspire those working and teaching in health education and their publics to think and do otherwise as well as advance health education research and pedagogies into new, exciting and provocative directions. It will be of interest to postgraduate students and researchers in education and health-related fields who want to explore and experiment with creative methods and craftivism in applied inquiry.

This book shows how creative methods, drawing on innovative arts-based and design-based approaches, can be employed in health education contexts. It takes a very broad view of ‘health education’, considering it as applying not only in school settings but across the lifespan, and as including physical education and sexuality education as well as public health campaigns, health activist initiatives and programmes designed for training educators and health professionals. The chapters outline a series of case studies contributed by leaders in the field, describing projects using a wide variety of creative methods conducted in a variety of global contexts. These include a rich constellation of arts-based and design-based methods and artefacts: sculptures, dance, walking and other somatic movement, diaries, paintings, drawings, zines, poems and other creative writing, body maps, collages, stories, films, photographs, theatre performances, soundscapes, potions, rock gardens, brainstorming, debates, secret ballots, murals and graffiti walls. There are no rules or guidelines outlined in these contributions about ‘how to do’ creative approaches to health education. However, the methods in the case studies the authors describe are explained in detail so that they can be adopted or re-invented in other contexts. More importantly, these contributions provide inspiration. They demonstrate what can be done in the field of health education (however it is defined) to go beyond the often stultifying and conventional boundaries it has set for itself. Creative Approaches to Health Education demonstrates that creative approaches can be used to inspire those working and teaching in health education and their publics to think and do otherwise as well as advance health education research and pedagogies into new, exciting and provocative directions. It will be of interest to postgraduate students and researchers in education and health-related fields who want to explore and experiment with creative methods and craftivism in applied inquiry.

This Open Access book brings the experiences of automation as part of quotidian life into focus. It asks how, where and when automated technologies and systems are emerging in everyday life across different global regions? What are their likely impacts in the present and future? How do engineers, policy makers, industry stakeholders and designers envisage artificial intelligence (AI) and automated decision-making (ADM) as solutions to individual and societal problems? How do these future visions compare with the everyday realities, power relations and social inequalities in which AI and ADM are experienced? What do people know about automation and what are their experiences of engaging with ‘actually existing’ AI and ADM technologies? An international team of leading scholars bring together research developed across anthropology, sociology, media and communication studies and ethnology, which shows how by rehumanising automation, we can gain deeper understandings of its societal impacts.The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license

This Open Access book brings the experiences of automation as part of quotidian life into focus. It asks how, where and when automated technologies and systems are emerging in everyday life across different global regions? What are their likely impacts in the present and future? How do engineers, policy makers, industry stakeholders and designers envisage artificial intelligence (AI) and automated decision-making (ADM) as solutions to individual and societal problems? How do these future visions compare with the everyday realities, power relations and social inequalities in which AI and ADM are experienced? What do people know about automation and what are their experiences of engaging with ‘actually existing’ AI and ADM technologies? An international team of leading scholars bring together research developed across anthropology, sociology, media and communication studies and ethnology, which shows how by rehumanising automation, we can gain deeper understandings of its societal impacts.The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license

This 1999 book presents a variety of exciting perspectives on the perception of risk and the strategies that people adopt to cope with it. Using the framework of recent social and cultural theory, it reflects the fact that risk has become integral to contemporary understandings of selfhood, the body and social relations, and is central to the work of writers such as Douglas, Beck, Giddens and the Foucauldian theorists. The contributors are all leading scholars in the fields of sociology, cultural and media studies and cultural anthropology. Combining empirical analyses with metatheoretical critiques, they tackle an unusually diverse range of topics including drug use, risk in the workplace, fear of crime and the media, risk and pregnant embodiment, the social construction of danger in childhood, anxieties about national identity, the governmental uses of risk and the relationship between risk phenomena and social order.

This 1999 book presents a variety of exciting perspectives on the perception of risk and the strategies that people adopt to cope with it. Using the framework of recent social and cultural theory, it reflects the fact that risk has become integral to contemporary understandings of selfhood, the body and social relations, and is central to the work of writers such as Douglas, Beck, Giddens and the Foucauldian theorists. The contributors are all leading scholars in the fields of sociology, cultural and media studies and cultural anthropology. Combining empirical analyses with metatheoretical critiques, they tackle an unusually diverse range of topics including drug use, risk in the workplace, fear of crime and the media, risk and pregnant embodiment, the social construction of danger in childhood, anxieties about national identity, the governmental uses of risk and the relationship between risk phenomena and social order.

Since 1981, AIDS has had an enormous impact upon the popular imagination. Few other diseases this century have been greeted with quite the same fear, loathing, and prejudice against those who develop it. The mass media, and in particular, the news media, have played a vital part in "making sense" of AIDS. This volume takes an interdisciplinary perspective, combining cultural studies, history of medicine, and contemporary social theory to examine AIDS reporting. There have been three major themes dominating coverage: the "gay-plague" dominant in the early 1980s, panic-stricken visions of the end of the world as AIDS was said to pose a threat to everyone, in the late 1980s; and a growing routinising of coverage in the 1990s. This book lays bare the sub-textual ideologies giving meaning to AIDS news reports, including anxieties about pollution and contagion, deviance, bodily control, the moral meanings of risk, the valorisation of drugs and medical science. Drawing together the work of cultural and politicaltheorists, sociologists and historians who have written about medicine, disease and the body, as well as that of theorists in Europe and the USA who have focused their attention specificaiiy on AIDS, this book explores the wide theoretical debate about the importance of language in the social construction of illness and disease. This text offers insights into the sociocultural context in which attitudes towards people with HIV or AIDS and people's perceptions of risk from HIV infection are developed and the responses of governments to the AIDS epidemic are formulated.

Risk and Everyday Life examines how people respond to, experience and think about risk as part of their everyday lives.

Bringing together original empirical research and sociocultural theory, the authors examine how people define risk and what risks they see as affecting them, for example in relation to immigration, employment and family life. They emphasise the need to take account of the cultural dimensions of risk and risk-taking to understand how risk is experienced as part of everyday life and consider the influence that gender, social class, ethnicity, sexual orientation, occupation, geographical location and nationality have on our perceptions and experience of risk.

Drawing on the work of key theorists - Ulrich Beck, Scott Lash, and Mary Douglas - the authors examine and critique theories of risk in the light of their own research and presents case studies which show how notions of risk interact with day-to-day concerns.

Risk and Everyday Life examines how people respond to, experience and think about risk as part of their everyday lives.

Bringing together original empirical research and sociocultural theory, the authors examine how people define risk and what risks they see as affecting them, for example in relation to immigration, employment and family life. They emphasise the need to take account of the cultural dimensions of risk and risk-taking to understand how risk is experienced as part of everyday life and consider the influence that gender, social class, ethnicity, sexual orientation, occupation, geographical location and nationality have on our perceptions and experience of risk.

Drawing on the work of key theorists - Ulrich Beck, Scott Lash, and Mary Douglas - the authors examine and critique theories of risk in the light of their own research and presents case studies which show how notions of risk interact with day-to-day concerns.

`It is a very impressive book. Its coverage of contemporary discourses of fatherhood is comprehensive. The theoretical stance is one that allows for complexity and fluidity. The authors write well, making even esoteric sociological and cultural theory accessible. I recommend it' - British Journal of Social Work

Constructing Fatherhood provides an analysis of the social, cultural and symbolic meanings of fatherhood in contemporary western societies. The authors draw on poststructuralist theory to analyze the representation of fatherhood in the `expert' literature of psychology, sociology and the health sciences, and in popular sources such as television, film, advertisements and child-care and parenting manuals and magazines. Men's own accounts of first-time fatherhood are also drawn upon, including four individual case studies.

`It is a very impressive book. Its coverage of contemporary discourses of fatherhood is comprehensive. The theoretical stance is one that allows for complexity and fluidity. The authors write well, making even esoteric sociological and cultural theory accessible. I recommend it' - British Journal of Social Work

Constructing Fatherhood provides an analysis of the social, cultural and symbolic meanings of fatherhood in contemporary western societies. The authors draw on poststructuralist theory to analyze the representation of fatherhood in the `expert' literature of psychology, sociology and the health sciences, and in popular sources such as television, film, advertisements and child-care and parenting manuals and magazines. Men's own accounts of first-time fatherhood are also drawn upon, including four individual case studies.

Petersen and Lupton focus critically on the new public health, assessing its implications for the concepts of self, embodiment and citizenship. They argue that the new public health is used as a source of moral regulation and for distinguishing between self and other. They also explore the implications of modernist belief in the power of science and the ability of experts to solve problems through rational administrative means that underpin the strategies and rhetoric of the new public health.

`This addition to a growing number of texts which approach emotions and emotionality from a social constructionist perspective is well written, scholarly, accessible and interesting....

There is both breadth and depth to this work.' - Feminism and Psychology

This broad-ranging and accessible book brings together social and cultural theory with original empirical research into the nature of the emotional self in contemporary western societies.

The emphasis of the analysis is on the emotional self as a dynamic project that is continually shaped and reshaped via discourse, embodied sensations, memory, personal biography and interactions with others and objects. Using an interdisciplinary approach, Deborah Lupton draws on a number of sociocultural approaches that adopt a post-structuralist perspective. She strongly emphasizes language and discourse as they construct and express concepts of the self and the emotions, whilst also acknowledging the sensual, embodied and unconscious dimensions of emotional experience.

`This addition to a growing number of texts which approach emotions and emotionality from a social constructionist perspective is well written, scholarly, accessible and interesting....

There is both breadth and depth to this work.' - Feminism and Psychology

This broad-ranging and accessible book brings together social and cultural theory with original empirical research into the nature of the emotional self in contemporary western societies.

The emphasis of the analysis is on the emotional self as a dynamic project that is continually shaped and reshaped via discourse, embodied sensations, memory, personal biography and interactions with others and objects. Using an interdisciplinary approach, Deborah Lupton draws on a number of sociocultural approaches that adopt a post-structuralist perspective. She strongly emphasizes language and discourse as they construct and express concepts of the self and the emotions, whilst also acknowledging the sensual, embodied and unconscious dimensions of emotional experience.

In this wide-ranging and thought-provoking analysis of the sociocultural and personal meanings of food and eating, Deborah Lupton explores the relationship between food and embodiment, the emotions and subjectivity. She includes discussion of the intertwining of food, meaning and culture in the context of childhood and the family, as well as: the gendered social construction of foodstuffs; food tastes, dislikes and preferences; the dining-out experience; spirituality; and the `civilized' body. She draws on diverse sources, including representations of food and eating in film, literature, advertising, gourmet magazines, news reports and public health literature, and her own empirical research into people's preferences, memories, experiences and emotional responses to food.

Food, the Body and the Self's strong interdisciplinary approach incorporates discussion of the work of a number of major contemporary social and cultural theorists, including Bourdieu, Elias, Kristeva, Grosz, Falk and Foucault.

In this reappraisal of public health and health promotion in contemporary societies, Deborah Lupton explores public health and health promotion using contemporary sociocultural and political theory, particularly that building on Foucault's writings on subjectivity, embodiment and power relations. The author examines the implications of the new social theories for the study of health promotion and health communication to analyze the symbolic nature of public health practices, and explores their underlying meanings and assumptions.

In this reappraisal of public health and health promotion in contemporary societies, Deborah Lupton explores public health and health promotion using contemporary sociocultural and political theory, particularly that building on Foucault's writings on subjectivity, embodiment and power relations. The author examines the implications of the new social theories for the study of health promotion and health communication to analyze the symbolic nature of public health practices, and explores their underlying meanings and assumptions.

COVID Societies presents a compelling and accessible overview of key sociocultural theories that can help us make sense of the diverse, dynamic and complex elements of the COVID crisis. These include discussions of the political economy perspective; biopolitics; risk society and cultures; gender and queer theory; and more-than-human theory. The book provides insights into everyday life around the world as people battled with containing the pandemic and explores the broader historical, social, cultural and political contexts in which these responses have developed. COVID-19 is the most serious pandemic to affect the world in the past century. We have all lived in ‘COVID societies’, the long-term effects of which have yet to be experienced or imagined. The COVID crisis has affected countries, regions within countries and social groups within regions in strikingly different ways. These impacts are continually changing, just as the novel coronavirus has mutated into different strains and variants. Throughout the book, a series of intertwined threads cross back and forth between the macropolitical and micropolitical dimensions of COVID-19: contagion, death, risk, uncertainty, fear, social inequalities, stigma, blame and power relations. Overarching these threads are five complementary themes: the historicity of COVID societies; the tension between local specificities and globalising forces; the control and management of human bodies; the boundary between Self and Other; and the continuously changing sociomaterial environments in which the world is living with and through the shocks of the COVID crisis.This book will be of great interest to anyone seeking to understand the manifold complex sociocultural consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.

COVID Societies presents a compelling and accessible overview of key sociocultural theories that can help us make sense of the diverse, dynamic and complex elements of the COVID crisis. These include discussions of the political economy perspective; biopolitics; risk society and cultures; gender and queer theory; and more-than-human theory. The book provides insights into everyday life around the world as people battled with containing the pandemic and explores the broader historical, social, cultural and political contexts in which these responses have developed. COVID-19 is the most serious pandemic to affect the world in the past century. We have all lived in ‘COVID societies’, the long-term effects of which have yet to be experienced or imagined. The COVID crisis has affected countries, regions within countries and social groups within regions in strikingly different ways. These impacts are continually changing, just as the novel coronavirus has mutated into different strains and variants. Throughout the book, a series of intertwined threads cross back and forth between the macropolitical and micropolitical dimensions of COVID-19: contagion, death, risk, uncertainty, fear, social inequalities, stigma, blame and power relations. Overarching these threads are five complementary themes: the historicity of COVID societies; the tension between local specificities and globalising forces; the control and management of human bodies; the boundary between Self and Other; and the continuously changing sociomaterial environments in which the world is living with and through the shocks of the COVID crisis.This book will be of great interest to anyone seeking to understand the manifold complex sociocultural consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.

We are living in a world in which the existence of risk is constantly debated, misinformation and disinformation are rife and spread quickly and easily through online media, and where governments and institutions continue to avoid taking decisive action even when there is general agreement that a serious threat exists. Understanding how people, social groups and social organizations understand, respond to and act on threats, hazards and dangers is more important than ever. In Risk, Deborah Lupton asserts the ongoing importance of the analysis of risk in our age of permacrisis and mounting scepticism about experts and science, calling for a ‘re-turn’ to risk theory in the social sciences.The book outlines the three major approaches to risk in social and cultural theory, devoting a chapter to each. The first approach draws upon the work of Mary Douglas to articulate the cultural/symbolic perspective on risk. The second approach is that of the risk society perspective, based on the writings of Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens. The third approach covered is that of the governmentality perspective, which builds on Michel Foucault’s work. Three other chapters examine in detail the relationship between concepts of risk and concepts of selfhood and the body, the notion of Otherness and how this influences the ways in which people respond to and think about risk, and the pleasures of voluntary risk-taking, including discussion of edgework. An entirely new chapter has been added to this edition, focusing on the risks posed by misinformation and denial in the context of climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic. This chapter discusses the politics of post-truth cultures and the powerful networks of actor and organizations that together work to challenge science and manufacture dissent against attempts to tackle these crises.This new edition of Risk is an essential introduction to the topic of risk for students and academics in the social sciences and humanities.

Living Futures offers a fresh and exciting perspective on how people imagine and make futures as part of their everyday lives. It addresses important questions about who is included in futures thinking and futures making, and who is excluded.Bringing together historical, anthropological, sociological, geographical and arts-based perspectives, this book provides a pithy yet expansive overview of social theories, research and creative approaches applied to futures thinking. Global practices and traditions of divination, fortune-telling and speculation from antiquity to the present day are investigated for how they help people deal with uncertainty and engage with the yet-to-come, while also serving political and economic objectives. The book emphasises the plasticity of temporalities and lived experiences across diverse social groups together with the role of the creatures, things, landscapes, and ecosystems with which we share our futures. The concluding chapter integrates the insights offered from each of the fields of research discussed in the book, providing ideas to spark vibrant and transformative approaches to creative futuring.Living Futures will appeal to academics and students interested in the history, sociology, anthropology and geography of futures, futures studies, possibility studies, anticipation studies, design and forecasting, as well as anyone interested in how innovative social research and creative approaches offer new insights into futures thinking.

Living Futures offers a fresh and exciting perspective on how people imagine and make futures as part of their everyday lives. It addresses important questions about who is included in futures thinking and futures making, and who is excluded.Bringing together historical, anthropological, sociological, geographical and arts-based perspectives, this book provides a pithy yet expansive overview of social theories, research and creative approaches applied to futures thinking. Global practices and traditions of divination, fortune-telling and speculation from antiquity to the present day are investigated for how they help people deal with uncertainty and engage with the yet-to-come, while also serving political and economic objectives. The book emphasises the plasticity of temporalities and lived experiences across diverse social groups together with the role of the creatures, things, landscapes, and ecosystems with which we share our futures. The concluding chapter integrates the insights offered from each of the fields of research discussed in the book, providing ideas to spark vibrant and transformative approaches to creative futuring.Living Futures will appeal to academics and students interested in the history, sociology, anthropology and geography of futures, futures studies, possibility studies, anticipation studies, design and forecasting, as well as anyone interested in how innovative social research and creative approaches offer new insights into futures thinking.

We now live in a digital society. New digital technologies have had a profound influence on everyday life, social relations, government, commerce, the economy and the production and dissemination of knowledge. People’s movements in space, their purchasing habits and their online communication with others are now monitored in detail by digital technologies. We are increasingly becoming digital data subjects, whether we like it or not, and whether we choose this or not.The sub-discipline of digital sociology provides a means by which the impact, development and use of these technologies and their incorporation into social worlds, social institutions and concepts of selfhood and embodiment may be investigated, analysed and understood. This book introduces a range of interesting social, cultural and political dimensions of digital society and discusses some of the important debates occurring in research and scholarship on these aspects. It covers the new knowledge economy and big data, reconceptualising research in the digital era, the digitisation of higher education, the diversity of digital use, digital politics and citizen digital engagement, the politics of surveillance, privacy issues, the contribution of digital devices to embodiment and concepts of selfhood and many other topics.Digital Sociology is essential reading not only for students and academics in sociology, anthropology, media and communication, digital cultures, digital humanities, internet studies, science and technology studies, cultural geography and social computing, but for other readers interested in the social impact of digital technologies.

We now live in a digital society. New digital technologies have had a profound influence on everyday life, social relations, government, commerce, the economy and the production and dissemination of knowledge. People’s movements in space, their purchasing habits and their online communication with others are now monitored in detail by digital technologies. We are increasingly becoming digital data subjects, whether we like it or not, and whether we choose this or not.The sub-discipline of digital sociology provides a means by which the impact, development and use of these technologies and their incorporation into social worlds, social institutions and concepts of selfhood and embodiment may be investigated, analysed and understood. This book introduces a range of interesting social, cultural and political dimensions of digital society and discusses some of the important debates occurring in research and scholarship on these aspects. It covers the new knowledge economy and big data, reconceptualising research in the digital era, the digitisation of higher education, the diversity of digital use, digital politics and citizen digital engagement, the politics of surveillance, privacy issues, the contribution of digital devices to embodiment and concepts of selfhood and many other topics.Digital Sociology is essential reading not only for students and academics in sociology, anthropology, media and communication, digital cultures, digital humanities, internet studies, science and technology studies, cultural geography and social computing, but for other readers interested in the social impact of digital technologies.