Hardback
Planetary Biostyles
Community-Making and Futures Design in the Age of Extremes
9781035346813 Edward Elgar Publishing
This innovative book addresses what ‘life’ is in scholarship and public culture, explores how it has been valued in the Anthropocene since the birth of critical theory, and designs a new approach to understanding biographical styles of life, or ‘biostyles’.
More Information
Critical Acclaim
Contents
More Information
This innovative book addresses what ‘life’ is in scholarship and public culture, explores how it has been valued in the Anthropocene since the birth of critical theory, and designs a new approach to understanding biographical styles of life, or ‘biostyles’.
By providing an alternative paradigmatic organisation of approaches to biopolitics, Rodanthi Tzanelli attempts a cross-disciplinary analysis of biopolitical issues arising from contemporary crises including overtourism, travel syndromes and hospitality in a mobile world. The study of communities emerging from this alternative mapping of these ‘biostyles’, is placed in ‘snapshots’ of extreme situations in tourism consumption, artwork, anti-museum design and technological reconfiguration. Global examples demonstrate different ways of approaching the Anthropocene, particularly by mobilising travel as an epistemological tool and incorporating popular culture into current debates.
This book is a key resource for students and academics specialising in futures studies, the sociology of culture, tourism and urban theory, and cultural methodologies. Its interdisciplinary approach also makes it an invaluable read for scholars in the fields of media, communications, and cultural and human geography.
By providing an alternative paradigmatic organisation of approaches to biopolitics, Rodanthi Tzanelli attempts a cross-disciplinary analysis of biopolitical issues arising from contemporary crises including overtourism, travel syndromes and hospitality in a mobile world. The study of communities emerging from this alternative mapping of these ‘biostyles’, is placed in ‘snapshots’ of extreme situations in tourism consumption, artwork, anti-museum design and technological reconfiguration. Global examples demonstrate different ways of approaching the Anthropocene, particularly by mobilising travel as an epistemological tool and incorporating popular culture into current debates.
This book is a key resource for students and academics specialising in futures studies, the sociology of culture, tourism and urban theory, and cultural methodologies. Its interdisciplinary approach also makes it an invaluable read for scholars in the fields of media, communications, and cultural and human geography.
Critical Acclaim
‘In a time of concatenating crises where “life” in both the sense of ecological health and of human meaning is under threat, how do we navigate? Tzanelli uses an imaginative examination of human mobility in all its forms and consequences to build a new, excoriating diagnosis of our current predicament. As if this were not enough, she also catalogues and critiques in great detail the diverse responses and solutions being offered and explored, ranging from the personal and intimate (biographical styles), to the grand and totalising (high theory and utopian schemes). She points out the dangers of the latter, challenging the reader to attend to the modest, careful and situated work of care in a complex, more-than-human planet whose dynamics will always exceed our grasp.’
– Bronislaw Szerszynski, Lancaster University, UK
‘Planetary Biostyles is a fascinating, timely and ambitious book. Instead of reproducing dystopic apocalypse imaginaries of collective extinction that foreclose any hope, it offers vital navigational tools to cope with the brokenness of the current world. The book will appeal to anyone interested in tourism studies, cultural theory, and critical posthumanism.’
– Olli Pyyhtinen, Tampere University, Finland
‘Rodanthi Tzanelli is a superb, thought-provoking thinker. This book requires concentration and immersion from its readers, but it rewards plentifully. Planetary Biostyles gives us a meta-perspective to rethink the world we live and act in, with tools and vocabulary that can help us transform mobility and tourism for the better.’
– Johan Edelheim, Hokkaido University, Japan
– Bronislaw Szerszynski, Lancaster University, UK
‘Planetary Biostyles is a fascinating, timely and ambitious book. Instead of reproducing dystopic apocalypse imaginaries of collective extinction that foreclose any hope, it offers vital navigational tools to cope with the brokenness of the current world. The book will appeal to anyone interested in tourism studies, cultural theory, and critical posthumanism.’
– Olli Pyyhtinen, Tampere University, Finland
‘Rodanthi Tzanelli is a superb, thought-provoking thinker. This book requires concentration and immersion from its readers, but it rewards plentifully. Planetary Biostyles gives us a meta-perspective to rethink the world we live and act in, with tools and vocabulary that can help us transform mobility and tourism for the better.’
– Johan Edelheim, Hokkaido University, Japan
Contents
Contents
PART I FOUNDATIONS AND ORIENTATIONS
1 Rethinking biopolitical imaginaries: styles and planetary
flows of life
2 Economies of attention and the design of viable planetary futures
PART II ‘DAMAGED’ HUMANITY
3 Anthropo-sensing and the anthropo-scenes of damaged
travel(lers)
4 Undoing the diagnostics of power, monstering (human) nature
5 Worldbreaking I and the project of recovery from power
PART III ‘DAMAGED’ EARTH
6 Introducing the geo-scene
7 Environmental imaginaria in the age of extinction:
theming and mytheming a biostylistic ghost
8 Worldbreaking II to document the future: monsters in
artificial paradise(s)
9 The planetary imperative after ‘modernity’: drifting and
wayfaring in the Critical Zone
Bibliography
PART I FOUNDATIONS AND ORIENTATIONS
1 Rethinking biopolitical imaginaries: styles and planetary
flows of life
2 Economies of attention and the design of viable planetary futures
PART II ‘DAMAGED’ HUMANITY
3 Anthropo-sensing and the anthropo-scenes of damaged
travel(lers)
4 Undoing the diagnostics of power, monstering (human) nature
5 Worldbreaking I and the project of recovery from power
PART III ‘DAMAGED’ EARTH
6 Introducing the geo-scene
7 Environmental imaginaria in the age of extinction:
theming and mytheming a biostylistic ghost
8 Worldbreaking II to document the future: monsters in
artificial paradise(s)
9 The planetary imperative after ‘modernity’: drifting and
wayfaring in the Critical Zone
Bibliography
