Description
Book Synopsis* This engaging book examines how the ease with which modern social and media networks create a sense of intimacy which can be exploited by media, politicians and authority * An intriguing thesis on how media creates relations where we are constant watchers of the lives of others.
Trade Review"Encompassing topics as diverse as Mae West's fame and the consequences of Hurricane Katrina, Charles Dickens's novels and the dilemmas of modern democracy, Rojek's book is a tour-de-force of interdisciplinary social criticism. Ambitious in scope, brilliant in execution, it constitutes nothing less than a profound meditation on what it means to be a human being today."
David Inglis, University of Exeter
"Rojek has created yet another of his unique and insightful analyses of the contemporary world. As “familiar strangers” we live in a tenuous world built on presumed intimacy. One’s anger about this world builds as one progresses through the book and leads one to applaud Rojek’s call for, among other things, the veracity and emotional integrity that are increasingly being lost in our world of increasing presumed intimacy."
George Ritzer, University of Maryland
Table of Contents1. Living with Statistical Men and Women
2. Chimerical Risk Management
3. The Shockwaves of Trauma
4. The Lost Neighbour Proposition and the Collateral Damage Problem
5. Horizontal Frontierism: The Juggernaut of Character
6. The Accentuation of Personality
7. Vertical Frontierism: Four Case Studies
8. Cracks in the Mirror
9. The Gestural Economy
10. Institutional and Counter-Institutional Gestural Economies
11. Nuda Veritas
Notes
References
