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The culture of twenty-first century America revolves around narcissistic death, violence, and visions of doom. Foster explores this culture of the apocalypse, from hoarding and gluttony to visions of the post-apocalyptic world.
The culture of twenty-first century America revolves around narcissistic death, violence, and visions of doom. Foster explores this culture of the apocalypse, from hoarding and gluttony to visions of the post-apocalyptic world.
The idea of America has always encouraged apocalyptic visions. The 'American Dream' has not only imagined the prospect of material prosperity; it has also imagined the end of the world. 'Final forecasts' constitute one of America's oldest literary genres, extending from the eschatological theology of the New England Puritans to the revolutionary discourse of the early republic, the emancipatory rhetoric of the Civil War, the anxious fantasies of the atomic age, and the doomsday digital media of today. For those studying the history of America, renditions of the apocalypse are simply unavoidable. This book brings together two dozen essays by prominent scholars that explore the meanings of apocalypse across different periods, regions, genres, registers, modes, and traditions of American literature and culture. It locates the logic and rhetoric of apocalypse at the very core of American literary history.
Increasing American fear about terrorism, environmental catastrophes, pandemics, and economic crises has fueled interest in "prepping": confronting disaster by mastering survivalist skills. This trend of self-reliance is not merely evidence of the American belief in the power of the individual; rather, this pragmatic shift away from expecting government aid during a disaster reflects a weakened belief in the bond between government and its citizens during a time of crisis. This ethnographic study explores the rise of the urban preppers' subculture in New York City, shedding light on the distinctive approach of city dwellers in preparing for disaster. With attention to the role of factors such as class, race, gender and one’s expectations of government, it shows that how one imagines Doomsday affects how one prepares for it. Drawing on participant observation, the author explores preppers’ views on the central question of whether to "bug out" or "hunker down" in the event of disaster, and examines the ways in which the prepper economy increases revenue by targeting concerns over developing skills, building networks, securing equipment and arranging a safe locale. A rich qualitative study, Bracing for the Apocalypse will appeal to scholars of sociology and anthropology with interests in urban studies, ethnography and subcultures.
After the End argues that the cultural imaginaries and practices of the Cold War continue to deeply shape the present in profound but largely unnoticed ways across the global North and in the global South. The argument draws examples from literature and literary criticism, film, music, the historical and social scientific record and past and present physical sites to consider the bunker as a material form, an image and as a fantasy that took shape in the global North in the 1960s and that spread globally into the twenty-first century. After the End reminds us not only that most of the world’s peoples have lived with or died from apocalyptic conditions for centuries, but that the Cold War imaginaries that grew from and fed those conditions, continue to survive as well.
In this insightful book, an underwater archaeologist and survival coach shows how understanding the collapse of civilizations can help us prepare for a troubled future. Pandemic, climate change, or war: our era is ripe with the odor of doomsday. In movies, books, and more, our imaginations run wild with visions of dreadful, abandoned cities and returning to the land in a desperate attempt at survival. In The Next Apocalypse, archaeologist Chris Begley argues that we completely misunderstand how disaster works. Examining past collapses of civilizations, such as the Maya and Rome, he argues that these breakdowns are actually less about cataclysmic destruction than they are about long processes of change. In short: it’s what happens after the initial uproar that matters. Some people abandon their homes and neighbors; others band together to start anew. As we anticipate our own fate, Begley tells us that it was communities, not lone heroes, who survived past apocalypses—and who will survive the next. Fusing archaeology, survivalism, and social criticism, The Next Apocalypse is an essential read for anxious times.
Consuming the Environment explores the environmental impacts of consuming everyday products and explains how we can consume more sustainably. Written in an accessible style, this book begins with our everyday mundane experiences of consuming products – online, in the grocery store, at the mall – and shows how these practices are connected to a global system dependent upon ever increasing consumption. Drawing on the expertise of researchers in topics such as energy, food, water, land, fashion, electronics, eco-tourism, green products, and (micro)plastics, this volume unpacks the complex and largely invisible relationships that consumerism has with resource extraction and manufacturing. By focusing on a diverse range of everyday consumer products, as well as more subtle things that have been transformed into products, such as knowledge, waste, and pets, the chapters are structured around the central argument that we must re-orient ourselves as citizens rather than consumers. It is as citizens that we may help to organize our communities and hold our governments and industry accountable to planetary sustainability boundaries. With the inclusion of summary boxes, directed discussion, assignment questions, and further reading in each chapter, this book will be an essential resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students studying courses on consumerism, sustainable consumption, and environmental sociology.
The Routledge Handbook of Waste Studies offers a comprehensive survey of the new field of waste studies, critically interrogating the cultural, social, economic, and political systems within which waste is created, managed, and circulated. While scholars have not settled on a definitive categorization of what waste studies is, more and more researchers claim that there is a distinct cluster of inquiries, concepts, theories and key themes that constitute this field. In this handbook the editors and contributors explore the research questions, methods, and case studies preoccupying academics working in this field, in an attempt to develop a set of criteria by which to define and understand waste studies as an interdisciplinary field of study. This handbook will be invaluable to those wishing to broaden their understanding of waste studies and to students and practitioners of geography, sociology, anthropology, history, environment, and sustainability studies.
Guns hold a complex place in American culture. Over 30,000 Americans die each year from gun violence, and guns are intimately connected to issues of public health, as is evident whenever a mass shooting occurs. But guns also play an important role in many Americans’ lives that is not reducible to violence and death—as tools, sporting equipment, and identity markers. They are also central to debates about constitutional rights, as seen in ongoing discussions about the Second Amendment, and they are a continuous source of legislative concern, as apparent in annual ratings of gun-supporting legislators. Even as guns are wrapped up with other crucial areas of concern, they are also fundamentally a rhetorical concern. Guns and gun violence occupy a unique rhetorical space in the United States, one characterized by silent majorities, like most gun owners; vocal minorities, like the firearm industry and gun lobby; and a stalemate that fails to stem the flood of the dead. How Americans talk, deliberate, and fight about guns is vital to how guns are marketed, used, and regulated. A better understanding of the rhetorics of guns and gun violence can help Americans make better arguments about them in the world. However, where guns are concerned, rhetorical studies is not terribly different from American culture more generally. Guns are ever-present and exercise powerful effects, but they are commonly talked about in oblique, unsystematic ways. Rhetoric and Guns advances more direct, systematic engagement in the field and beyond by analyzing rhetoric about guns, guns in rhetoric, and guns as rhetoric, particularly as they relate to specific instances of guns in culture. The authors attempt to understand rhetoric’s relationship to guns by analyzing rhetoric about guns and how they function in and as rhetoric related to specific instances—in media coverage, political speech, marketing, and advertising. Original chapters from scholars in rhetorical studies, communication, education, and related fields elucidate how rhetoric is used to maintain and challenge the deadly status quo of gun violence in the United States and extend rhetoricians’ sustained interest in the fields’ relationships to violence, brutality, and atrocity. Contributors: Ira J. Allen, Brian Ballentine, Matthew Boedy, Peter Buck, Lisa Corrigan, Rosa Eberly, Kendall Gerdes, Ian E. J. Hill, Nathalie Kuriowa-Lewis, Patricia Roberts-Miller, Craig Rood, Bradley Serber, Catherine R. Squires, Scott Gage