Planetary Biostyles: Community-Making and Futures Design in the Age of Extremes

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.

Rodanthi Tzanelli, Professor of Sociology of Culture, School of Sociology and Social Policy and Co-Director of the Bauman Institute, University of Leeds, UK