Anxiety Culture: The New Global State of Human Affairs

A collection of timely essays on the rising wave of anxiety in culture.

The twenty-first century is characterized by uncertainty: from catastrophic climate change to the accelerating pace of technological change, societies around the world are gripped by anxiety about the future. In Anxiety Culture, editors John Allegrante, Ulrich Hoinkes, Michael Schapira, and Karen Struve bring together a distinguished group of international scholars to examine the forces that increase anxiety as a phenomenon beyond solely individual experiences of clinical anxiety to pervade global culture.

These trenchant essays examine our culture of anxiety across diverse avenues of society. Covering fears related to climate change, populist and extremist movements around the world, gun violence, artificial intelligence, and more, contributors also examine how anxiety is expressed in literature and the media and how a culture of anxiety affects policymaking. Chapters are organized into five sections: disciplinary perspectives on anxiety, climate change and the environment, population health and social well-being, migration, and technology.

There's room for hope, however. Contributors provide pragmatic recommendations for coping with anxiety culture in public education, governments, and NGOs. Anxiety Culture is a unique attempt to define this condition and an indispensable resource for those seeking stability in an unstable age, providing a set of conceptual and practical narratives for navigating both existing and emergent planetary challenges.

Contributors: Kristina Allgoewer, Bryndis Asgeirsdottir, John Baldacchino, Christine Blaettler, Michel Bourban, Dominic Boyer, Eva J. Dauss?, Nicholas Freudenberg, Monica van der Haagen-Wulff, Kelsey Hudson, Karena Kalmbach, Emmanuel Kattan, Markus Lemmens, Eric Lewandowski, Rapha?l Liogier, Roman Marek, Christian Martin, Paul Mecheril, Angelika Messner, Caine C. A. Meyers, Julie Mostov, Dirk Nabers, Frauke Nees, Konrad Ott, Sonali Rajan, Julie Reshe, B?rbara Rovir?, Renata Selecl, Inga Dora Sigfusdottir, Frank Stengel, Ingibjorg Eva Thorisdottir, Maren Urner, Iris Wieczorek, Zhao Xudong, Liya Yu

John P. Allegrante (NEW YORK, NY), an applied behavioral scientist, is the Charles Irwin Lambert professor of health behavior and education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Ulrich Hoinkes (KIEL, GERMANY) is a Romance philologist, a linguist, and a professor of Romance studies and teacher education at the Christian-Albrechts University of Kiel. Michael Schapira (ST. ANDREWS, SCOTLAND) is an independent scholar and the author of University in Crisis: From the Middle Ages to the University of Excellence. Karen Struve (BREMEN, GERMANY) is a professor of Franco-Romance and literary studies at the University of Bremen.