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In this insightful and pathbreaking reflection on "doing nothing," Billy Ehn and Orvar Löfgren take us on a fascinating tour of what is happening when, to all appearances, absolutely nothing is happening. Sifting through a wide range of examples drawn from literature, published ethnographies, and firsthand research, they probe the unobserved moments in our daily lives—waiting for a bus, daydreaming by the window, performing a routine task—and illuminate these "empty" times as full of significance. Creative, insightful, and profound, The Secret World of Doing Nothing leads us to rethink the ordinary and find meaning in today's hypermodern reality

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Notes on Contributors -- Foreword -- 1 Introduction: The Mandrake Mode -- 2 Meditation, Magic and Spiritual Regeneration: Spas and the Mass Production of Serenity -- 3 Trick or Treatment: Brokers in Biotech -- 4 Possessed by Enterprise: Values and Value-creation in Mandrake Management -- 5 Catwalking and Coolhunting: The Production of Newness -- 6 Transformers: Hip Hotels and the Cultural Economics of Aura-production -- 7 Spectral Events: Attempts at Pattern Recognition -- 8 It's in the Mix: Configuring Industrial Cool -- 9 A Land of Milk and Money: The Dairy Counter in an Economy of Added Values -- 10 Flexible, Adaptable, Employable: Ethics for a New Labour Market -- Making Sense: An Afterword -- Index.

This book presents studies of ways in which people and organizations deal with the overflow of information, goods, or choices. The contributors explore two main themes. The first is the emergence of overflows: What is defined as overflow? Here the notion of framing as coined by Michel Callon has guided our approach. There is no overflow until some flow has been framed; framing means defining, and defining means imposing borders. Who does it, how, and why? The answer to these questions necessitates an historical and comparative approach. What one culture defines as necessity, another may see as excess, and these differences can exist even between different levels of the same social hierarchy. The second theme is the management of overflows, in the double meaning of the term: as controlling and as coping. Coping with overflow means learning to live with it; controlling overflow requires various skills and devices. The individual chapters show the management of overflow taking place in various social settings, periods, and political contexts: From the attempts of states to manage future consumption overflow in post-war Eastern European to the contemporary economies of sharing. Other contributions focus on overflow in healthcare administration, overflow problems in mass travel and migration, overflow in digital services, and the overflow that scholars face in dealing with an abundance of research information and publications. This edited volume belongs to the transdisciplinary social sciences, and therefore it should be of interest to sociologists, management scholars, economists, historians, anthropologists, and cultural studies scholars.

This transdisciplinary volume investigates the ways in which people and organisations deal with the overflow of information, goods or choices. It explores two main themes: the emergence of overflows and the management of overflows, in the sense of either controlling or coping with them. Individual chapters show the management of overflows taking place in various social settings, periods and political contexts. This includes attempts by states to manage future consumption overflow in post-war Easter European, contemporary economies of sharing, managing overflow in health care administration, overflow problems in mass travel and migration, overflow in digital services and the overflow that scholars face in dealing with an abundance of publications.

Résumé L'étude culturelle des émotions se développe dans l'ethnologie contemporaine de la Suède. Cet article explore un contexte dans lequel les émotions sont souvent réprimées, voire « taboues » : le monde universitaire. Comment la jalousie, la fierté, la passion ou l'ennui sont-ils exprimés ou réprimés au quotidien ? Pourquoi le ton ironique est-il un style de communication si répandu parmi les enseignants-chercheurs ? L'article montre, à partir d'une plus vaste étude sur l'université, comment les sentiments s'inscrivent dans les situations les plus banales – la pause-café, les plaisanteries ou les attitudes corporelles adoptées au cours des séminaires de recherche.