At a time when the mass media insist on bombarding us with news about natural, political and economic disasters, words, ideas and images associated with such “crises” and “catastrophes” shape to a great extent collective memory and current imagination. Fear and Fantasy in a Global World seeks to stir the debate on the processes and meanings of, as well as on the relations between, fear and fantasy in the globalized world. Collective fears and fantasies are analysed from a number of cross-disciplinary perspectives, promoted by the epistemological underpinnings of comparative literature. In various ways and from different disciplinary angles, the 17 essays here gathered respond to and scrutinize key questions related to the imaginaries of fear and fantasy, as well as their relations to trauma, crisis, anxiety, and representations of both the conscious and the unconscious. Contributors: Alexandra Hills, Ana Filipa Prata, Brecht de Groote, Christin Grunert, Christopher Bollas, Daniela Di Pasquale, David Vichnar, Edith Beltrán, Gero Guttzeit, Hande Gurses, Harriet Hulme, James Rushing Daniel, João Pedro da Costa, Margarita García Candeira, Marija Sruk, Martijn Boven, and Ortwin de Graef.

"In Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight, Eric Avila offers a unique argument about the restructuring of urban space in the two decades following World War II and the role played by new suburban spaces in dramatically transforming the political culture of the United States. Avila's work helps us see how and why the postwar suburb produced the political culture of 'balanced budget conservatism' that is now the dominant force in politics, how the eclipse of the New Deal since the 1970s represents not only a change of views but also an alteration of spaces."—George Lipsitz, author of The Possessive Investment in Whiteness

The media vampire has roots throughout the world, far beyond the shores of the usual Dracula-inspired Anglo-American archetypes. Depending on text and context, the vampire is a figure of anxiety and comfort, humor and fear, desire and revulsion. These dichotomies gesture the enduring prevalence of the vampire in mass culture; it can no longer articulate a single feeling or response, bound by time and geography, but is many things to many people. With a global perspective, this collection of essays offers something new and different: a much needed counter-narrative of the vampire's evolution in popular culture. Divided by geography, this text emphasizes the vampiric as a globetrotting citizen du monde rather than an isolated monster.

"The rise of China and its status as a leading global factory--combined with an increasing worldwide desire for inexpensive toys, clothes, and food--are altering the way people live and consume. At the same time, the world appears wary of the real costs of this desire: toys drenched in lead paint, dangerous medicines, and tainted pet food. Examining sites in China, including the plan for a new eco-city called Dongtan on the island of Chongming, suburbanization projects, and the Shanghai World Expo, JulieSze interrogates Chinese, European, and American 'eco-desire' and the eco-technological fantasies that underlie contemporary development of global cities and mega-suburbs. In doing so, she challenges readers to rethink how cities must undergo alterationsto become true 'eco-cities.' Sze frames her analysis of these case studies in the context of the problems of global economic change and climate crisis, and she explores the flows, fears, and fantasies of Pacific Rim politics that shaped plans for Dongtan. She looks at the flow of pollution from Asia to the United States (ten billion pounds of airborne pollutants annually). Simultaneously, she considers the flow of financial and political capital for eco-city and ecological development between elite powerstructures in the UK and China, and charts how climate change discussions align with US fears of China's ascendancy and the related demise of the American Century. Ultimately, Fantasy Islands examines how fears and fantasies about China and historical and political power change the American imagination."--Provided by publisher.

'Part-detective story, part-cultural snapshot . . . all bound by Gibson's pin-sharp prose' Arena -------------- THE FIRST NOVEL IN THE BLUE ANT TRILIOGY - READ ZERO HISTORY AND SPOOK COUNTRY FOR MORE Cayce Pollard has a new job. She's been offered a special project: track down the makers of an addictive online film that's lighting up the internet. Hunting the source will take her to Tokyo and Moscow and put her in the sights of Japanese hackers and Russian Mafia. She's up against those who want to control the film, to own it - who figure breaking the law is just another business strategy. The kind of people who relish turning the hunter into the hunted . . . A gripping spy thriller by William Gibson, bestselling author of Neuromancer. Part prophesy, part satire, Pattern Recognition skewers the absurdity of modern life with the lightest and most engaging of touches. Readers of Neal Stephenson, Ray Bradbury and Iain M. Banks won't be able to put this book down. -------------- 'Fast, witty and cleverly politicized' Guardian 'A big novel, full of bold ideas . . . races along like an expert thriller' GQ 'Dangerously hip. Its dialogue and characterization will amaze you. A wonderfully detailed, reckless journey of espionage and lies' USA Today 'A compelling, humane story with a sympathetic heroine searching for meaning and consolation in a post-everything world' Daily Telegraph 'Electric, profound. Gibson's descriptions of Tokyo, Russia and London are surreally spot-on' Financial Times

Modernity was supposed to be the period in human history when the fears that pervaded social life in the past could be left behind and human beings could at last take control of their lives and tame the uncontrolled forces of the social and natural worlds. And yet, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, we live again in a time of fear. Whether its the fear of natural disasters, the fear of environmental catastrophes or the fear of indiscriminate terrorist attacks, we live today in a state of constant anxiety about the dangers that could strike unannounced and at any moment. Fear is the name we give to our uncertainty in the face of the dangers that characterize our liquid modern age, to our ignorance of what the threat is and our incapacity to determine what can and can't be done to counter it. This new book by Zygmunt Bauman one of the foremost social thinkers of our time is an inventory of liquid modern fears. It is also an attempt to uncover their common sources, to analyse the obstacles that pile up on the road to their discovery and to examine the ways of putting them out of action or rendering them harmless. Through his brilliant account of the fears and anxieties that weigh on us today, Bauman alerts us to the scale of the task which we shall have to confront through most of the current century if we wish our fellow humans to emerge at its end feeling more secure and self-confident than we feel at its beginning.

"Fear and Fantasy in a Global World" is a collection of essays which examines the processes, meanings and relations between fear and fantasy in the globalized world, from bold interdisciplinary and comparative perspectives.