"It is simply too much" is a common complaint of the modern age. This book looks at how people and institutions deal with overflow - of information, consumption or choices. The essays explore the ways in which notions of overflow - framed in terms of excess and abundance or their implicit opposites, scarcity and dearth - crop up in a number of contexts such as sociological and economic theory, management consulting, consumer studies, and the politics of everyday life. Chapters range from studies of overload at home, at work or in the world of cyber information; strategies of coping with overflow in institutions such as news agencies; and historical comparisons. When, where, how and for whom is overflow a problem or a blessing?

What does a stockbroker in Istanbul navigating the rush of incoming trading figures have in common with a mother in Stockholm trying to organize a growing pile of baby clothes? They are both coping with excess or overflow. This book explores the ways in which institutions, corporations and individuals define and manage situations of 'too much' - too much information, too many choices, too many commodities or too many tasks. By analyzing a wide range of settings - from corporate firms and public administration to everyday domestic routines - the book offers an in-depth understanding of the complexities of overflow phenomena. It questions when, where and why overflow emerges and for whom this is a problem or a blessing. This broad introduction to a striking contemporary phenomenon will prove an enlightening read for a wide-ranging audience including academics and researchers in the disciplines of business and management, political science, economic history and sociology. Contributors: H. Brembeck, F. Cochoy, H. Corvellec, B. Czarniawska, M. Czubaj, P. Donatella, K.M. Ekstroem, S. Fellman, O. Loefgren, L. Noren, M. Pantzar, A. Popp, E. Raviola, R. Solli, E. Tarim, J. Wentzer, R. Willim

"It is simply too much" is a common complaint of the modern age. This book looks at how people and institutions deal with overflow - of information, consumption or choices. The essays explore the ways in which notions of overflow - framed in terms of excess and abundance or their implicit opposites, scarcity and dearth - crop up in a number of contexts such as sociological and economic theory, management consulting, consumer studies, and the politics of everyday life. Chapters range from studies of overload at home, at work or in the world of cyber information; strategies of coping with overflow in institutions such as news agencies; and historical comparisons. When, where, how and for whom is overflow a problem or a blessing?

What happens when economies 'heat up'? This book looks at the 1990s, years of intense economic experimentation, when buzz words such as 'network society', 'the experience economy', 'creative cities' and 'glocalization' were everywhere. A fascinating perspective on 'The New Economy' emerges as the authors explore the worlds of coolhunters, biotech brokers, career coaches, software entrepreneurs and event managers and tackle such questions as: - how is magic used in the quest for newness and change? - what happens when cultural techniques such as branding and styling colonize new arenas? - what turns out to be just a flash-in-the-pan and what has a lasting impact? This book is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand how economies operate in periods of rapid transformation.

What happens when economies 'heat up'? This book looks at the 1990s, years of intense economic experimentation, when buzz words such as 'network society', 'the experience economy', 'creative cities' and 'glocalization' were everywhere. A fascinating perspective on 'The New Economy' emerges as the authors explore the worlds of coolhunters, biotech brokers, career coaches, software entrepreneurs and event managers and tackle such questions as: - how is magic used in the quest for newness and change? - what happens when cultural techniques such as branding and styling colonize new arenas? - what turns out to be just a flash-in-the-pan and what has a lasting impact? This book is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand how economies operate in periods of rapid transformation.

What does a stockbroker in Istanbul navigating the rush of incoming trading figures have in common with a mother in Stockholm trying to organize a growing pile of baby clothes? They are both coping with excess or overflow. This book explores the ways in which institutions, corporations and individuals define and manage situations of 'too much' - too much information, too many choices, too many commodities or too many tasks. By analyzing a wide range of settings - from corporate firms and public administration to everyday domestic routines - the book offers an in-depth understanding of the complexities of overflow phenomena. It questions when, where and why overflow emerges and for whom this is a problem or a blessing. This broad introduction to a striking contemporary phenomenon will prove an enlightening read for a wide-ranging audience including academics and researchers in the disciplines of business and management, political science, economic history and sociology. Contributors: H. Brembeck, F. Cochoy, H. Corvellec, B. Czarniawska, M. Czubaj, P. Donatella, K.M. Ekstroem, S. Fellman, O. Loefgren, L. Noren, M. Pantzar, A. Popp, E. Raviola, R. Solli, E. Tarim, J. Wentzer, R. Willim

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. An electronic version of this book is available under a creative commons licence: manchesteropenhive.com/view/9789198469813/9789198469813.xml -- .

A rapidly growing number of double homes connect different parts of Europe in new ways. The second home can be a cottage in the woods, an apartment in the Costa del Sol or a restored farm house in Tuscany. However, other forms of double homes must be added to these landscapes of leisure. There are long distance commuters who spend most of their week in an overnight flat, in a caravan on a dreary parking lot or at a construction site. Economic migrants dream of a house 'back home' for vacations or retirement. Dual homes come in all shapes and sizes -- from the caravans of touring circus artists to people turning sailboats into a different kind of domestic space. This special issue of "Ethnologic Europaea" captures some dimensions of lives that are anchored in two different homes. How are such lives organised in time and space in terms of identification, belonging and emotion? How do they, in very concrete terms, render material transnational lives? The next issue of the journal (2008:1) will take such a comparative perspective into another direction as the authors will consider different kinds of research strategies to achieve European comparisons and to gain new cultural perspectives on European societies and everyday life.

"A fun book to read, witty and emotionally evocative without ever being sentimental or superficial. It focuses on the common experiences of tourism familiar to readers from any class or culture, and really enters the tourist imagination--in stark contrast to most other books I've read about tourism, which act like the tourists are some sort of exotic livestock."--Richard Wilk, author of "Economies and Cultures

"A pleasure to read. The author has accomplished the very difficult task of moving almost seamlessly from general observations to the specific, and from the observations of others through time to his personal experience."--Erve Chambers, editor of "Tourism and Culture

"Lofgren takes us down countless paths that we didn't know were there. . . . His interests seem wonderfully idiosyncratic. The issues that he deals with are thoroughly familiar, but the angle of his light is very new."--Stephen M. Fjellman, author of "Vinyl Leaves

What is Europe? Where is Europe? And what is Europe in the discipline of European ethnology? This issue of Ethnologic Europaea celebrates the journal's 40th birthday by looking at future paths for research on Europe. For a long time the disciplines grouped under the label of European ethnology were mainly national ethnologies. The need for European com-parisons lived more in the Sunday rhetoric of the discipline than in actual research, but with a new interest in transnational processes the perspectives have widened. The processes of economic unification also gave rise to research on facets of a Euro-pean culture, conditioned, for instance, by the administrative implementation of European economic and, increasingly, cultural policies. Local, regional and national cultural dimen-sions do not vanish in this development, of course, and neither do borders and boundaries, physical and mental. Processes of EU integration as well as globalisation may both weaken and strengthen national and regional borders, as we have seen during the last decades, but such developments call for a rethinking of Europe as a research field and also a questioning of ideas about Europe or European cultural homogeneity. The EU rhetoric about unity hides a more complex picture, where European integration and disintegration emerges in often surprising settings and forms.

Ethnologia Europaea has set itself the task of breaking down not only the barriers which divided research into Europe from general ethnology, but also the barriers between the various national schools within the continent. With this manifesto Ethnologia Europaea was started in 1969. Since then, it has acquired a central position in the international co-operation between ethnologists in the various European countries, in the East as well as the West. It is, however, a journal of topical interest, not only for ethnologists, but also for anthropologists, social historians and others studying the social and cultural forms of everyday life in recent and historical European societies.

In this insightful and pathbreaking reflection on 'doing nothing', Billy Ehn and Orvar Lofgren 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.

The numerous tasks and routines that shape our daily existence can seem mundane, even invisible-and yet they play an extremely powerful role in structuring and reproducing society. Exploring Everyday Life casts light on these so-called trivialities, serving as both a guide to the invisible world of the everyday and an instruction manual for first-time explorers. Ehn, Lofgren, and Wilk demonstrate how to use a broad array of ethnographic tools to discover, map, and document new and unexplored territories and guide readers through the process of cultural analysis. Their concrete examples shed light on how a study or paper assignment can evolve and point to how cultural analysis of everyday life can be practically applied in business, government, and other arenas outside of academia.

The numerous tasks and routines that shape our daily existence can seem mundane, even invisible-and yet they play an extremely powerful role in structuring and reproducing society. Exploring Everyday Life casts light on these so-called trivialities, serving as both a guide to the invisible world of the everyday and an instruction manual for first-time explorers. Ehn, Lofgren, and Wilk demonstrate how to use a broad array of ethnographic tools to discover, map, and document new and unexplored territories and guide readers through the process of cultural analysis. Their concrete examples shed light on how a study or paper assignment can evolve and point to how cultural analysis of everyday life can be practically applied in business, government, and other arenas outside of academia.