Overview
- This book is open access, which means that you have free and unlimited access
- Offers a timely exploration of figure and figuration, by leading and emerging scholars from a variety of backgrounds
- Includes case studies of complex phenomena such as AI, pollution, care of breast cancer patients, and #MeToo
- Contributes to new thinking in interdisciplinary studies and in a range of social science and humanities disciplines
Buy print copy
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
About this book
This open access book shows how figures, figuring, and configuration are used to understand complex, contemporary problems. Figures are images, numbers, diagrams, data and datasets, turns-of-phrase, and representations. Contributors reflect on the history of figures as they have transformed disciplines and fields of study, and how methods of figuring and configuring have been integral to practices of description, computation, creation, criticism and political action. They do this by following figures across fields of social science, medicine, art, literature, media, politics, philosophy, history, anthropology, and science and technology studies. Readers will encounter figures as various as Je Suis Charlie, #MeToo, social media personae, gardeners, asthmatic children, systems configuration management and cloud computing – all demonstrate the methodological utility and contemporary relevance of thinking with figures. This book serves as a critical guide to a world of figuresand a creative invitation to “go figure!”
Similar content being viewed by others
Keywords
Table of contents (13 chapters)
-
Front Matter
Reviews
“This fascinating collection opens up the figure of the “figure,” diving deep into its histories and ranging widely across its many contemporary lives. It is a boon for anyone interested in the strange power of figuration.”
—Nick Seaver, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Tufts University, USA
Editors and Affiliations
About the editors
Celia Lury is Professor in the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, University of Warwick. She has a long-standing interest in the ways in which “live” methods contribute to the enactment of social worlds. Her most recent book is Problem Spaces: How and Why Methodology Matters (2020).
William Viney is a research fellow in the Department of Anthropology, Goldsmiths, University of London, as part of the project “People Like You”: Contemporary Figures of Personalisation. His most recent book is Twins: Superstitions and Marvels, Fantasies and Experiments (2021).
Scott Wark is a research fellow for the Wellcome-funded project, “People Like You”: Contemporary Figures of Personalisation. He is based at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies at the University of Warwick. His main research focus is on online culture.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Figure
Book Subtitle: Concept and Method
Editors: Celia Lury, William Viney, Scott Wark
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2476-7
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Singapore
eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2022
Hardcover ISBN: 978-981-19-2475-0Published: 27 October 2022
Softcover ISBN: 978-981-19-2478-1Published: 27 October 2022
eBook ISBN: 978-981-19-2476-7Published: 26 October 2022
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XV, 283
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations, 11 illustrations in colour
Topics: Sociology, general, Anthropology, Social Sciences, general, Cultural Studies, Media and Communication