Routledge International Handbook of Failure

This Handbook examines the study of failure in social sciences, its manifestations in the contemporary world, and the modalities of dealing with it - both in theory and in practice. It draws together a comprehensive approach to failing, and invisible forms of cancelling out and denial of future perspectives.
Underlining critical mechanisms for challenging and reimagining norms of success in contemporary society, it allows readers to understand how contemporary regimes of failure are being formed and institutionalized in relation to policy and economic models, such as neo-liberalism. While capturing the diversity of approaches in framing failure, it assesses the conflations and shifts which have occurred in the study of failure over time.
Intended for scholars who research processes of inequality and invisibility, this Handbook aims to formulate a critical manifesto and activism agenda for contemporary society. Presenting an integrated view about failure, the Handbook will be an essential reading for students in sociology, social theory, anthropology, international relations and development research, organization theory, public policy, management studies, queer theory, disability studies, sports, and performance research.

List of contents

Introduction

1. FAIL! Are We Headed Towards Critical Failure Studies?

PART 1: Critical Failure Studies in the Making

2. Failure in Intercultural Communication

3. Entrepreneurial Failure Contextualized: Sociocultural Approaches

4. Fear of Failure in Athletes: Fanning the Fire of Sport Desire or Burning Out?

5. Career Failure: Forms and Levels of Analysis from a Sociological Perspective

6. Sociology of Failures in Clinical Trials

7. From Varieties of Failure to Failure Judgments: The Sociology of Valuation and Failure Studies

PART 2: Failure Regimes and Power

8. Failed Identities: On the Processes and Meanings of Unformed Alternate Selves

9. The Study of Failures and the Problem of Contingency

10. Successful Failure

11. The Theatre of Failure: Social Media's Role in Demonstrating Mundane Disruption

12. Economising Failure and Assembling a Failure Regime

13. Foreign Policy Failure: A Narrative Analysis

14. Valuing Plurality: Objectivist and Interpretivist Approaches to the Study of Mistakes and Failures in International Relations

PART 3: Restoring, Learning and Attributing Blame for Failure

15. Before Breakdown, After Repair: The Art of Maintenance

16. Cloud Backup and Restore: The Infrastructure of Digital Failure

17. Governance Failure, Metagovernance Failure, and the Pedagogy of Failure

18. Beyond Policy Accidents: Learning the Lessons of Policy Failures

19. Market Failures

20. Preventing Major Disasters: Success and Failure as Two Sides of the Same Coin

21. Blame Games: Stories of Crises, Causes, and Culprits

PART 4: Failure Trouble and Resistance in Neoliberalism

22. Counter-interpretations of Failure from Literature, Sociology and Social Philosophy

23. The Material Ecologies of Policy Failure: Ruptures of Bodies and of State

24. Financialization and Failure: Lessons from the Anxious University

25. Market Failures and Failed Marketization: Neoliberalism, Development and Poverty

26. Failing the States: The Fragility of the State-Failure Paradigm

27. Neoliberalism, Policy Failures, and the COVID-19 Crisis: Going Beyond Hirschman's Fracasomanía

PART 5: Post-Failure or Reimagined Failure?

28. Experiments as Successful Failures

29. How Science Fails Successfully

30. Politics, Sociology, and the "Inevitability" of Failure

31. Cripistemologies of the Body: Knowing through Disability

32. Beyond Failure: Queer Theory's Fallibilities

33. Gravity Matters: A Meditation on Falling and Failing

34. Crashing to Earth: Redefining Failure in a Time of Precarity

Afterword

35. Discovery and Inquiry Pathways to Navigating the Routledge International Handbook of Failure

About the author

Adriana Mica is an assistant professor at the University of Warsaw where she leads the Failure Lab. Her research interests include failure, possibility, ignorance, projectivity, and contingency in policymaking
Miköaj Pawlak is an associate professor at the Institute of Social Prevention and Resocialisation, University of Warsaw, where he leads the Chair of Sociology of Norms, Deviance and Social Control. His research interests cover new institutional theory, migration studies, and sociology of knowledge/ignorance.
Anna Horolets is an associate professor at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, University of Warsaw. Her research interests include critical discourse analysis, anthropology of tourism and migration, and leisure studies. She currently studies migrants' imaginaries of the good life.
Pawe¿ Kubicki is an associate professor at the Warsaw School of Economics where he leads the Department of Social Policy. He specializes in public policy analysis, particularly in disability studies, migration studies, and social exclusion, being involved in projects aimed at developing equalizing opportunities for persons with disabilities.

Summary

This Handbook examines the study of failure in social sciences, its manifestations in the contemporary world, and the modalities of dealing with it – both in theory and in practice. It draws together a comprehensive approach to failing, and invisible forms of cancelling out and denial of future perspectives.

Report

"Unlike most Handbooks in the social sciences, this one is groundbreaking and meets two difficult goals: one is to provide a comprehensive assessment of the emergent field of failure studies, and the second, which is to use the idea of failure to cast new light on many central problems of the social sciences, such as contingency, accountability, and economization. This Handbook is a milestone which will be widely read by researchers in many fields."
Arjun Appadurai, Professor Emeritus of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, USA
"In a comprehensive way, the Routledge International Handbook of Failure provides new insights from different perspectives on the important topic of failure. This handbook is of critical importance because it can help scholars and practitioners overcome a pervasive anti-failure bias that restricts our thinking and actions. I highly recommend this book."

Dean Shepherd, Ray and Milann Siegfried Professor of Entrepreneurship, University of Notre Dame, USA
"This new book on failure is a welcome addition to this fascinating and important topic. I hope it meets with great success."

Gary Wickham, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Murdoch University, Australia
"This handbook highlights what can only be described as a failure of imagination in the social sciences concerning the concept of failure itself. The Handbook's essays reframe our understanding of what the discourse of failure reveals and obscures. Far from being a self- evident concept-neutrally applied-the application of the pejorative, "failure," can too often prevent us from recognizing and seizing meaningful opportunities for advance or experimentation."

Ilene Grabel, Distinguished University Professor, University of Denver, USA

Product details

• Assisted by: Anna Horolets (Editor), Pawel Kubicki (Editor), Paweł Kubicki (Editor), Adriana Mica (Editor), Mica Adriana (Editor), Mikolaj Pawlak (Editor), Mikołaj Pawlak (Editor)
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 26.08.2024
• EAN: 9781032371047
• ISBN: 978-1-0-3237104-7
• No. of pages: 534
• Dimensions: 174 mm x 28 mm x 246 mm
• Weight: 453 g
• Illustrations: 8 SW-Abb., 6 SW-Fotos, 2 SW-Zeichn., 16 Tabellen
• Series: Routledge International Handbooks
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Philosophy > General, dictionaries; Non-fiction book > Politics, society, business > Politics; Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > Sociological theories; SELF-HELP / General, Sociology, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / General, Self-help & personal development, Self-help, personal development and practical advice