Anxiety and the Governance of Risk and Opportunity
The Unsettled Community
Kristof Van Assche author Monica Gruezmacher author Debadutta Parida author
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Taylor & Francis Ltd
Publishing:14th Dec '26
£36.99
This title is due to be published on 14th December, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
We live in anxious times, and not investigating that anxiety carries great risk – hence the value of these bold and psychoanalytically inspired arguments on the meaning and management of collective anxiety.
Risk and uncertainty contribute to collective restlessness and communities prone to conflict. Psychoanalytic ideas can be productively mobilized to better understand the unsettled community, and the anxieties circulating in governance systems continuously overburdened, obliged to overpromise and sell simple realities that can only be fiction. Whether such fictions are productive, or rather destabilizing, hinges on the transformations and migrations of anxiety, the emergence of objects of fear and desire, and the always imperfect translation of such objects into objects of governance. Rather than obsessively striving for certainty, for the maintenance of a stable order of thinking and things, the authors argue that a careful and ideally participatory examination of fear and desire comes closer to a realistic ideal of good governance. Pre-emptively banishing anxiety suppresses both its negative and positive meanings, preventing the recognition of problems real and imagined.
A must read for anyone interested in psychoanalysis and everyone with an interest in informed governance.
'Governing a society under duress is quite challenging, as the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated. This erudite and kaleidoscopic book takes the reader on an interdisciplinary journey to understanding the roots of anxiety, the limits of governance and potential futures.'
Arjen Boin, Professor Public Institutions and Governance, Institute of Political Science, Leiden University
'Anxiety and the Governance of Risk and Opportunity marks the first genuine attempt to integrate a theoretically informed conception of anxiety into the discussion of governance. What results is an absolute breakthrough. This work shows us both how governance inherently generates anxiety and how it might best deal with the problem of anxiety without attempting to repress it. For anyone interested in making governance more effective, it’s simply not to be missed.'
Todd McGowan, Professor, Director of Film and Television Studies
'For those who wondered why governance is not a purely rational practice, this book provides the unsettling answer. Using psychoanalytical and cognate perspectives, the authors demonstrate conclusively how subconscious affects such as anxiety or desire, and their articulation within fantasies of planning, are powerful agents in structuring governance practice. An essential guide for the perplexed who wonder why things do not always work as intended.'
Erik Swyngedouw, Professor of Human Geography, University of Manchester
ISBN: 9781041009085
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
190 pages