The Measured Life in the Digital Age: Optimisation by Numbers(Routledge Advances in Sociology)

This book examines both the productive and counterproductive dimensions of the increasing orientation towards digital figures. Building on findings of the transdisciplinary research project "The Measured Life", the book explores the social, cultural and psychological implications of digital optimisation. The study focuses on its effects across work and organisations, relationships in social media and bodily measurement practices such as self-tracking. Based on in-depth research, the authors analyse the connections between society and the individual, culture and psyche. The spheres investigated reveal incentives and risks embodied by digital technology that indicate shifts taking place in the culturally defined relations between social and individual pathology and normality. With new theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches, The Measured Life in the Digital Age appeals to scholars in sociology, social theory, cultural studies and psychoanalysis, as well as anyone seeking to understand how digital optimisation influences our society, relationships and sense of self.

Table of Contents:
Part I. Introduction 1. The Measured Life. Productive and Counterproductive Consequences of Quantification in Digitally Optimising Societies Part II. Social Relations in the Context of Digital Media 2. Attention: Shared, Divided, Undivided. Cultural Change and Psychic Development in the Digital Age 3. Modes of Resonance in the Age of Digitalisation 4. Relationship Formation in the Context of Digital Change. Two Case Studies on Social Media and Self-Tracking 5. “There is definitely something potentially addictive about it”. Self-Measurement as the New Digital Normal Part III. Dynamics of Parametric Optimisation: Digitalised Life Conduct, Work and Organisation 6. Parametric Optimisation 7. Digital and Parametric Optimisation in the World of Work. An Overview of Research 8. The Significance of Numbers in Digital Living and Working Environments. Ambivalent Meanings of Measurement and Comparison 9. Social Problems Work in Local Governments. Quantification Practice in Demand and Resource Planning Part IV. Digitally Measured Bodies (in the Context of Psychopathologies) 10. Self-Measurement as a Form of Optimisation and a Defensive Corset. Case Study of an avid Self-Tracker 11. Quantifying Self-Quantification. A Statistical Study on Individual Characteristics and Motivations for Digital Self-Tracking in Young- and Middle-Aged Adults in Germany 12. Between Vulnerable Receptivity and Avoidant Distancing. A Psychoanalytic Investigation of the Psychic Processing of Self-Tracking in Women with Bulimia 13. Mirroring Recognition and Narcissistic Withdrawal. Psychodynamics of Self-Tracking in Burnout and Depression Part V. Conclusion 14. The Measured Life. New ‘Normalities’ and ‘Pathologies’ in Digital Society

About the Author :
Vera King is Professor of Sociology and Psychoanalytic Social Psychology at the Goethe University and Managing Director of the Sigmund Freud Institute (SFI), Frankfurt/M., Germany. Benigna Gerisch is Professor of Clinical Psychology, Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis at the International Psychoanalytic University (IPU), Berlin, Germany. She is a psychoanalyst and member of the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA). Hartmut Rosa is Professor of Sociology at the Schiller-University of Jena and Director of the Max-Weber-Center, Erfurt, Germany. He is the author of Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity.