Presumed Intimacy: Parasocial Interaction in Media, Society and Celebrity Culture

Chris Rojek is Professor of Sociology at City University London

• 1. Living with Statistical Men and Women2. Chimerical Risk Management3. The Shockwaves of Trauma4. The Lost Neighbour Proposition and the Collateral Damage Problem5. Horizontal Frontierism: The Juggernaut of Character6. The Accentuation of Personality7. Vertical Frontierism: Four Case Studies8. Cracks in the Mirror9. The Gestural Economy10. Institutional and Counter-Institutional Gestural Economies11. Nuda VeritasNotesReferences

"Encompassing topics as diverse as Mae West's fame and the consequences of Hurricane Katrina, Charles Dickens's novels and the dilemmas of modern democracy, Rojek's book is a tour-de-force of interdisciplinary social criticism. Ambitious in scope, brilliant in execution, it constitutes nothing less than a profound meditation on what it means to be a human being today."David Inglis, University of Exeter"Rojek has created yet another of his unique and insightful analyses of the contemporary world. As “familiar strangers” we live in a tenuous world built on presumed intimacy. One’s anger about this world builds as one progresses through the book and leads one to applaud Rojek’s call for, among other things, the veracity and emotional integrity that are increasingly being lost in our world of increasing presumed intimacy."George Ritzer, University of Maryland