The Ashgate research companion to paranormal cultures

The Ashgate Research Companion to Sociocultural Studies of the Paranormal is a collection of new original essays on the socio-cultural of the paranormal from international scholars across social sciences and humanities disciplines. This work will develop current academic/ non-academic understandings of the socio cultural dimensions of contemporary engagements with the paranormal and its histories, taking the field in new directions. The main objective is to investigate the processes of every day life practices and discourses as well as textual engagements that have a relation to the discourse of the paranormal. This includes forays into how people relate to the paranormal as well as the paranormal’s metaphorical role in media and literature and its use as a trope for critiques of normative politics of rationality. Taking seriously questions of how and why people seek meaning in the realm of the paranormal and how the notion of the paranormal is used to make meaning of emotional, ideological and epistemological realities, this book will be a valuable resource for cultural studies, humanities and sociological approaches to the recent upsurge in cultural engagements with paranormal discourse that has been a growing research focus since the 1990s