Anomalies of the Early 21st Century: Some Case Studies

Anomalies of the Early 21st Century is about society’s dropouts and those in transition or on a downward slope towards social exclusion. The book contains sixty-six accounts (some fictional, some documentary, and some a hybrid of the two) telling of literal dropouts, people who have effectively turned their back on their “society” to live self-sufficiently in the woods, or those who have rejected the mainstream or have simply been forced to drop out – the unemployed and homeless. We also read of winners, the happy few in the neo-liberal programme of out-and-out capitalization. Anomalies of the Early 21st Century is told against the backdrop of the global market fundamentalism of the last twenty-five years, in which all those who depart from the faith are branded as sentimental, as naïve, or simply as failures. The portraits are dedicated to these “fallen souls” and are combined with internet images of famous and lesser-known figures.