To understand the emergence of overflows it is first necessary to frame and define them. Who does this, how, and why? Answering these questions requires a historical and comparative approach, since what one culture defines as necessity, another may see as excess, and these differences can exist even between different levels of the same hierarchy. The management of overflows has a double sense: as controlling and as coping. Contributors to the volume show management taking place in various social settings, periods, and political contexts, from state attempts to manage future consumption in postwar Eastern Europe to contemporary economies of sharing.

With further chapters on healthcare administration, mass travel and migration, digital services, and the overflow that scholars face in dealing with an abundance of research information and publications, Overwhelmed by overflows? is a transdisciplinary volume that will appeal to sociologists, management scholars, economists, historians, anthropologists, and cultural studies scholars.