Doom Embodied: How Imagining the End Times Changes Our Behavior

• In Event: 21081 - Section on Sociology of Body and Embodiment Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 4: Bodies Reimagined

Abstract

This study compares two qualitative dissertations with data collected through semi-structured in-depth interviews. The first author interviewed 65 people, between the ages of 18-45, about their reproductive decision-making, family planning and formation, and subsequent future ideations. The second author interviewed 53 people, also in their prime reproductive years, about their shifting dynamics with identity, online sexual content, gender/sexual performance, and economic precarity on many scales.

We find a pervasive feeling of “doom” permeating through these individuals as well as through the meaning making they employ to understand their lived experience and reality. Many of the interviews in these studies mirror a broader trend throughout the US, in “doomslang” (Montell 2024), in that “doom” has infiltrated our language, our ways of speaking and relating to one another, and our collective future. Both sets of interviewees had a surprising amount in common, or perhaps the ways people are experiencing the polycrisis of this current moment is a great equalizer in ways we did not foresee at the outset of these studies. Some individuals report their futures to be “child free” because of how chaotic, stressful, and precarious life feels for many young people today. Oftentimes the “child free by choice” movement frames it as such, but many of the interviewees felt they did not have a choice, given the current geo-socio-political landscape. Some of the online sexual content creators and consumers cite the crumbling planet and environment as justification for engaging in or subscribing to sex work. One informant stated plainly “I never would have done sex work before, but the planet is dying so why not?” Between the two studies, we encountered similar “who cares if everything is doomed anyway?” types of hand wringing.

Authors

• Natalie Blanton, University of Tennessee-Chattanooga

• Darbee Hagerty, University of Utah