Instrumentalising Flow

Part III engages with widespread assumptions that flow is a positive force, with broad ranging benefits from wellbeing to performance enhancement, and growing interest in what is framed as a dark side to flow, associated with addiction and criminal activity. Through the chapters within this part, I develop an argument that by castigating some instances of flow as bad or dark, we misdirect attention away from where our critical concern should lie: The powers and interests that are served by the conscription of flow into the workings of everyday life and the unequal outcomes that result from it. This introductory chapter provides an overview of these arguments, first at the level of the individual through consideration of workplace flow and gambling, among other issues, and subsequently at the global societal level through exploration of flow in the context of eco-tourism and experience tourism as international development strategies. Ultimately, a warning is issued with respect to the progressive conscription of flow to fuel neoliberal and neocolonial agendas, the need for a critical moral geography of flow is asserted to protect against foreseeable deleterious outcomes, and flow scholarship is upscaled to the global geopolitical level.