Self-Help, Inc.: Makeover Culture in American LifeOxford University Press, 08.09.2005 - 304 Seiten Why doesn't self-help help? Cultural critic Micki McGee puts forward this paradoxical question as she looks at a world where the market for self-improvement products--books, audiotapes, and extreme makeovers--is exploding, and there seems to be no end in sight. Rather than seeing narcissism at the root of the self-help craze, as others have contended, McGee shows a nation relying on self-help culture for advice on how to cope in an increasingly volatile and competitive work world. Self-Help, Inc. reveals how makeover culture traps Americans in endless cycles of self-invention and overwork as they struggle to stay ahead of a rapidly restructuring economic order. A lucid and fascinating treatment of the modern obsession with work and self-improvement, this lively book will strike a chord with its acute diagnosis of the self-help trap and its sharp suggestions for how we can address the alienating conditions of modern work and family life. |
Inhalt
3 | |
From SelfMade to Belabored | 11 |
Spiritual Secular and Gendered Notions | 25 |
Survivalism and the Inward Turn | 49 |
Gender and the Logic of Diminished Expectations | 79 |
From JobHunters to ArtistEntrepreneurs | 111 |
The Making of the Belabored Self | 139 |
Chapter 6 All You Can Be or Some Conclusions | 175 |
Some Notes on Method | 193 |
Notes | 197 |
Bibliography | 247 |
269 | |
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advice American Anthony Robbins Arendt argue Arlie Russell Arlie Russell Hochschild artist authenticity belabored bestseller list Bolles Bolles’s Brown calling capitalism career codependency context Covey Covey’s creating creative Deepak Chopra economic emergence emphasis in original ethic example Feminine Mystique Foucault Franklin FranklinCovey gender Gloria Steinem groups Helen Gurley Brown Hochschild human Ibid idea ideal imagined increasingly individual invent Julia Cameron labor force labor market literature of self-improvement lives masculine metaphor Michel Foucault mind-power mother notion offers one’s oneself Parachute path Peck’s political possibility pursuit rational readers religious Road Less Traveled role Scott Lash Scott Peck self-fulfillment self-help self-help books Self-Help Culture self-help literature self-improvement culture self-improvement literature self-invention self-made self-mastery Seven Habits Simple Abundance social movements social theorist spiritual Steinem success suggests things tion Tom Peters traditional twentieth century University Press values women workers writing York