Self-help books aim to empower their readers and deliver happiness and personal fulfilment but do they really live up to this? This book offers a fresh perspective on self-help culture and popular psychology. Research on this subject matter has generally focused on the USA and the Global Northwest. In contrast, this book explores the production, circulation and consumption of self-help books from an innovative transnational perspective. Case studies on Trinidad, Mexico, the People's Republic of China, the UK and the USA explore the roles which self-help's therapeutic narratives of self and social relationships play in the contemporary world. In this context, the book questions the extent to which self-help fulfils its promise of individual autonomy and contentment. At the same time, it addresses debates about contemporary political change under transnational processes of cultural standardization.
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"Their book 'Transnational Popular Psychology and the Global Self-help Industry: The Politics of Contemporary Social Change' brings a much-needed theoretical and empirical balance into the scholarship on therapeutic culture and self-help, which has so far focused on the global North, in particular the Anglo-American context. ... the book's remarkable collection of data and its emphasis on multidirectional transnational cultural flows are a vital addition to the literature." (Tatiana Tiaynen-Qadir, Acta Sociologica, Vol. 61 (2), May, 2018)
"This unique book reviews the transnational growth of the self-help industry in the US, UK, Mexico, China, and Trinidad and Tobago. ... the work is unique and valuable in presenting cross-cultural study and understanding of the industry of self-help around the world. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty." (D. L. Loers, Choice, Vol. 54 (3), November, 2016)
"This unique book reviews the transnational growth of the self-help industry in the US, UK, Mexico, China, and Trinidad and Tobago. ... the work is unique and valuable in presenting cross-cultural study and understanding of the industry of self-help around the world. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty." (D. L. Loers, Choice, Vol. 54 (3), November, 2016)