Jennifer Radden
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195151657
- eISBN:
- 9780199849253
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195151657.003.0023
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
Samuel Smiles, born in 1812, was an influential figure in the 19th-century “self-help” movement. His book, Self-help: With Illustrations of Character, Conduct and Perseverance (1859) grew out of a ...
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Samuel Smiles, born in 1812, was an influential figure in the 19th-century “self-help” movement. His book, Self-help: With Illustrations of Character, Conduct and Perseverance (1859) grew out of a series of lectures, designed for self-improvement, which he gave to young men as editor of the Leeds Times newspaper. This chapter presents passages from an 1862 American edition of that work. His theme was that diligent self-culture, self-control, and self-discipline held the key to human fulfillment; his motto: “It all depends on me.” Smiles's emphasis on and disgust with the unmanly, unmasculine quality of the Romantic melancholy popularized by Goethe and Byron may account in significant part for the curious gender reversal by which, toward the end of the 19th century melancholy, melancholia, and related responses came to be associated with women and the feminine.Less
Samuel Smiles, born in 1812, was an influential figure in the 19th-century “self-help” movement. His book, Self-help: With Illustrations of Character, Conduct and Perseverance (1859) grew out of a series of lectures, designed for self-improvement, which he gave to young men as editor of the Leeds Times newspaper. This chapter presents passages from an 1862 American edition of that work. His theme was that diligent self-culture, self-control, and self-discipline held the key to human fulfillment; his motto: “It all depends on me.” Smiles's emphasis on and disgust with the unmanly, unmasculine quality of the Romantic melancholy popularized by Goethe and Byron may account in significant part for the curious gender reversal by which, toward the end of the 19th century melancholy, melancholia, and related responses came to be associated with women and the feminine.
Mike W. Martin
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780195304718
- eISBN:
- 9780199786572
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195304713.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
Critics have interpreted the therapeutic trend as a replacement of community-oriented morality with self-oriented therapeutic values such as self-esteem, self-fulfilment, and authenticity. They ...
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Critics have interpreted the therapeutic trend as a replacement of community-oriented morality with self-oriented therapeutic values such as self-esteem, self-fulfilment, and authenticity. They charge that exporting therapeutic attitudes from the clinic to the community erodes moral responsibility by fostering moral subjectivity and shallowness, lowering moral aspiration, and encouraging selfishness and a victim mentality. This chapter responds to these charges, including their application to self-help groups and moral education, and argues that the critics identify genuine dangers but exaggerate them. For the most part, the therapeutic trend integrates morality with therapy, albeit with varying degrees of success, rather than abandoning it.Less
Critics have interpreted the therapeutic trend as a replacement of community-oriented morality with self-oriented therapeutic values such as self-esteem, self-fulfilment, and authenticity. They charge that exporting therapeutic attitudes from the clinic to the community erodes moral responsibility by fostering moral subjectivity and shallowness, lowering moral aspiration, and encouraging selfishness and a victim mentality. This chapter responds to these charges, including their application to self-help groups and moral education, and argues that the critics identify genuine dangers but exaggerate them. For the most part, the therapeutic trend integrates morality with therapy, albeit with varying degrees of success, rather than abandoning it.
Nancy Whittier
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195325102
- eISBN:
- 9780199869350
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195325102.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
This book studies activism against child sexual abuse, tracing it from its emergence in feminist anti‐rape efforts, through the development of mainstream self‐help, conflicts with an opposing ...
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This book studies activism against child sexual abuse, tracing it from its emergence in feminist anti‐rape efforts, through the development of mainstream self‐help, conflicts with an opposing movement, and entry into mass media and public policy. Activists sought to change their feelings about child sexual abuse, to challenge its cultural invisibility, and to gain institutional resources. Elaborating a “therapeutic politics,” activists saw tactics for changing the self and emotion as crucial for widespread social change and combined them with efforts to change institutions and the state. The book argues that these tactics were a challenge to efforts by the state and powerful institutions to shape the self; activists against child sexual abuse played an important part in developing and disseminating the therapeutic politics that have become important to many social movements. The book conceptualizes the selection processes by which some movement goals entered mainstream media and public policy, while others did not. As activists engaged with the state and opposing movements, shifting political winds pulled them toward formulations of child sexual abuse as a medical or criminal problem and away from emphases on gender and power. Like many social movements, it achieved social change that was a mixture of compromise, cooptation, and gains. The book thus sheds light on the processes of incomplete social change that characterize contemporary politics in the United States.Less
This book studies activism against child sexual abuse, tracing it from its emergence in feminist anti‐rape efforts, through the development of mainstream self‐help, conflicts with an opposing movement, and entry into mass media and public policy. Activists sought to change their feelings about child sexual abuse, to challenge its cultural invisibility, and to gain institutional resources. Elaborating a “therapeutic politics,” activists saw tactics for changing the self and emotion as crucial for widespread social change and combined them with efforts to change institutions and the state. The book argues that these tactics were a challenge to efforts by the state and powerful institutions to shape the self; activists against child sexual abuse played an important part in developing and disseminating the therapeutic politics that have become important to many social movements. The book conceptualizes the selection processes by which some movement goals entered mainstream media and public policy, while others did not. As activists engaged with the state and opposing movements, shifting political winds pulled them toward formulations of child sexual abuse as a medical or criminal problem and away from emphases on gender and power. Like many social movements, it achieved social change that was a mixture of compromise, cooptation, and gains. The book thus sheds light on the processes of incomplete social change that characterize contemporary politics in the United States.
Nancy Whittier
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195325102
- eISBN:
- 9780199869350
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195325102.003.0003
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
This chapter discusses the hybrid political/therapeutic approach of feminist self‐help groups of the very early 1980s, which developed an analysis of internalized oppression that linked the political ...
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This chapter discusses the hybrid political/therapeutic approach of feminist self‐help groups of the very early 1980s, which developed an analysis of internalized oppression that linked the political and the personal. Like their immediate feminist predecessors, these women constructed influential experiential knowledge about child sexual abuse, expanding on the politics and techniques of self‐help. They drew on and contributed to identity politics, constructing a collective identity as survivors. They also sought to influence how professional psychotherapy addressed child sexual abuse. They have been analyzed as part of a therapeutic turn in feminism; this chapter argues that the therapeutic turn remained fundamentally oriented toward social change.Less
This chapter discusses the hybrid political/therapeutic approach of feminist self‐help groups of the very early 1980s, which developed an analysis of internalized oppression that linked the political and the personal. Like their immediate feminist predecessors, these women constructed influential experiential knowledge about child sexual abuse, expanding on the politics and techniques of self‐help. They drew on and contributed to identity politics, constructing a collective identity as survivors. They also sought to influence how professional psychotherapy addressed child sexual abuse. They have been analyzed as part of a therapeutic turn in feminism; this chapter argues that the therapeutic turn remained fundamentally oriented toward social change.
Nancy Whittier
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195325102
- eISBN:
- 9780199869350
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195325102.003.0005
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
This chapter recounts the rise of single‐issue self‐help groups during the 1980s, showing how they both reflected and transformed the approach of their forebears and helped to popularize a modified ...
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This chapter recounts the rise of single‐issue self‐help groups during the 1980s, showing how they both reflected and transformed the approach of their forebears and helped to popularize a modified analysis of child sexual abuse as widespread, but not as a result of gender inequality. These groups included men as well as women, defined sexual abuse in gender‐neutral terms, and focused on promoting self‐help. They advocated for survivors' issues and increased visibility, but eschewed other political issues. They were an important force in making the issue visible in mainstream culture.Less
This chapter recounts the rise of single‐issue self‐help groups during the 1980s, showing how they both reflected and transformed the approach of their forebears and helped to popularize a modified analysis of child sexual abuse as widespread, but not as a result of gender inequality. These groups included men as well as women, defined sexual abuse in gender‐neutral terms, and focused on promoting self‐help. They advocated for survivors' issues and increased visibility, but eschewed other political issues. They were an important force in making the issue visible in mainstream culture.
Nancy Whittier
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195325102
- eISBN:
- 9780199869350
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195325102.003.0008
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
This chapter traces the development of a repoliticized self‐help movement focused on visibility politics in the wake of the countermovement. It discusses the construction of a repoliticized ...
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This chapter traces the development of a repoliticized self‐help movement focused on visibility politics in the wake of the countermovement. It discusses the construction of a repoliticized collective identity among survivor activists, their understanding of self‐help as political, and their emphasis on identity disclosure, or coming out, as a political tactic. The chapter discusses the notion of visibility politics as including activist art, speak‐outs, and identity disclosures in daily life. It analyzes the tactical implications of identity disclosure and emotional transformation within social movements, and discusses the role of visibility politics in social movements more generally.Less
This chapter traces the development of a repoliticized self‐help movement focused on visibility politics in the wake of the countermovement. It discusses the construction of a repoliticized collective identity among survivor activists, their understanding of self‐help as political, and their emphasis on identity disclosure, or coming out, as a political tactic. The chapter discusses the notion of visibility politics as including activist art, speak‐outs, and identity disclosures in daily life. It analyzes the tactical implications of identity disclosure and emotional transformation within social movements, and discusses the role of visibility politics in social movements more generally.
Matthew E. Archibald
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195388299
- eISBN:
- 9780199866519
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195388299.003.0014
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
This chapter focuses on the challenges health social movements face in their efforts to achieve legitimation—sociopolitical and cultural recognition and acceptance—from actors with vested interests ...
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This chapter focuses on the challenges health social movements face in their efforts to achieve legitimation—sociopolitical and cultural recognition and acceptance—from actors with vested interests in institutions such as mainstream medicine and health and human services. The author explores how the self‐help movement simultaneously challenges institutional authority in medicine and health care while seeking the approbation of those interests. This chapter considers multiple sources of legitimation for self‐help organizations and where sympathetic actors are positioned in a variety of disparate fields, including medicine, academia, politics, and popular media. To understand how these actors shaped self‐help, Archibald examines longitudinal trends in targeted fields of influence and asks three related questions: (1) Are some sources of legitimation more important than others? (2) Do these have differential effects in self‐help specialty niches? and (3) How do these effects impact niche growth? Results confirm that medical, academic, political, and popular legitimation make unique contributions to the self‐help movement, that the importance of each varies dramatically by specialty niche, and that legitimation has a differential impact on niche growth.Less
This chapter focuses on the challenges health social movements face in their efforts to achieve legitimation—sociopolitical and cultural recognition and acceptance—from actors with vested interests in institutions such as mainstream medicine and health and human services. The author explores how the self‐help movement simultaneously challenges institutional authority in medicine and health care while seeking the approbation of those interests. This chapter considers multiple sources of legitimation for self‐help organizations and where sympathetic actors are positioned in a variety of disparate fields, including medicine, academia, politics, and popular media. To understand how these actors shaped self‐help, Archibald examines longitudinal trends in targeted fields of influence and asks three related questions: (1) Are some sources of legitimation more important than others? (2) Do these have differential effects in self‐help specialty niches? and (3) How do these effects impact niche growth? Results confirm that medical, academic, political, and popular legitimation make unique contributions to the self‐help movement, that the importance of each varies dramatically by specialty niche, and that legitimation has a differential impact on niche growth.
Verta Taylor and Lisa Leitz
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195388299
- eISBN:
- 9780199866519
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195388299.003.0016
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
Taylor and Leitz trace processes of collective identity construction and politicization among women suffering from postpartum psychiatric illness who have been convicted of infanticide. Joining a ...
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Taylor and Leitz trace processes of collective identity construction and politicization among women suffering from postpartum psychiatric illness who have been convicted of infanticide. Joining a growing body of research suggesting that self‐help and consumer health movements can be a significant force for change in both the cultural and political arenas, Taylor and Lietz examine one such movement, a pen‐pal network of women incarcerated for committing infanticide. Taylor and Leitz show how a sense of collective identity fostered by the pen‐pal network triggered a profound emotional transformation in participants, allowing them to convert shame and loneliness into pride and solidarity, and encouraging their participation in efforts to change how the medical and legal system treat postpartum psychiatric illness.Less
Taylor and Leitz trace processes of collective identity construction and politicization among women suffering from postpartum psychiatric illness who have been convicted of infanticide. Joining a growing body of research suggesting that self‐help and consumer health movements can be a significant force for change in both the cultural and political arenas, Taylor and Lietz examine one such movement, a pen‐pal network of women incarcerated for committing infanticide. Taylor and Leitz show how a sense of collective identity fostered by the pen‐pal network triggered a profound emotional transformation in participants, allowing them to convert shame and loneliness into pride and solidarity, and encouraging their participation in efforts to change how the medical and legal system treat postpartum psychiatric illness.
Verta Taylor and Mayer N. Zald
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195388299
- eISBN:
- 9780199866519
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195388299.003.0018
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
This chapter locates U.S. health institutions in the context of American society and culture, exploring “American Exceptionalism” and its implications for the particular structure and culture of ...
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This chapter locates U.S. health institutions in the context of American society and culture, exploring “American Exceptionalism” and its implications for the particular structure and culture of health institutions. This context limits and shapes the forms and processes of social movements and collective action that occur. The chapter then uses the earlier chapters, as well as the broader literature, to argue how U.S. health institutions shape, and are shaped by, social movements. The range is broad and includes research that deals with movements aimed at shaping the overall financing and governance of U.S. health institutions, the internal workings of organizations, professions, and occupations, self‐help movements, and movements about particular disease and disability entities. One of main questions raised is the relevance of contemporary social movement theory, largely dealing with political movements, for the analysis of movements oriented towards specific institutions. Key concepts of institutional theory are also discussed. The key concepts of contemporary theory, with modifications, can be usefully employed in examining institutional movements. These key concepts include fields, framing processes, political opportunities, resources, collective identity, and mobilization processes.Less
This chapter locates U.S. health institutions in the context of American society and culture, exploring “American Exceptionalism” and its implications for the particular structure and culture of health institutions. This context limits and shapes the forms and processes of social movements and collective action that occur. The chapter then uses the earlier chapters, as well as the broader literature, to argue how U.S. health institutions shape, and are shaped by, social movements. The range is broad and includes research that deals with movements aimed at shaping the overall financing and governance of U.S. health institutions, the internal workings of organizations, professions, and occupations, self‐help movements, and movements about particular disease and disability entities. One of main questions raised is the relevance of contemporary social movement theory, largely dealing with political movements, for the analysis of movements oriented towards specific institutions. Key concepts of institutional theory are also discussed. The key concepts of contemporary theory, with modifications, can be usefully employed in examining institutional movements. These key concepts include fields, framing processes, political opportunities, resources, collective identity, and mobilization processes.
Leah Price
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691114170
- eISBN:
- 9781400842186
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691114170.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter assesses what makes the novel associate printed matter with interruption in particular. It also asks what difference does it make that the act in which the characters are interrupted ...
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This chapter assesses what makes the novel associate printed matter with interruption in particular. It also asks what difference does it make that the act in which the characters are interrupted consists not of reading, but rather of using an unread book as a material prompt or alibi for inwardness and abstraction. The bait and switch that structures the midcentury bildungsroman sets readers up to expect a novel about an agent shaped by books, only to reveal the protagonist instead as an object compared to books. As the plot of David Copperfield turns a child who is acted upon into an adult who acts, its trope shifts from metaphor to metonymy. As a result, it turns only belatedly into a proto-Smilesian account of self-help. Its first debt is to an older genre that associates selfhood with helplessness and passivity—more specifically, that locates consciousness not in a person marked by books, but in a book marked by readers.Less
This chapter assesses what makes the novel associate printed matter with interruption in particular. It also asks what difference does it make that the act in which the characters are interrupted consists not of reading, but rather of using an unread book as a material prompt or alibi for inwardness and abstraction. The bait and switch that structures the midcentury bildungsroman sets readers up to expect a novel about an agent shaped by books, only to reveal the protagonist instead as an object compared to books. As the plot of David Copperfield turns a child who is acted upon into an adult who acts, its trope shifts from metaphor to metonymy. As a result, it turns only belatedly into a proto-Smilesian account of self-help. Its first debt is to an older genre that associates selfhood with helplessness and passivity—more specifically, that locates consciousness not in a person marked by books, but in a book marked by readers.
Joan Petersilia
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195160864
- eISBN:
- 9780199943395
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195160864.003.0005
- Subject:
- Sociology, Law, Crime and Deviance
This chapter documents the decline of inmate participation in prison work, treatment, and education programs. It considers these trends in light of the growing amount of research documenting what ...
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This chapter documents the decline of inmate participation in prison work, treatment, and education programs. It considers these trends in light of the growing amount of research documenting what works, and the changing nature of inmates' characteristics. The data show that U.S. prisons today offer fewer services than they did when inmate problems were less severe, although history shows that not much has been invested in prison rehabilitation. Today, just one-third of all prisoners released will have received vocational or educational training while in prison. And despite the fact that three-quarters of all inmates have alcohol or drug abuse problems, just one-fourth of all inmates will participate in a substance abuse program prior to release. The treatment programs consist mostly of inmate self-help groups rather than the intensive therapeutic communities found to be most effective.Less
This chapter documents the decline of inmate participation in prison work, treatment, and education programs. It considers these trends in light of the growing amount of research documenting what works, and the changing nature of inmates' characteristics. The data show that U.S. prisons today offer fewer services than they did when inmate problems were less severe, although history shows that not much has been invested in prison rehabilitation. Today, just one-third of all prisoners released will have received vocational or educational training while in prison. And despite the fact that three-quarters of all inmates have alcohol or drug abuse problems, just one-fourth of all inmates will participate in a substance abuse program prior to release. The treatment programs consist mostly of inmate self-help groups rather than the intensive therapeutic communities found to be most effective.
Dan P. McAdams
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195176933
- eISBN:
- 9780199786787
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195176933.003.0006
- Subject:
- Psychology, Social Psychology
This chapter examines key themes in the redemptive self as expressed in the tradition of American self-help and in well-known theories of psychological development. It opens with a survey of American ...
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This chapter examines key themes in the redemptive self as expressed in the tradition of American self-help and in well-known theories of psychological development. It opens with a survey of American self-help books from the past fifty years and then traces themes of self-help — including the notion that everybody has a good and true inner self that should be explored and eventually actualized in psychological development — from the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson in the 19th century through Freud (who rejected Emerson's view), the humanistic psychologies of Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow, attachment theory, and the self-psychology of Heinz Kohut, and culminating with Oprah Winfrey's extraordinarily American vision of the redemptive self as the recovery of one's original good essence in the face of poverty, addiction, or abuse.Less
This chapter examines key themes in the redemptive self as expressed in the tradition of American self-help and in well-known theories of psychological development. It opens with a survey of American self-help books from the past fifty years and then traces themes of self-help — including the notion that everybody has a good and true inner self that should be explored and eventually actualized in psychological development — from the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson in the 19th century through Freud (who rejected Emerson's view), the humanistic psychologies of Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow, attachment theory, and the self-psychology of Heinz Kohut, and culminating with Oprah Winfrey's extraordinarily American vision of the redemptive self as the recovery of one's original good essence in the face of poverty, addiction, or abuse.
DAVID WRIGHT
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199246397
- eISBN:
- 9780191715235
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199246397.003.009
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
During the Victorian period, England witnessed a dramatic change in the education of mentally disabled children. Before the early 19th century, idiots were thought to be uneducable. Indeed, the very ...
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During the Victorian period, England witnessed a dramatic change in the education of mentally disabled children. Before the early 19th century, idiots were thought to be uneducable. Indeed, the very definition of idiocy revolved around the inability of idiots to be ‘improved’. The moral education of idiot children incorporated traditional classroom teaching, workshop apprenticeship, and the inculcation of accepted norms of social behaviour. All three were to be incorporated within the therapeutic milieu of idiot asylums such as the Earlswood Asylum, where education was also based on a Victorian belief in the organicist origins of mental disability. This organicist understanding of mental handicap was central to the medical model of idiocy — that physical defects of unknown origin were preventing the true expression of the idiot mind. The philosophical underpinnings of education at the Earlswood Asylum were based on a post-Enlightenment belief in the perfectibility of humankind, a Victorian faith in the improvement of individuals, and a non-conformist desire to see spiritual improvement through employment and self-help.Less
During the Victorian period, England witnessed a dramatic change in the education of mentally disabled children. Before the early 19th century, idiots were thought to be uneducable. Indeed, the very definition of idiocy revolved around the inability of idiots to be ‘improved’. The moral education of idiot children incorporated traditional classroom teaching, workshop apprenticeship, and the inculcation of accepted norms of social behaviour. All three were to be incorporated within the therapeutic milieu of idiot asylums such as the Earlswood Asylum, where education was also based on a Victorian belief in the organicist origins of mental disability. This organicist understanding of mental handicap was central to the medical model of idiocy — that physical defects of unknown origin were preventing the true expression of the idiot mind. The philosophical underpinnings of education at the Earlswood Asylum were based on a post-Enlightenment belief in the perfectibility of humankind, a Victorian faith in the improvement of individuals, and a non-conformist desire to see spiritual improvement through employment and self-help.
Micki McGee
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195171242
- eISBN:
- 9780199944088
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195171242.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Culture
Why doesn't self-help help? This book puts forward this paradoxical question as it looks at a world where the market for self-improvement products—books, audiotapes, and extreme makeovers—is ...
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Why doesn't self-help help? This book puts forward this paradoxical question as it 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, the author shows a nation relying on self-help culture for advice on how to cope in an increasingly volatile and competitive work world. The book 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 treatment of the modern obsession with work and self-improvement, it 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.Less
Why doesn't self-help help? This book puts forward this paradoxical question as it 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, the author shows a nation relying on self-help culture for advice on how to cope in an increasingly volatile and competitive work world. The book 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 treatment of the modern obsession with work and self-improvement, it 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.
Paul Rock
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780198267959
- eISBN:
- 9780191683428
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198267959.001.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
This book describes the collective responses of bereaved people to the aftermath of violent death, a subject not dealt with in any detail in the literature that is currently available. It ...
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This book describes the collective responses of bereaved people to the aftermath of violent death, a subject not dealt with in any detail in the literature that is currently available. It concentrates particularly on the birth, development, and organization of the self-help and campaigning groups that have emerged in the last decade. The book examines these as attempts to give institutional expression to interpretations of grief, and shows us that these attempts, in their turn, are implicated in a potent phenomenology of mourning. In addition, the book had special access to a number of groups and uses the information that has been gathered through this access to discuss the practical and political importance of the work of these groups, and their affects on policing, the media and the law.Less
This book describes the collective responses of bereaved people to the aftermath of violent death, a subject not dealt with in any detail in the literature that is currently available. It concentrates particularly on the birth, development, and organization of the self-help and campaigning groups that have emerged in the last decade. The book examines these as attempts to give institutional expression to interpretations of grief, and shows us that these attempts, in their turn, are implicated in a potent phenomenology of mourning. In addition, the book had special access to a number of groups and uses the information that has been gathered through this access to discuss the practical and political importance of the work of these groups, and their affects on policing, the media and the law.
V.N. Balasubramanyam and Ahalya Balasubramanyam
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780198077992
- eISBN:
- 9780199081608
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198077992.003.0002
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, Development, Growth, and Environmental
This chapter analyses the impact of growth on development in the context the experience of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh in south India. It argues that the translation of growth into development is ...
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This chapter analyses the impact of growth on development in the context the experience of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh in south India. It argues that the translation of growth into development is conditioned by the nature of the growth process and the presence of institutions that facilitate development. The record of Karnataka on development is relatively poor compared to that of Andhra Pradesh, though its growth rate is, in general, higher than that of the latter. The chapter attributes this phenomenon to the elitist nature of growth in Karnataka as opposed to the populist nature of growth in Andhra Pradesh.Less
This chapter analyses the impact of growth on development in the context the experience of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh in south India. It argues that the translation of growth into development is conditioned by the nature of the growth process and the presence of institutions that facilitate development. The record of Karnataka on development is relatively poor compared to that of Andhra Pradesh, though its growth rate is, in general, higher than that of the latter. The chapter attributes this phenomenon to the elitist nature of growth in Karnataka as opposed to the populist nature of growth in Andhra Pradesh.
Micki McGee
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195171242
- eISBN:
- 9780199944088
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195171242.003.0004
- Subject:
- Sociology, Culture
This chapter describes the unisex or general-audience advice literature, exploring the new survivalism that emerges against the background of a continuing inward turn. In The Road Less Traveled, M. ...
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This chapter describes the unisex or general-audience advice literature, exploring the new survivalism that emerges against the background of a continuing inward turn. In The Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck recounts his spiritual “journey” from the secular medical realm of psychiatry to a hybrid realm of psychotherapeutic and Christian values. Anthony “Tony” Robbins and Stephen Covey represent two distinct traditions of self-improvement culture: the former privileges emotion and the affective dimension while the latter heralds the superiority of reason, planning, and time management. The New Age inheritors of New Thought posit a world in which there is ultimately no distinction between self and other, matter and energy, reality and imagination. The generic literature of self-help during the last quarter of the twentieth century signaled an intensification of tendencies in American culture that had been evident, in some cases, since the nation's founding.Less
This chapter describes the unisex or general-audience advice literature, exploring the new survivalism that emerges against the background of a continuing inward turn. In The Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck recounts his spiritual “journey” from the secular medical realm of psychiatry to a hybrid realm of psychotherapeutic and Christian values. Anthony “Tony” Robbins and Stephen Covey represent two distinct traditions of self-improvement culture: the former privileges emotion and the affective dimension while the latter heralds the superiority of reason, planning, and time management. The New Age inheritors of New Thought posit a world in which there is ultimately no distinction between self and other, matter and energy, reality and imagination. The generic literature of self-help during the last quarter of the twentieth century signaled an intensification of tendencies in American culture that had been evident, in some cases, since the nation's founding.
Micki McGee
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195171242
- eISBN:
- 9780199944088
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195171242.003.0007
- Subject:
- Sociology, Culture
This chapter investigates more completely just how laborious the work of “inventing a self” can be, and how the ideal of individual self-mastery—which is at the heart of most self-help ...
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This chapter investigates more completely just how laborious the work of “inventing a self” can be, and how the ideal of individual self-mastery—which is at the heart of most self-help literature—relies on the unacknowledged servitude of others. In describing the nature of work on the self, the literatures of self-improvement give two distinct options: the path of endless effort and the path of absolute effortlessness. The Maudlin Exemplar manages the notion of misfortune and suggests that self-mastery is the fundamental prerequisite for success. The impossibility of finding one's “authentic” self is mitigated by the possibility of accessing, at least, one's most persuasive self. The ideal of life as a work of art is meant to insulate the self from the more economistic metaphor of life as a business, but in the end it fails to do so when it elevates work over labor, the reproduction of life itself.Less
This chapter investigates more completely just how laborious the work of “inventing a self” can be, and how the ideal of individual self-mastery—which is at the heart of most self-help literature—relies on the unacknowledged servitude of others. In describing the nature of work on the self, the literatures of self-improvement give two distinct options: the path of endless effort and the path of absolute effortlessness. The Maudlin Exemplar manages the notion of misfortune and suggests that self-mastery is the fundamental prerequisite for success. The impossibility of finding one's “authentic” self is mitigated by the possibility of accessing, at least, one's most persuasive self. The ideal of life as a work of art is meant to insulate the self from the more economistic metaphor of life as a business, but in the end it fails to do so when it elevates work over labor, the reproduction of life itself.
Micki McGee
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195171242
- eISBN:
- 9780199944088
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195171242.003.0002
- Subject:
- Sociology, Culture
This book investigates how the promise of self-help can lead workers into a new sort of enslavement – into a cycle where the self is not improved but endlessly belabored – and explores the shifts in ...
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This book investigates how the promise of self-help can lead workers into a new sort of enslavement – into a cycle where the self is not improved but endlessly belabored – and explores the shifts in self-improvement culture in an era of dramatic economic and social changes. It also provides a glance of how the cultures of personal transformation, though largely a force for maintaining the status quo, might be mined for progressive political opportunities. When social and economic structures—gender role expectations and employment conditions—undergo dramatic changes, individual and interpersonal change is inevitable. The culture of self-improvement is seen as fragmented, varied, mutable, and, at least in theory, potentially emancipatory. This chapter provides an overview of the chapters included in the book. The forced labor of self-making, the belaboring of our selves, is at the centre of the book's discussion.Less
This book investigates how the promise of self-help can lead workers into a new sort of enslavement – into a cycle where the self is not improved but endlessly belabored – and explores the shifts in self-improvement culture in an era of dramatic economic and social changes. It also provides a glance of how the cultures of personal transformation, though largely a force for maintaining the status quo, might be mined for progressive political opportunities. When social and economic structures—gender role expectations and employment conditions—undergo dramatic changes, individual and interpersonal change is inevitable. The culture of self-improvement is seen as fragmented, varied, mutable, and, at least in theory, potentially emancipatory. This chapter provides an overview of the chapters included in the book. The forced labor of self-making, the belaboring of our selves, is at the centre of the book's discussion.
Michael S. Gorham
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801452628
- eISBN:
- 9780801470578
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801452628.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Russian Politics
This book presents a cultural history of the politics of Russian language from Gorbachev and glasnost to Putin and the emergence of new generations of Web technologies. The book begins from the ...
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This book presents a cultural history of the politics of Russian language from Gorbachev and glasnost to Putin and the emergence of new generations of Web technologies. The book begins from the premise that periods of rapid and radical change both shape and are shaped by language. It documents the role and fate of the Russian language in the collapse of the USSR and the decades of reform and national reconstruction that have followed. The book demonstrates the inextricable linkage of language and politics in everything from dictionaries of profanity to the flood of publications on linguistic self-help, the speech patterns of the country's leaders, the blogs of its bureaucrats, and the official programs promoting the use of Russian in the so-called near abroad. The book explains why glasnost figured as such a critical rhetorical battleground in the political strife that led to the Soviet Union's collapse and shows why Russians came to deride the newfound freedom of speech of the 1990s as little more than the right to swear in public. It assesses the impact of Medvedev's role as Blogger-in-Chief and the role Putin's vulgar speech practices played in the restoration of national pride. The book investigates whether Internet communication and new media technologies have helped to consolidate a more vibrant democracy and civil society or if they serve as an additional resource for the political technologies manipulated by the Kremlin.Less
This book presents a cultural history of the politics of Russian language from Gorbachev and glasnost to Putin and the emergence of new generations of Web technologies. The book begins from the premise that periods of rapid and radical change both shape and are shaped by language. It documents the role and fate of the Russian language in the collapse of the USSR and the decades of reform and national reconstruction that have followed. The book demonstrates the inextricable linkage of language and politics in everything from dictionaries of profanity to the flood of publications on linguistic self-help, the speech patterns of the country's leaders, the blogs of its bureaucrats, and the official programs promoting the use of Russian in the so-called near abroad. The book explains why glasnost figured as such a critical rhetorical battleground in the political strife that led to the Soviet Union's collapse and shows why Russians came to deride the newfound freedom of speech of the 1990s as little more than the right to swear in public. It assesses the impact of Medvedev's role as Blogger-in-Chief and the role Putin's vulgar speech practices played in the restoration of national pride. The book investigates whether Internet communication and new media technologies have helped to consolidate a more vibrant democracy and civil society or if they serve as an additional resource for the political technologies manipulated by the Kremlin.
