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.
This book builds a fresh perspective on therapeutic narratives of intimate life. Focusing on the question of how popular psychology organises everyday experiences of intimacy, its argument is grounded in qualitative research in Trinidad in the Anglophone Caribbean. Against the backdrop of Trinidad’s colonial and postcolonial history, the authors map the development of therapeutic institutions and popular therapeutic practices and explore how transnationally mobile, commercial forms of popular psychology, mostly originating in the Global North, have taken root in Trinidadian society through online social networks, self-help books, and other media. In this sense, the book adds to social research on the transnational spread of a digital attention economy and its participation in the proliferation of popular psychological discourse. Drawing on in-depth interviews with self-help readers, the book considers how popular psychology organises their everyday experiences of intimate life. It argues that the proliferation of self-help media contributes to the psychologisation of intimate relationships and obscures the social dimensions of intimacy in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, and other social structures and inequalities. At the same time, the book draws on anthropological arguments about the colonisation of consciousness in the Global South to interpret the insertion of transnationally mobile popular psychology into Trinidadian society. An innovative contribution to scholarship on therapeutic cultures, which explores the widely under-researched dissemination of popular psychology in the Global South, the book adds to a sociological understanding of the ways in which therapeutic narratives of self and intimate relationships come to be incorporated into everyday experience. As such, it will appeal to scholars of cultural studies, anthropology, and the sociology of gender, sexuality, families, and personal life.
Re-examining C.Wright Mills’ legacy as a jumping off point, this original introduction to sociology illuminates global concepts, themes and practices that are fundamental to the discipline. It makes a case for the importance of developing a sociological imagination and provides the steps for how readers can do that. The unique text: • Offers succinct and wide-ranging coverage of many of the most important themes and concepts taught in first year sociology courses; • Has a global framework and case material which engages with decoloniality and critiques an overly white, western and developed world view of sociology; • Is woven through with contemporary examples, from social media to social inequality, big data to the self-help industry; • Rethinks and re-imagines what a critically committed, politically engaged and publicly relevant sociology should look like in the 21st century. This is a lively, engaging and accessible overview of sociology for all its students, teachers and people who want to learn more about sociology today. It is a welcome clarion call for sociology’s importance in public life.
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.
This book builds a fresh perspective on therapeutic narratives of intimate life. Focusing on the question of how popular psychology organises everyday experiences of intimacy, its argument is grounded in qualitative research in Trinidad in the Anglophone Caribbean. Against the backdrop of Trinidad’s colonial and postcolonial history, the authors map the development of therapeutic institutions and popular therapeutic practices and explore how transnationally mobile, commercial forms of popular psychology, mostly originating in the Global North, have taken root in Trinidadian society through online social networks, self-help books, and other media. In this sense, the book adds to social research on the transnational spread of a digital attention economy and its participation in the proliferation of popular psychological discourse. Drawing on in-depth interviews with self-help readers, the book considers how popular psychology organises their everyday experiences of intimate life. It argues that the proliferation of self-help media contributes to the psychologisation of intimate relationships and obscures the social dimensions of intimacy in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, and other social structures and inequalities. At the same time, the book draws on anthropological arguments about the colonisation of consciousness in the Global South to interpret the insertion of transnationally mobile popular psychology into Trinidadian society. An innovative contribution to scholarship on therapeutic cultures, which explores the widely under-researched dissemination of popular psychology in the Global South, the book adds to a sociological understanding of the ways in which therapeutic narratives of self and intimate relationships come to be incorporated into everyday experience. As such, it will appeal to scholars of cultural studies, anthropology, and the sociology of gender, sexuality, families, and personal life.
Winner of the CWA Gold Dagger for Best Crime Novel of the Year. “Fans [of The Wire] can find many of the same strengths in Kerrigan’s work” (The New York Times). Vincent Naylor has just been released from prison and has already begun to plot his next heist—the robbery of an armored car. Det. Sgt. Bob Tidey has been caught perjuring himself to protect fellow officers. He’s also found the link between an unsolved murder case and the recent execution of a corrupt banker in serious financial difficulty. An old acquaintance will change the course of the investigation. A retired nun living on regrets and bad memories notices something deeply suspicious and makes a phone call that sets in motion a series of fateful events. In The Rage, Gene Kerrigan weaves together astute observations regarding a financial crisis, church abuse, and gangland crime. The writing is, as always with a Kerrigan novel, superb, with an engaging story that has pitch perfect dialogue and characters that come fully alive. The prize-winning crime fiction is set in contemporary Ireland where nothing is neatly resolved and there are no easy choices. Like life itself. “A perfect novel . . . beautifully constructed, with sharp and relevant dialogue, and not a superfluous word to be found.” —The Oregonian “Gritty and compulsively readable.” —The Wall Street Journal “Tightly plotted . . . the story’s pacing is masterly.” —The New Yorker “A boundlessly readable portrait of an Ireland in which all the old certainties have vanished. Remarkable for its verve, moral trickiness, and nifty plotting.” —NPR Fresh Air “Fans of Ken Bruen, Declan Hughes, and Declan Burke won’t want to miss this one.” —Booklist (starred review)
Writing is not a subject; it is part of reading, of speaking, and of listening. Being a writer means being a reader, articulating stories and characters, listening to tales and learning from other writers. Through teaching exciting and engaging lessons you can help children to discover stories, create worlds, record events, mould characters and inspire each other as writers. Inspiring Writing in Primary Schools helps you to teach writing and to know what a good writing lesson looks and feels like. It gives you all the background theory you need to encourage purposeful writing across the curriculum. It includes exemplar lessons and offers them alongside a detailed exploration of what makes them good, and the theory behind them. As a teacher or trainee teacher, you can respond more imaginatively to the way you approach and teach writing. This text will help you to seize the opportunity of the new curriculum and inspire fabulous writing in your classroom. "Packed with accessible advice, engaging examples of research-informed practice and new ideas for ways to involve and support young writers, it offers primary teachers a breath of fresh air. Emerging from the memorable work of BookTrust’s Everybody Writes initiative (which was co-led by Liz Chamberlain) and drawing on her own doctoral research (which involved exploring three young writers’ practices at home and at school), the resultant mix of practice and theory - theory and practice is very energising. The authors take a real world view of writing and recognise and respect each child as a writer and each teacher as a professional - a potentially creative pedagogue." - Teresa Cremin
This book explores the relationship between creativity, creative people, and creative industries in regional Australia through examining lived experience. The authors draw on more than 100 qualitative interviews with creative workers, and contextualise this creative work within the broader social and cultural structures of Australia’s Hunter region (located north of Sydney, in New South Wales). An invaluable resource for anyone interested in creative ecosystems as well as creativity and innovation, this book is an ethnographic study using the Hunter region as a case connected to the national and global networks that typify the creative industry. This timely addition to the Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture series gives a unique insight into creativity and cultural production.
The book is now called Missing the Sunset at Sounion. It explores the darkest regions of the human soul. It talks about relationships between men and women and deals with passion on many levels. Based on the life of the author, it goes into the difficulties of love and honor in the twenty-first century.
This book examines how the Calais Jungle posed and addressed the European Question. The issue of who and what counts as European was articulated through this makeshift camp. The book argues that the Jungle acquired meaning as a localised struggle to define territory, borders, rights and refugees in Europe. Henri Lefebvre’s spatial triad is used as a framing device for analysis. Discourses of tropicality are shown to produce the Jungle in terms of a postcolonial space of exception. This representational space fused bodies and environment in racialised ways. Attention is then drawn to assemblages that gave rise to political subjectivity, which partially elided a Eurocentric prism of rights. Here, the book explores how a ‘right to the jungle’ was generated via relations between refugees, aid workers and material objects—constituting the Jungle as a space of representation. Finally, intimate life in, and beyond, the Jungle is examined as a spatial practice that contests the EU border regime.
From First Communions to CIÉ Mystery Tours – the heartwarming story of award-winning journalist Gene Kerrigan's childhood in Dublin in the '50s In his highly addictive style, Gene Kerrigan effortlessly reconstructs the Ireland of the 1950s and early '60s in which he grew up. An adult world of absolute moral certainties, casual cruelties and mass emigration; for children an age of innocence, but an innocence hemmed in by fear and guilt. In this brilliant and humorous memoir, Kerrigan tells of a world that now seems as distant as another country. Into the details of school, street and family life, of Christmas, First Communion, school violence, CIE Mystery Tours and the arrival of television are woven the political background of the day and recollections of the impact of major figures: Michael O Hehir, Seán Lemass, Eamon 'Dev' De Valera, JFK, not to mention Hector Grey, Shane, Davy Crockett and Audie Murphy. It's a compelling, touching and often very funny account of a happy childhood in a country that was itself far from happy.
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