Eric C. Hendriks

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.

In Life Advice from Below, Eric C. Hendriks offers the first systematic, comparative study of the globalization of American-style self-help culture and the cultural conflicts this creates in different national contexts. The self-help guru is an archetypical American figure associated with individualism, materialism and the American Dream. Nonetheless, the self-help industry is spreading globally, thriving in China and other seemingly unlikely places. Controversy follows in its wake, as the self-help industry, operating outside of formal education and state institutions, outflanks philosophical, religious and political elites who have their own visions of the Good Life. Through a comparison of Germany and China, Hendriks analyzes how the competition between self-help gurus and institutional authorities unfolds under radically different politico-cultural regimes. “This witty book charms its way through a very serious sociology of the seriously quirky field of self-help books. Read it for its fascinating pop-culture insights and you’ll come away with a deep understanding of contemporary sociological theory. Highly recommended.” - Salvatore Babones, University of Sydney “Hendriks’ finding that Germany rather than China is more resistant to self-help gurus offers a powerful corrective to the assumption in much of the globalization literature that the greatest cultural divide is between the Anglo-Western European sphere and the rest of the globe.” - Rodney Benson, New York University

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.