Transnational Popular Psychology and the Global Self-Help Industry: The Politics of Contemporary Social Change

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 other societies in 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 and Tobago, Mexico, the People's Republic of China, the United Kingdom 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 processes of globalisation as sources of cultural standardization.

Daniel Nehring is currently Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Worcester, UK. He has previously worked at Pusan National University, South Korea. Over the past ten years, he has done extensive research on transnational self-help cultures. Recent publications include Sociology (2013) and Intimacies and Cultural Change (2014, with Emmanuel Alvarado and Rosario Esteinou).

Emmanuel Alvarado is Professor of Spanish and Hispanic Studies at Palm Beach State College in Florida, USA. His research concerns experiences of intimate citizenship among Mexican-Americans and Mexican immigrants in the USA. Recent publications include Intimacies and Cultural Change (2014, with Daniel Nehring and Rosario Esteinou).

Eric C. Hendriks is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Sociology Department of Peking University, Beijing, China. He investigates the globalization of self-help culture and conducted fieldwork in Germany and China. In 2015, he published the book Knowledge Wars: The Global Competition between Self-Help Gurus and Institutional Authorities.

Dylan Kerrigan is a Lecturer in Anthropology and Political Sociology at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine Campus. He is currently developing a manuscript on the Militarisation and Insecurity of Everyday Life in the Caribbean.