The Routledge International Handbook of Global Therapeutic Cultures

The cultural logic of precariousness and the marginalization of the sociological imagination: Signs from Mexican self‐help books

“…This article has furthered the three goals identified by Nehring et el. (2020) as central to advancing the interdisciplinary study of global therapeutic cultures. First, my analysis of five of the most popular contemporary self‐help books in Mexico contributes to the challenge of understanding and explaining therapeutic cultures in the Global South.…”

“…In terms of breadth, most studies of self‐help have focused on Anglophone countries in the Global North. Important work has been done to establish a foundation for postcolonial and multicultural studies of therapeutic cultures (Klein & Mills, 2017; Nehring & Kerrigan, 2019, 2020; Nehring et al., 2016, 2020; Salmenniemi & Adamson, 2015; Salmenniemi & Vorona, 2014), but the great majority of textual analyses of self‐help focus on books popular in North America. There have been modest analyses of self‐help texts in Mexico (Nehring, 2009, 2011; Ortiz, 2017), but my article provides a more ambitious reading of the most influential contemporary self‐help books in the largest marketplace for Spanish‐speaking books in the world.…”

“…The campaign's slogan (“And you, how will you improve your life?”) exemplifies the spirit of “global therapeutic cultures” (Nehring et al., 2020). In a country where nearly half of the population lives under the official poverty line (INEGI, 2017), this advertising campaign's discursive individualization of responsibility for improving one's life illustrates the tenacity and global reach of “self‐help ideology” (Rimke, 2017).…”

“…Nehring et al. (2020) argue that scholars should address three issues limiting “the emergence of the study of therapeutic cultures as a distinct field of interdisciplinary enquiry:” the marginalized status of research on therapeutic cultures in disciplines such as sociology; the dominance of research focused on Anglophone countries in the Global North; and the need to revitalize “critical engagement and public scholarship on the part of social researchers.” Through the sociological analysis of popular self‐help texts in Mexico, this article contributes to the advancement of all three of these issues. First, I address the marginalized status of studies of therapeutic cultures in sociology through linking self‐help discourses with the social reality that, in recent decades, precariousness has become a reality in many people's lives.…”

The ambivalence of the psychosocial in Norwegian education. A policy document analysis

“…Aim and scope Positioning this article within the existing literature on the psychosocial, I wish to contribute to the growing research on how 'psy-expertise' and epistemic cultures play a key role in modern societies (e.g. Madsen, 2018;Nehring et al, 2020). Even though I do not share the overly pessimistic view of some of the adversaries of the psychosocial, my aim is to give a critical discussion of the psychosocial as a field of knowledge in Norwegian education policy and its relatedness to broader social and historical contexts.…”