Life advice from below : : the public role of self-help coaches in Germany and China / / by Eric C. Hendriks.

• Author: Hendriks, Eric C.
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden ;, Boston : : Brill,, [2017]
• Year of Publication: 2017
• Language: English
• Series: International Comparative Social Studies 37.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (251 pages) :; illustrations.

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

Table of Contents

Preliminary Material -- Introduction -- Cultural Fields in the Public Sphere -- The Persistence of National Regimes -- Global Popular Culture and Self-Help -- Lines of Conflict -- Mapping and Comparing Social Space -- The German Self-Help Field -- Clashing into Germany’s Corporatist Welfare Regime -- The Chinese Self-Help Field -- Coexisting with China’s Institutional Authorities -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Index.