Loading…
The promise of the hyphen : an ethnography of self-help practices
This thesis is an ethnography of the phenomenon of self-help. It begins by noting a problematic at the centre of the topic: the term self-help connotes, on the one hand, an autonomous agent ("self'), and on the other, a reliance on other agents ("help"). More substantively, the t...
Saved in:
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Default Thesis |
| Published: |
2009
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/2134/12692 |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| _version_ | 1818173965957332992 |
|---|---|
| author | Scott Cherry |
| author_facet | Scott Cherry |
| author_sort | Scott Cherry (786495) |
| collection | Figshare |
| description | This thesis is an ethnography of the phenomenon of self-help. It begins by noting a problematic at the centre of the topic: the term self-help connotes, on the one hand, an autonomous agent ("self'), and on the other, a reliance on other agents ("help"). More substantively, the term attaches itself to two opposing ideological positions, individualism and collectivism. This strange splitting of the term is reproduced in a contemporary context, where we see the genre of self-help books, which is built around the highly individualistic activity of reading as a quest for self-help, and self-help groups, which are built around the collective, co-presence of members as they mutually help one another. But the phenomenon is engaged by separate, non-overlapping literatures that treat self-help books as having a status independent of self-help groups; one attends to self-help books, but disregards self-help groups, while the other attends to self-help groups, but disregards self-help books. Thus self-help books and self-help groups get polarized. This effectively makes the original problematic around the term itself disappear, because it' simply ignores it. This research turns this character of self-help into a topic for study. It looks at what holds the term together, that is to say, self-help books and self-help groups, when they appear to be entirely independent phenomena, and yet still share the term self-help. It is interested in the significance of the term, why it gets invoked as a description of particular activities and what that entails as a practical matter. It wants to see how self-help is performed. It identifies a hybrid of self-help books and self-help groups - a self-help workshop. This third site of self-help brings individual readers of self-help books into a context of collective, social activity. It uses this as a strategy with which to examine the relationships between self-help books and self-help groups, self and help. It undertakes a detailed empirical analysis of a corpus of self-help books, a selfhelp workshop and a range of self-help groups, drawing on textual, discursive and ethnographic modes of inquiry. It then uses this empirical work to map self-help and engage it as a wider, cultural phenomenon in the modem period. |
| format | Default Thesis |
| id | rr-article-9480158 |
| institution | Loughborough University |
| publishDate | 2009 |
| record_format | Figshare |
| spelling | rr-article-94801582009-01-01T00:00:00Z The promise of the hyphen : an ethnography of self-help practices Scott Cherry (786495) Other human society not elsewhere classified Other language, communication and culture not elsewhere classified Self-help groups Self-help books Life coaching Ethnography Epistemology Conversation analysis Practice theory Language, Communication and Culture not elsewhere classified Studies in Human Society not elsewhere classified This thesis is an ethnography of the phenomenon of self-help. It begins by noting a problematic at the centre of the topic: the term self-help connotes, on the one hand, an autonomous agent ("self'), and on the other, a reliance on other agents ("help"). More substantively, the term attaches itself to two opposing ideological positions, individualism and collectivism. This strange splitting of the term is reproduced in a contemporary context, where we see the genre of self-help books, which is built around the highly individualistic activity of reading as a quest for self-help, and self-help groups, which are built around the collective, co-presence of members as they mutually help one another. But the phenomenon is engaged by separate, non-overlapping literatures that treat self-help books as having a status independent of self-help groups; one attends to self-help books, but disregards self-help groups, while the other attends to self-help groups, but disregards self-help books. Thus self-help books and self-help groups get polarized. This effectively makes the original problematic around the term itself disappear, because it' simply ignores it. This research turns this character of self-help into a topic for study. It looks at what holds the term together, that is to say, self-help books and self-help groups, when they appear to be entirely independent phenomena, and yet still share the term self-help. It is interested in the significance of the term, why it gets invoked as a description of particular activities and what that entails as a practical matter. It wants to see how self-help is performed. It identifies a hybrid of self-help books and self-help groups - a self-help workshop. This third site of self-help brings individual readers of self-help books into a context of collective, social activity. It uses this as a strategy with which to examine the relationships between self-help books and self-help groups, self and help. It undertakes a detailed empirical analysis of a corpus of self-help books, a selfhelp workshop and a range of self-help groups, drawing on textual, discursive and ethnographic modes of inquiry. It then uses this empirical work to map self-help and engage it as a wider, cultural phenomenon in the modem period. 2009-01-01T00:00:00Z Text Thesis 2134/12692 https://figshare.com/articles/thesis/The_promise_of_the_hyphen_an_ethnography_of_self-help_practices/9480158 CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 |
| spellingShingle | Other human society not elsewhere classified Other language, communication and culture not elsewhere classified Self-help groups Self-help books Life coaching Ethnography Epistemology Conversation analysis Practice theory Language, Communication and Culture not elsewhere classified Studies in Human Society not elsewhere classified Scott Cherry The promise of the hyphen : an ethnography of self-help practices |
| title | The promise of the hyphen : an ethnography of self-help practices |
| title_full | The promise of the hyphen : an ethnography of self-help practices |
| title_fullStr | The promise of the hyphen : an ethnography of self-help practices |
| title_full_unstemmed | The promise of the hyphen : an ethnography of self-help practices |
| title_short | The promise of the hyphen : an ethnography of self-help practices |
| title_sort | promise of the hyphen : an ethnography of self-help practices |
| topic | Other human society not elsewhere classified Other language, communication and culture not elsewhere classified Self-help groups Self-help books Life coaching Ethnography Epistemology Conversation analysis Practice theory Language, Communication and Culture not elsewhere classified Studies in Human Society not elsewhere classified |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/2134/12692 |