Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Self-Help, Inc.


One of the most substantial studies of self-help books, and certainly the most recent, is Micki McGee's engaging Self-Help, Inc.
McGee is an academic, and takes a thoroughly academic approach to her analysis of self-help books. Her critique seems to be informed by Marxist theory, and he basic thesis is that self-help books mostly encourage workers to accept poor wages and working conditions, and to blame themselves for these material shortcomings.
While I don't necessarily agree with McGee's thesis (though she certainly argues it convincingly, and I think that many of her assertions are valid), I love her passion for the genre, and the degree to which it fascinates her.
The book is well-written, and superbly referenced and argued. As an academic resource it is faultless, and is certainly the main critical reference point for my own PhD.
McGee is most interesting when she talks about the different ways work is conceived in the literature of self-help. Along with Weber (who she seems to have a real understanding of), she says that the older Western notions of religious vocation and calling were transferred in the Protestant world to the areas of work and moneymaking. She sees mystical overtones in Nelson Bolles' What Colour is Your Parachute, and provides an interesting analysis of Julia Cameron and The Artist's Way (a book that interests me because of its overtly religious rhetoric).
McGee sees the growth in popularity of self-help as a negative thing, reflecting an increasingly solipsistic tendency in the Western mind. People who may once have committed themselves to social causes and societal change instead focus on transforming themselves, a work which is all-consuming and never-ending.

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