The Routledge International Handbook of Global Therapeutic Cultures

The Routledge International Handbook of Global Therapeutic Cultures explores central lines of enquiry and seminal scholarship on therapeutic cultures, popular psychology, and the happiness industry, adopting a consciously global focus. It examines emergent trends in therapeutic culture and explores how the advent of new therapeutic technologies, the political interest in happiness, and the radical privatisation and financialisation of social life converge to remake self-identities and modes of everyday experience.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 470 pages
Publication date: 29 April 2022
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

The Routledge International Handbook of Global Therapeutic Cultures delves into fundamental research areas and groundbreaking scholarship on therapeutic cultures, popular psychology, and the happiness industry. By bringing together studies from sociology, anthropology, psychology, education, politics, law, history, social work, cultural studies, development studies, and American Indian studies, this handbook adopts a consciously global perspective, combining insights into the psychologization of social life from across the world. The book is thematically organized, providing historical accounts of the increasing prominence of therapeutic discourses and practices in everyday life. It then explores the construction of self-identity in the context of the diffusion of therapeutic discourses alongside the global spread of capitalism.

Attention is given to the ways in which emotional language has brought about new problematizations of the divide between the normal and the pathological, as well as significant transformations of key institutions such as work, family, education, and religion. The handbook examines emerging trends in therapeutic culture and explores how the advent of new therapeutic technologies, the political interest in happiness, and the radical privatization and financialization of social life converge to remake self-identities and modes of everyday experience.

Furthermore, the volume features the work of scholars who have emphasized the historical and contemporary implications of psychotherapeutic practices in processes of globalization and colonial and postcolonial modes of social organization. By presenting agenda-setting research, this handbook aims to encourage interdisciplinary and international dialogue, fostering the development of a distinctive new field of social research.

Weight: 902g
Dimension: 246 x 174 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780367509682