Livros de autoajuda : os manuais de civilidade. Uma prática cultural híbrida e reflexiva da contemporaneidade

Abstract

This thesis has as subject the self-help book. The general objectives that had motivated the research had been: to understand the estimated ones of the self-help sort; to search inter-relations between books of self-help and manuals of behavior; to demonstrate that the self-help books, exactly with its peculiarities and differences in relation to old manuals, play normalized role in compliance with the civilizing process. The hypothesis that supports this work is that the self-help books, inside of its characteristics to consider formulas and rules for the solution of personal problems, can be seen as inheriting of manuals of behavior of the beginning of century XIX. To verify this hypothesis, if it used as theoretical recital, the proper books of self-help, the quarrel on the civilizing process in Norbert Elias, the reflectivity of I in Anthony Giddens and the social insertion of the book in Roger Chartier. It was developed more at great length thematic - body, health, beauty and style of life, observing, the rules of the body contemporary. It was perceived that the self-help books can be seen as inheriting of old manuals of behavior, that the standards of behavior, the established construction of auto-images and other standards, directly are related with terms as: courtesy, civility and civilization. It was still observed, that, to recoup self esteem started to be, before everything, to recoup the proper body, therefore, it is in the body that, the success and the failure are negotiated in the contemporariness.