From "the good girls" to the "bitches": the construction of female subjectivity according to the phenomenon of contemporary self-help

• Grant number: 11/03011-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: August 01, 2011
• End date: February 28, 2013
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology - Other specific Sociologies
• Principal Investigator: Richard Miskolci Escudeiro
• Grantee: Lara Roberta Rodrigues Facioli
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The research intends to comprehend the construction of female subjectivity in self-help books and websites directed to a womens audience. We will create a analysis of the discourse present in this literary gender best selling works as in the most popular websites. In those sites, we will develop an ethnography to understand the incorporation of that discourse by the women themselves. The research is based on gender and sexuality studies that deal with the comprehension of subjectivation processes as "gender technologies". Among the objectives of the research are the critical cartography of what the contemporary self-help offer to women and, through the ethnography, to explore the way they incorporate these "techniques of the self". (AU)