Over the past fifty years, numerous cultural and structural changes have profoundly altered how heterosexual women and men in North America envision and live out their intimate lives. As key social structures where individuals typically sought guidance about their relationships have lost cultural potency, and insecurities about social and economic structures have grown, people have turned increasingly to alternative sources of advice, of which self-help books are a readily available option. In three interrelated studies, this dissertation considers one of North America’s most popular and lucrative book genres—relationship advice—and its readers. On a textual level, it examines connections between ideological shifts in advice and macro-level changes; with regard to audiences, it asks what generates particular modes of self-help reading. All studies then consider the implications of ideological shifts and modes of reading for the creation or maintenance of social boundaries and attendant inequalities.
While prior theoretical and empirical work on relationship advice products and audiences has considered time-limited samples of women’s texts, and research in reception studies has emphasized the importance of gender in generating modes of reading, this dissertation contributes new insight by looking longitudinally at bestselling advice books, offering the first detailed look at books for men, and considering the influence of variables beyond gender in channeling readers toward particular modes of reading. Findings demonstrate strong coupling between ideological trends in advice and broader social changes, and an interlocking effect of readers’ biographical, demographic and psychological factors on modes of reading. Analyses of texts and readers also reveal how the genre reinforces social inequalities. Paper 1 corrects presumptions about advice book content by identifying new ideological trends, Paper 2 develops a conceptual and theoretical vocabulary for understanding constructions of ideal masculinity, namely through identification of a process of “masculinizing” intimacy, and Paper 3 newly identifies two modes of reading—targeted and habitual—and generates theoretical insight broadly applicable to reception studies.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/44085 |
| Date | 20 March 2014 |
| Creators | Knudson, Sarah |
| Contributors | Baumann, Shyon, Taylor, Judith |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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