The language of psychology is all-pervasive in American culture—from The Sopranos to Oprah, from the abundance of self-help books to the private consulting room, and from the support group to the magazine advice column. Saving the Modern Soul examines the profound impact of therapeutic discourse on our lives and on our contemporary notions of identity. Eva Illouz plumbs today's particular cultural moment to understand how and why psychology has secured its place at the core of modern identity. She examines a wide range of sources to show how self-help culture has transformed contemporary emotional life and how therapy complicates individuals' lives even as it claims to dissect their emotional experiences and heal trauma.

'Saving the Modern Soul' explores the impact of therapeutic discourse on our lives & on our contemporary notions of identity. Eva Illouz examines how self-help culture has transformed emotional life & how therapy complicates individuals' lives even as it claims to dissect their emotional experiences.

In the last two decades, the philosophy of criminal law has undergone a vibrant revival in Canada. The adoption of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms has given the Supreme Court of Canada unprecedented latitude to engage with principles of legal, moral, and political philosophy when elaborating its criminal law jurisprudence. Canadian scholars have followed suit by paying increased attention to the philosophical foundations of domestic criminal law. Because of Canada's leadership in international criminal law, both at the level of the International Criminal Court and of specific war crimes tribunals, they have also begun to turn their attention to international criminal law per se. This collection seeks to bring all these Canadian voices together for the first time, and evidence the fact that criminal law theory is no longer to be associated exclusively with the older British, German and American traditions. The topics covered include questions of philosophical methodology, the legitimate scope of domestic and international criminalization, rationales for criminal law defences in both domestic and international law, the philosophical underpinnings of specific crimes and forms of joint responsibility, as well as the theorization of criminal procedure and evidence law. ENDORSEMENTS "In continental Europe, academic commentary on the criminal law has long manifested large philosophical ambitions. Less so in common-law countries, where the dominance of jury trial and the piecemeal development of case-law, together with the famously robust attitudes of common lawyers, have militated against detailed philosophical engagement with doctrine. Over the last 20 years or so, however, new generations of philosophically-literate lawyers and legally-informed philosophers have overcome the historic resistance. Nowhere more so, it seems, than in Canada, where the common law and civilian traditions meet. In 'Rethinking Criminal Law Theory', François Tanguay-Renaud and James Stribopoulos have joined with 14 talented Canadian colleagues to showcase the tremendous breadth and depth of their contemporary national contribution to the subject. Ranging across topics as diverse as emergency, obscenity, and insanity, these essays - without exception insightful and penetrating -set a high standard for the rest of us to aspire to.'' John Gardner, University of Oxford "'Rethinking Criminal Law Theory' is an excellent collection of essays demonstrating the vigour, creativity and range of Canadian criminal justice scholarship. It covers a wide range of problems and issues both in the domestic and the international context. Core questions are examined in depth and new questions are brought to the fore. I recommend it very highly to criminal lawyers and philosophers of the criminal law." Professor Victor Tadros, University of Warwick "'Rethinking Criminal Law Theory 'is packed with outstanding contributions from criminal law theorists who are among the best not only in Canada, but in the whole English-speaking world. Broad and deep in its coverage, the collection offers fresh approaches to a wide range of cutting-edge issues in the field. It provides a resource readers will come back to repeatedly." Stuart Green, Professor of Law and Justice Nathan L Jacobs Scholar, Rutgers University

Around 20 percent of Americans fall into the category of “spiritual but not religious.” Yoga has become a ubiquitous pastime for middle-class Westerners. Mindfulness is increasingly incorporated into school curricula, sports programs, and even corporate culture. Hollywood icons and Silicon Valley trendsetters tout the benefits of a “spiritual” life. These developments reflect a widespread turn away from “religion” toward “spirituality.” Yet the nature of this spiritual turn is still poorly understood, and its consequences sorely underappreciated. The Shape of Spirituality brings together leading sociologists to challenge common notions that spirituality is individualistic, privatized, and apolitical—and to make the definitive case for its social and political significance. Contributors examine the sweeping influence of spirituality on a variety of realms, including health care and therapeutic practice, popular culture, civic engagement, public protest, conspiracy culture, and progressive politics. Leveraging cutting-edge quantitative and qualitative data, this authoritative book makes clear that, far from being marginal and inconsequential, spirituality holds profound public importance today.

The origins of the incest taboo have puzzled many of the most influential minds of the West, from Plutarch to St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, David Hume, Lewis Henry Morgan, Sigmund Freud, Emile Durkheim, Edward Westermarck, and Claude Lévi-Strauss. This book puts the discussion of incest on a new foundation. It is the first attempt to thoroughly examine the rich literature, from philosophical, theological, and legal treatises to psychological and biological-genetic studies, to a wide variety of popular cultural media over a long period of time. The book offers a detailed examination of discursive and figurative representations of incest during five selected periods, from 1600 to the present. The incest discussion for each period is complemented with a presentation of dominant kinship structures and changes, without arguing for causal relations. Part I deals with the legacy of ecclesiastical marriage prohibitions of the Middle Ages: Historians dealing with the Reformation have wondered about the political and social implications of theological debates about the incest rules, the Enlightenment opted for sociological considerations of the household and a new anthropology based on the passions, Baroque discourse focused upon sexual relations among kin by marriage, while Enlightenment and Romantic discussions worried the intimacy of siblings. The first section of Part II deals with the six decades around 1900, during which European and American cultures obsessed about the sexuality of women. Almost everyone concurred in the idea that mother made the family what it was; that she configured the household, kept the lines of kinship vibrant, and stood at the threshold as stern gatekeeper, and many thought that she managed these tasks through her sexuality and an eroticized relationship with sons. Another story line, taken up in the section "Intermezzo," this one about the physical and mental consequences of inbreeding, appeared after 1850. To what extent do close-kin marriages pose risks for progeny? At its center, lay the incest problematic, now restated: Is avoidance of kin genetically programmed? Do all cultures know about risks of consanguinity? As for the twenty-first century, evolutionary and genetic assumptions are challenged by a living world population containing roughly one billion offspring of cousin marriages. Part III deals with one of the perhaps most remarkable reconfigurations of Western kinship in the aftermath of World War I: The shift from an endogamous to an exogamous alliance system centered on the "nuclear family." An historical anomaly, this family form began to dissolve almost as soon as it came together and, in the process, shifted the focus of incest concerns to a new pairing: father and daughter. By the 1970s, when the father/daughter problematic swept all other considerations of incest aside, that relationship had come to be modeled, for the most part, around power and its abusive potential. As for "incest," its representations in the last three decades of the twentieth century no longer focused on biologically damaged progeny but rather on power abuses in the nuclear family: sexual "abuse." By the mid-1990s, Western culture at least partly redirected its gaze away from father and daughter towards siblings, especially towards brothers and sisters and the sexual boundaries and erotics of their relationships. Correspondingly, siblings became a "model organism" for psychotherapy, evolutionary biology, and the science of genetics.

In Mothering through Precarity Julie A. Wilson and Emily Chivers Yochim explore how working- and middle-class mothers negotiate the difficulties of twenty-first-century mothering through their everyday engagement with digital media. From Facebook and Pinterest to couponing, health, and parenting websites, the women Wilson and Yochim study rely upon online resources and communities for material and emotional support. Feeling responsible for their family's economic security, these women often become "mamapreneurs," running side businesses out of their homes. They also feel the need to provide for their family's happiness, making successful mothering dependent upon economic and emotional labor. Questioning these standards of motherhood, Wilson and Yochim demonstrate that mothers' work is inseparable from digital media as it provides them the means for sustaining their families through such difficulties as health scares, underfunded schools, a weakening social safety net, and job losses.

In this provocative history of parenting, Harry Hendrick analyses the social and economic reasons behind parenting trends. He shows how broader social changes, including neoliberalism, feminism, the collapse of the social-democratic ideal, and the 'new behaviourism', have led to the rise of the anxious and narcissistic parent. The book charts the shift from the liberal and progressive parenting styles of the 1940s-70s, to the more 'behavioural', punitive and managerial methods of childrearing today, made popular by 'experts' such as Gina Ford and Supernanny Jo Frost, and by New Labour's parent education programmes. This trend, Hendrick argues, is symptomatic of the sour, mean-spirited and vindictive social norms found throughout society today. It undermines the better instincts of parents and, therefore, damages parent-child relations. Instead, he proposes, parents should focus on understanding and helping their children as they work at growing up.