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For radical twentieth-century feminists, it was a rallying cry for bodily autonomy and political power. For influencers and lifestyle brands, it’s buying fancy nutrition and body products at a premium. And it has now infiltrated nearly every food, leisure, and pop-culture space as a multi-billion-dollar industry.
What is it? To quote a million memes: it’s called self-care.In
Decolonize Self-Care Alyson K. Spurgas and Zoë C. Meleo-Erwin deliver a comprehensive sociological analysis and scathing critique of the catchphrase’s capitalist, racist undertones. To decolonize self-care, they argue, requires a full reckoning with the exclusionary, appropriative nature of most of the wellness industry, but this education is only the first step in the process. We must commit to new models of care and well-being that allow for health, pleasure, and community—for everyone.
List of contents
Editor’s Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1: How to Have Amazing Sex (and Become Your Best Self in the Process): Harness Your Receptive Femininity and Practice Mindfulness!
Chapter 2: Marketing Self-Care: From FemTech and Biohacking to Painmoons and Extreme Travel
Chapter 3: You Can Nourish Your Family and Climb the Ladder of Success! The White Neoliberal Feminism and Hip Domesticity of Food-Based Health Movements
Chapter 4: More Care, Less Self ? How to (Hopefully) Move Beyond Complaint, Critique, and Coloniality
References
About the author
Alyson K. Spurgas is Associate Professor of Sociology and affiliated faculty in the Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Program at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. Spurgas researches, writes, and teaches about the sociology of trauma, the politics of desire, and technologies of care from an interdisciplinary and intersectional feminist perspective. They are also the author of
Diagnosing Desire: Biopolitics and Femininity into the Twenty-First Century (The Ohio State University Press, 2020), which won the 2021 Cultural Studies Association First Book Prize. Alyson lives in Brooklyn, New York, with their amazing partner and cat. Check out www.alysonkspurgas.com for info about Alyson’s writing, teaching, speaking events, and more.
Zoë C. Meleo-Erwin is a qualitative sociologist and former assistant professor of public health. In 2022, she left academia to pursue a career as a user experience researcher in the tech industry. As a scholar, her work focused on the meanings of health and illness, health decision-making, experiences of embodiment, and the ways in which digital technologies facilitate the creation of both identity and community around health and illness. A list of her publications can be found on her website, www.zoemeleoerwin.com
Bhakti Shringarpure is a writer, academic and founding editor of
Warscapes magazine. She is the author of
Cold War Assemblages: Decolonization to Digital and a regular contributor to
The Los Angeles Review of Books and
Africa is a Country. She currently runs the Radical Books Collective which pushes for an alternative, inclusive and non-commercial approach to books and reading.
Summary
For radical twentieth-century feminists, it was a rallying cry for bodily autonomy and political power. For influencers and lifestyle brands, it’s buying fancy nutrition and body products at a premium. And it has now infiltrated nearly every food, leisure, and pop-culture space as a multi-billion-dollar industry.
What is it? To quote a million memes: it’s called self-care.
In Decolonize Self-Care Alyson K. Spurgas and Zoë C. Meleo-Erwin deliver a comprehensive sociological analysis and scathing critique of the catchphrase’s capitalist, racist undertones. To decolonize self-care, they argue, requires a full reckoning with the exclusionary, appropriative nature of most of the wellness industry, but this education is only the first step in the process. We must commit to new models of care and well-being that allow for health, pleasure, and community—for everyone.
Foreword
- Conduct dynamic social media campaign, running giveaways, offering discounts during publication week, and coordinating with key influencers.
Pitch excerpts and reviews to wide array of publications including Lux Magazine, The Nation, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement, The Baffler, Harper’s, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Literary Hub, Guernica, Bookforum, Book Riot, Africa Is a Country, Morning Star, and more.- Pitch television, radio, and podcast interviews with authors.
- Host book launch in New York, along with series of events in conjunction with other Decolonize That! authors.
