Smart Living

What do the Fab Five from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, the Supernanny and celebrity chef Jamie Oliver all have in common? Lifestyle gurus are increasingly intruding on everyday life, directing ordinary people to see themselves as «projects» that can be «made over» through embracing an ethos of relentless self-improvement. Smart Living argues that they represent a new form of popular expertise sweeping the world. Written in a lively and accessible manner, the book examines this cult of expertise across a range of media and cultural sites and offers the reader a range of critical tools for understanding the recent emergence of this popular international phenomenon. Smart Living is a must-read for anyone interested in the relationship between popular media culture and contemporary social life.

Autorentext

The Author: Tania Lewis is Senior Research Fellow in Sociology at La Trobe University, Melbourne. Her work in the fields of media and cultural studies has been published in Media, Culture and Society, Television and New Media, Cultural StudiesCritical Methodologies, Continuum, and the European Journal of Cultural Studies.