Smart Living: Lifestyle Media and Popular Expertise

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, the volume 15 in the series of Popular Culture and Everyday Life, 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.