New heroines of labour: domesticating post-feminism and neoliberal capitalism in Russia

Salmenniemi, Suvi and Adamson, Maria (2015) New heroines of labour: domesticating post-feminism and neoliberal capitalism in Russia. Sociology, 49 (1) . pp. 88-105. ISSN 0038-0385 [Article] (doi:10.1177/0038038513516830)

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Abstract

In recent years, postfeminism has become an important element of popular media culture and the object of feminist cultural critique. This paper explores how postfeminism is domesticated in Russia through popular self-help literature aimed at a female audience. Drawing on a close reading of self-help texts by three bestselling Russian authors, the paper examines how postfeminism is made intelligible to the Russian audience through constructions of femininity and how it articulates with other symbolic frameworks. It identifies labour as a key trope through which postfeminism is domesticated and argues that the texts invite women to invest time and energy in the labour of personality, the labour of femininity and the labour of sexuality in order to become ‘valuable subjects’. The paper demonstrates that the domestication of postfeminism also involves the domestication of neoliberal capitalism in Russia, and highlights how popular psychology, neoliberal capitalism and postfeminism are symbiotically related

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: OnlineFirst Version of Record - Jan 13, 2014
Keywords (uncontrolled): postfeminism, self-help literature, femininity, domestication, Russia, popular psychology
Research Areas: A. > Business School > Leadership, Work and Organisations
A. > Business School > Leadership, Work and Organisations > Diversity and Gender group
Item ID: 14493
Notes on copyright: © The Author(s) 2014
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page(https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
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Depositing User: Maria Adamson
Date Deposited: 20 Mar 2015 13:42
Last Modified: 29 Nov 2022 23:00
URI: https://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/id/eprint/14493

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