Literature Review #5

2. Citation: Becker, Dana. One Nation under Stress: The Trouble with Stress as an Idea. New York:

                       Oxford UP, 2013. Print.

3. Summary: 

Dana Becker explores a different view of stress in her book called One Nation Under Stress. She introduces her book with the idea that the media has put in our heads that stress is something that we all have all the time. All we can do is find ways to cope with stress. This is a concept that has evolved over time, and it has caused panic is people. She believes that is is not worth our time to individually cope with this stress. In her view, it makes a lot more sense to target the source of all the stress, which would be the media and our society as a whole. Her view point is very different from the general view, and I will learn more about it as I continue through her book.

4. Author: 

Dana Becker- Dana Becker has her Ph.D., and she is a professor of Social Work at Bryn Mawr College. Her book is very useful for my paper because her view serves as a counter-argument for my view.

5. Key Terms:

Stressism- This is a term that Becker coined and mentioned at the end of the first chapter of her book. She says that the word describes the current belief that "the tensions of contemporary life are primarily individual lifestyle problems to be solve through managing stress". This term opposes her view that this "stress" needs to be solved through social means.

Medicalization- This is another term mentioned by Becker in the first paragraph of her book. It basically describes how all of the tensions in peoples' lives today are becoming linked to different illnesses. In the end, people are being told that they need medication to fix these tensions.

6. Quotes:

 "The stress concept draws the outside in- and in such a way that we end up believing that we need to change ourselves so that we can adjust to societal conditions, rather than changing the conditions themselves" (3 Becker).

"The stress concept often obscures injustices and inequalities by seducing us into viewing those injustices and inequalities as individual problems" (7 Becker).

"Examining stress brings light to many of our cherished cultural preoccupations and predispositions, exposing existing tensions and inequities related to class and gender; and our increasing dependence on stress to explain our lives has consequences for the way we see ourselves and the world, the way we act, an the world we create as a consequence of that vision and those actions" (18 Becker).

7. Value: 

This material is very valuable for by paper because, as I mentioned early, Becker's view on today's stress is much different from my view on it. Therefore, her work serves as a perfect counter-argument for my paper. I was only able to read the first chapter so far, and it is filled with valuable information. With further reading I am sure I will find even more to include in my paper.