Literature Review 3

                                                         

Becker, Dana. "Stress: The New Black Death?". One Nation Under Stress: The Trouble With Stress As An Idea. Oxford University Press. New York, NY. 2013. 1-18.

Becker, Dana. "Getting and Spending: The Wear and Tear of Modern Life". One Nation Under Stress: The Trouble With Stress As An Idea. Oxford University Press. New York, NY. 2013. 18-48.

Dana Becker is a professor of social work at Bryn Mawr College. She recieved her graduate education in Social Work at Bryn Mawr College and has done extensive research on the concept of stress. Her previous work examines the various relationships between mental health and social conditions in the United States. Due to her extensive exposure to the topic of stress, Becker should provide an authoritative voice as to how stress has become such a prominent aspect of American life that it has become salient in virtually all situations as well as ways to create alternatives to reduce the prevalence of stress among individuals.

The first two chapters of Dana Becker's book are what I will examine here. She begins the book by citing numerous effects the concept of stress may have on our mental and physical health, stating that our current society has been "elevating stress to the status of an actual disease" (Becker 3). She terms this concept the medicalization of stress whereby a social phenomenon is transformed into a disease. This is an important concept to consider when thinking about the widespread nature of stress in America, because the health care sector has transformed the idea of stress into a money-making industry which perpetuates a desire for stress alleviation which Foucault classifies as "technologies of the self," or strategies used to attain a particular state of happiness (Becker 5). Similarly, Becker notes that the solutions available to Americans to cope with stress are middle-class solution middle-class problems. She clarifies this when she states, "The achievement of a 'healthy lifestyle' requires more than individual 'healthy choices.' When the stressor is poverty, we need to reckon with inequalities that make the universal attainment of a healthy lifestyle so exclusive" (Becker 13). She further illuminates the effects of the American obsession with mental health when she claims that stress has the ability to "produce people who can act and think about themselves in certain ways" (Becker 5). She validates this with a discussion of Type A personalities and the physical ramification this obsessive personality type has on individuals, such as heart attack, stroke, and high blood pressure. But Becker claims that this Type A personality is harmful for the individuals, but even more harmful for society as a whole. "Type A was the first of may attempts to quantify the social and psychological nature of our society in terms of the individual" (Becker 44). This exemplifies the vicious cycle that Americans remain trapped in as stress is produced by social and societal factors, yet is only treatable on the individual level.

Dana Becker's book will be explicitly helpful in my research as it provides a mode of analyses that contrasts sharply with many of my other sources. Because many other scholars on the topic of stress offer solutions which Becker explicitly refutes throughout her research, her book will be helpful in understanding why the solutions that have been proposed thus far are not working.