From ‘having’ to ‘being’: self‐worth and the current crisis of American society

What is it about?

With growing inequality, the American dream is becoming less effective as a collective myth. With its focus on material success, competition and self‐reliance, the intensified diffusion of neoliberal scripts of the self is leading the upper‐middle class toward a mental health crisis while the working class and low‐income groups do not have the resources needed to live the dream. African Americans, Latinos and undocumented immigrants, who are presumed to lack self‐reliance, face more rigid boundaries. One possible way forward is broadening cultural membership by promoting new narratives of hope centered on a plurality of criteria of worth, ‘ordinary universalism’ and destigmatizing stigmatized groups.

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