Self-help literature: a look at labor relations

Abstract

The article focuses on the emergence of a self-help discourse in the labor relations. It briefly discusses the origins of traditional self-help, which go back to the nineteenth century, in order to understand its reconfiguration in the last decade of the twentieth century. It then analyzes, in more detail, the uses and abuses of this discourse by the area of human relations, enabling us to think about the movement of labor capital which, under a “humanitarian” guise, seeks to conceal the relations of exploitation and power between employers and employees. Thus, the language used in the discourse of self-help is, in itself, a strategy that allows labor capital to resume control in labor relations.