| This research is a case study, which focuses on the teachings and methods of Landmark Education Corporation as a representative of the Human Potential Movement. Criticisms have been leveled at the Human Potential Movement, asserting that it is a white, middle-class phenomenon indulged in by a privileged population with an emphasis on self-improvement toward individualistic and narcissistic ends. This study examines how the benefits ascribed to participation in Landmark programs may extend beyond personal development and into community development, and how this form of self-improvement enables people for life in a globalizing economy.;Previous research on the Human Potential Movement has tended to identify it as an aspect of the counterculture or as a reflection of aberrations of the Baby Boom generation. The counterculture has substantially faded, however, while the organizations that sell human potential products have grown and have permeated the mainstream. The intensification of the globalization process during the last forty years has affected western culture in such a way that it is now possible to get a more precise reading of the structuring of this movement as it relates to western consciousness and life practices.;Two different cultural populations were researched through the qualitative methods of in-depth interviewing and participant observation both within the communities and in Landmark programs. The first population consists of primarily African American inner-city residents involved in community-building efforts. The second population consists of formerly committed volunteers in the Landmark organization. From these data a picture of privilege and race as they are constructed in U.S. culture emerges in the context of the teachings of Landmark Education. Race is less a factor determining the value derived from participation in Landmark than is class. The often-denigrated position of middle-class privilege, as it relates to social awareness and activism, may be a false criticism leveled against the class as a function of mystification inspired by economic restructuring.;Finally, this research addresses the possibility that a new kind of individual is being created in the globalized social milieu, and what the nature of that individual may imply. |
