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The notion of commercialization of love, that is not to be confused with prostitution (the commercialization of sexual activity), involves the definitions of romantic love and consumerism.
The commercialization of love is the ongoing process of infiltration of commercial and economical stimuli in the daily life of lovers and the association of monetary and non-monetary symbols and commodities in the love relationships.
The application of Habermas’ theory is helpful to fully understand the discussion of the relationship between the market and love. From the model of a two-tiered society postulated by Habermas (comprising the sphere of the systems and the life-world), Frankfurt School has affirmed that when romantic stimuli made with commercial proposes infiltrate the daily life of lovers it causes an undesired colonization of the life-world, thus reaffirming the irreducible contradiction between the economy and love.
In contemporary societies, the economy is present in several spheres of love, offering cultural products that embody its ideals and feelings and providing the contexts in which to experience the romantic rituals (i.e. love manuals, sex therapists and marriage crisis counselors).
Romantic love can be defined, according to Sérgio Costa, [1] as a historical-cultural model that branches into five dimensions:
Two sociologists, in particular, have debated and analyzed in depth the theme of commercialization of love related to our society: Eva Illouz and Arlie R. Hochschild.
Eva Illouz is a professor of sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Illouz's research has always focused on several different topics and themes such as the study of culture, communication and especially emotions. In particular, the theme of commercialization, or commodification, of love is well analyzed in her first book Consuming the Romantic Utopia, where indeed she describes how capitalism has transformed emotional patterns. At the beginning of the book, it is examined how romantic love has changed during time also due to the newly expanding mass markets of leisure. This change lead to the creation of a new process called romanticization of commodities, that is a process in which commodities played a crucial role in experiencing emotions such as love or romance. In the 1930s, commodities of any kind such as jewelry, household appliances and even basic generic products were advertised in newspapers, magazines and also in movies as essential indicators that will enable people to fully live and experience romance. Throughout the book, Illouz deals also with another process: the commodification of romance. She states that the practice of “dating” replaced the practice of “calling on a woman” and going to her parents’ house and it consequently moved romantic encounters from the home sphere to the sphere of consumption, that is going out on a date for example to the cinema or to have dinner in a fancy restaurant. The inscription of the romantic encounter into the leisure consumption’s sphere, due to the practice of dating, marked the entrance of romance in the market. All this was made possible, on one hand, by the availability of some goods and services such as cars or leisure travels that, until then, were reserved to the upper classes and, on the other, by the middle-classes’ adoption of the working class’ entertainments, such as going to the movie theatre. [4]
Arlie Russell Hochschild is a sociologist and a professor emerita at the Berkeley University of California. During her career, she studied and examined topics like market culture, family global patterns of care work, and the relationships between culture and emotion. [5]
She analyzed the linkage between love and market in several works, including The Outsourced Self: Intimate Life in Market Times (2012) [6] and The Commercialization of Intimate Life: Notes from Home and Work (2003). [7]
In her essay "The Commodity Frontier" (contained in The Commercialization of Intimate Life: Notes from Home and Work), she argued that the commodity frontier (the boundary between market commodities and emotions) has a double aspect: it is developed by both the market-place and the family. On the market side, this frontier represents for commercial companies an opportunity to develop new markets for products that in the past were associated with the familiar environment in the past (for example nannies, birthday party planners, personal chefs and so on). On the other hand, the supply of the products increases, with a growing number of families wants or desires to consume these services and goods. This particular market targets above all single men and women, or parents who spend most of their time working outside the house, without being able to devote their time to family or emotional relationships’ care. These services have become affordable for rich people, while on the other side, lower or middle class members occupy these jobs positions. Besides, “in their more recent incarnation, the commercial substitutes family activities often turn out to be better than the real thing”. [8] Therefore, companies do not compete against each other, but with families. Commodification is moving into the domain of our private life and desires, creating an ambivalence; by purchasing goods and services that simulate family-like experience, we want, on one hand, to live some authentic experiences, like the one we experienced in the past with our family, but at the same time, we are enhancing the commodification of these practices by drawing upon these services.
Valentine's Day, also known as Saint Valentine's Day, [9] is a religious celebration observed on 14 February each year, also if in some countries it is celebrated in different occasions. In Russia and in the Eastern Orthodox Church in general Valentines’ day is celebrated on 6 and 30 July, while in Brazil the Dia de São Valentim is recognized on 12 June. During this day, traditionally, lovers exchange symbols and commodities to show their sentiments to each other. This tradition developed during the 19th century in England, where people started to express their love for each other by donating flowers, offering sweets and exchanging handwritten greeting cards (known as "valentines"), that rapidly were replaced with mass-produced ones. [10] In the later 20th and early 21st centuries, this Valentine's Day tradition spread to other countries, arriving in some East Asian countries with globalization and concentrated marketing strategies, becoming a worldwide celebration differentiated in each country with several peculiarities and behaviors.
Internet has revolutionized courtship by becoming the biggest love mall around here. Nowadays finding love is considered a work and a lot of people do not think they are able to do it on their own. For this reason single people see dating websites as a support that will help them to find the perfect partner. Finding your soulmates and sexual chemistry are exactly the core ideas, the pillars at the bottom of love seekers’ industry. In fact, dating websites’ users behave like shoppers: they have a list of desired qualities and or physical characteristics they look for in a partner; you have only few seconds to brand yourself, make a good impression and be chosen among thousands of other people before being rejected with a click. Internet dating isn’t always as rewarding as it may appear: sometimes people remain hurt because they invest money, time and feelings in it but they still can’t find the “right” person or face problems with users who lie about their age, drug habits or marital status. Some websites, by embracing the spirit of capitalism and applying statistics to love, even provide their “clients” with surveys using pie charts, graph or rating systems such as ROI and CSI (Couple Satisfaction Index). The industry of love has also devoted some websites to matching daters by religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disabilities and even level of intelligence.
In her essay “Love and Gold”, Hochschild explains that nowadays the world is facing a particular global trend: care and love importation from poor countries to rich nations is increasing sharply. Professionals from the developing countries leave their workplaces for better job opportunities and higher salaries in richer countries, usually in Europe or in the United States. However, this trend widens the gap between poor and rich countries. Today, there is a parallel trend, in which care workers started to leave developing countries to care for children, elders, and sick people in richer nations. Therefore, due to the growing demand for care workers, a large number of women is migrating in order to find jobs as nurses, nannies, and so on. These jobs allow women to send home enough money to sustain their families; in the words of Hochschild: “migration has become a private solution to a public problem”. [11]
Half of the world's migrants are now constituted by women, who emigrate to find mostly domestic jobs. In this process, not only time and energy are involved, but also love; in this situation, we can consider love as a resource that is extracted from one place and "consumed" somewhere else. As reported by Hochschild : "If love is a resource, it's a renewable resource; it creates more of itself". [12] Love and feelings are profitable resources, but we do not invest feelings, we find a new object towards to redirect it.
The richest/upper-class families invite nannies to displace their love towards their own children; many families welcome the fact that the nanny would import her native culture values. They identify their care practices as more relaxed, patient and joyful.
Love as a resource is not just extracted from poor countries and then imported in the richest ones. It is created, or rather assembled, with elements that come from both cultural environments. The love that nannies express, once migrated, towards children i is partially produced in the richer countries, and it is also the outcome of money, ideology, loneliness and yearning for their sons and daughters. The suffering of these women is not visible to the nannies’ employers; they just focus on the love that nannies show towards their children. Therefore, nanny’s love becomes a "thing itself. It is unique, private – fetishized". [13] While objectifying a concept, we start to consider it outside its natural context. By isolating the concept of care from the context in which is produced, we unconsciously separate the logic of nanny love from the economic and capitalist context in which is created.
A gift economy or gift culture is a system of exchange where valuables are not sold, but rather given without an explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards. Social norms and customs govern giving a gift in a gift culture; although there is some expectation of reciprocity, gifts are not given in an explicit exchange of goods or services for money, or some other commodity or service. This contrasts with a barter economy or a market economy, where goods and services are primarily explicitly exchanged for value received.
Feelings are subjective self-contained phenomenal experiences. According to the APA Dictionary of Psychology, a feeling is "a self-contained phenomenal experience"; and feelings are "subjective, evaluative, and independent of the sensations, thoughts, or images evoking them". The term feeling is closely related to, but not the same as, emotion. Feeling may for instance refer to the conscious subjective experience of emotions. The study of subjective experiences is called phenomenology. Psychotherapy generally involves a therapist helping a client understand, articulate, and learn to effectively regulate the client's own feelings, and ultimately to take responsibility for the client's experience of the world. Feelings are sometimes held to be characteristic of embodied consciousness.
An experience economy is the sale of memorable experiences to customers. The term was first used in a 1998 article by B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore describing the next economy following the agrarian economy, the industrial economy, and the most recent service economy.
In Marxist philosophy, the term commodity fetishism describes the economic relationships of production and exchange as being social relationships that exist among things and not as relationships that exist among people. As a form of reification, commodity fetishism presents economic value as inherent to the commodities, and not as arising from the workforce, from the human relations that produced the commodity, the goods and the services.
Arlie Russell Hochschild is an American professor emeritus of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley and writer. Hochschild has long focused on the human emotions that underlie moral beliefs, practices, and social life generally. She is the author of nine books including, most recently, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, a finalist for the National Book Award. In The Managed Heart (1983), The Second Shift (1989), The Time Bind (1997) and many of her other books, she continues the sociological tradition of C. Wright Mills by drawing links between private troubles and public issues. Her impact worldwide is recognized, as her books have been translated into 16 different languages.
Commodification is the process of transforming inalienable, free, or gifted things into commodities, or objects for sale. It has a connotation of losing an inherent quality or social relationship when something is integrated by a capitalist marketplace. Concepts that have been argued as being commodified include broad items such as the body, intimacy, public goods, animals and holidays.
Emotional labor is the process of managing feelings and expressions to fulfill the emotional requirements of a job. More specifically, workers are expected to regulate their personas during interactions with customers, co-workers, clients, and managers. This includes analysis and decision-making in terms of the expression of emotion, whether actually felt or not, as well as its opposite: the suppression of emotions that are felt but not expressed. This is done so as to produce a certain feeling in the customer or client that will allow the company or organization to succeed.
Marxist feminism is a philosophical variant of feminism that incorporates and extends Marxist theory. Marxist feminism analyzes the ways in which women are exploited through capitalism and the individual ownership of private property. According to Marxist feminists, women's liberation can only be achieved by dismantling the capitalist systems in which they contend much of women's labor is uncompensated. Marxist feminists extend traditional Marxist analysis by applying it to unpaid domestic labor and sex relations.
An affectional action is one of four major types of social action, as defined by Max Weber. Unlike the other social actions, an affectional action is an action that occurs as a result of a person's state of feeling, sometimes regardless of the consequences that follow it. Because the action is a result of our state of feeling, an affectional action may sometimes be described as irrational and reactive. An example of an affectional action can be the act of a father striking their daughter because of an action that she carried out that the father saw as frustrating.
Emotion work is understood as the art of trying to change in degree or quality an emotion or feeling.
Feeling rules are socially shared norms that influence how people want to try to feel emotions in given social relations. This concept was introduced by sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild in 1979. Hochschild's 1983 book, The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling, discusses feeling rules in greater depth, especially in the occupational worlds of flight attendants and bill collectors. Hochschild draws on the work of sociologist Erving Goffman as well as labor scholar Harry Braverman to discuss the dramaturgical demands and emotional labor entailed by jobs in the service sector, in which workers must "perform" certain roles that entail abiding by certain feeling rules. She notes that women are more likely to have such jobs than men, and that analysis of feeling rules may therefore be especially relevant to understanding the gendered dimensions of labor. This work foreshadows themes from her later analyses of women's work, both paid and unpaid, e.g. in The Commercialization of Intimate Life (2003).
The spectacle is a central notion in the Situationist theory, developed by Guy Debord in his 1967 book The Society of the Spectacle. In the general sense, the spectacle refers to "the autocratic reign of the market economy which had acceded to an irresponsible sovereignty, and the totality of new techniques of government which accompanied this reign." It also exists in a more limited sense, where spectacle means the mass media, which are "its most glaring superficial manifestation."
The sociology of emotions applies sociological theorems and techniques to the study of human emotions. As sociology emerged primarily as a reaction to the negative effects of modernity, many normative theories deal in some sense with emotion without forming a part of any specific subdiscipline: Karl Marx described capitalism as detrimental to personal 'species-being', Georg Simmel wrote of the deindividualizing tendencies of 'the metropolis', and Max Weber's work dealt with the rationalizing effect of modernity in general.
Eva Illouz is a professor of sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris. She was the first woman president of Bezalel Academy of Art and Design.
Emotions in the workplace play a large role in how an entire organization communicates within itself and to the outside world. "Events at work have real emotional impact on participants. The consequences of emotional states in the workplace, both behaviors and attitudes, have substantial significance for individuals, groups, and society". "Positive emotions in the workplace help employees obtain favorable outcomes including achievement, job enrichment and higher quality social context". "Negative emotions, such as fear, anger, stress, hostility, sadness, and guilt, however increase the predictability of workplace deviance,", and how the outside world views the organization.
The commodification of nature is an area of research within critical environmental studies that is concerned with the ways in which natural entities and processes are made exchangeable through the market, and the implications thereof.
Self-estrangement is the idea conceived by Karl Marx in Marx's theory of alienation and Melvin Seeman in his five logically distinct psychological states that encompasses alienation. As spoken by Marx, self-estrangement is "the alienation of man's essence, man's loss of objectivity and his loss of realness as self-discovery, manifestation of his nature, objectification and realization". Self-estrangement is when a person feels alienated from others and society as a whole. A person may feel alienated by his work by not feeling like he has meaning to his work, therefore losing their sense of self at the work place. Self-estrangement contributes to burnout at work and a lot of psychological stress.
The Outsourced Self: Intimate Life in Market Times, by Arlie Russell Hochschild, was published in 2012. It focuses on the "emotional terms of engagement" individuals develop as they increasingly outsource tasks associated with intimate life. These range from for-pay internet dating, long-distance elder care and take-out dinners to "rent-a-friends" and global commercial surrogacy.
Hyperconsumerism, hyper-consumerism, hyperconsumption or hyper-consumption is the consumption of goods beyond ones necessities and the associated significant pressure to consume those goods, exerted by social media and other outlets as those goods are perceived to shape one's identity. Frenchy Lunning defines it curtly as "a consumerism for the sake of consuming."
A global care chain is a globalized labor market for workers who provide care-intensive labor, such as childcare, eldercare and healthcare. The term was coined by the feminist sociologist Arlie Hochschild. The movement of these workers is an important topic for research and policy development since the number of international migrants around the world has grown substantially since the 1990s.
