Commercialization of Intimate Life
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Arlie Russell Hochschild, author of three "New York Times" Notable Books, has been one of the freshest and most popular voices in feminist sociology over the last decades. Her influential, unusually perceptive work has opened up new ways of seeing family life, love, gender, the workplace, market transactions - indeed, American life itself. This book gathers some of Hochschild's most important and most widely read articles in one place, includes new work, and brings several essays to American audiences for the first time. Each chapter reflects on the complex negotiations we make day to day to juggle the conflicting demands of love and work. Taken together, they are a compelling, often startling, look at how our everyday lives are shaped by modern capitalism. These essays, rich with the details of everyday life, explore larger social issues by looking at a series of intimate moments in people's lives. Among them, "Love and Gold" investigates the globalization of love by focusing on care workers who leave their own children and elderly to care for children and the elderly in wealthy countries.
In "The Commodity Frontier," Hochschild considers an Internet ad for a 'beautiful, smart, hostess, good masseuse - $400/week', and explores our responses to personal services for hire. In "From the Frying Pan into the Fire" she asks if capitalism is a religion. In addition to these recent essays, several of Hochschild's important early essays, such as 'Inside the Clockwork of Male Careers', have been revised and updated for this collection.
Arlie Russell Hochschild is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. She is author of The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work (1997), The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home (1989), and The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (California, 1983), all cited as Notable Books of the Year by the New York Times. She is also author of The Unexpected Community (California, 1973), and she has received the American Sociological Association Award for Public Understanding of Sociology.