The Purchase of Intimacy

Abstract

Students of the intersection between monetary transfers and intimate social relations face a choice among three ways of analyzing that relationship: as hostile worlds whose contact contaminates one or the other; as nothing but market transactions, cultural constructions, or coercion; or as differentiated ties, each marked by a distinctive set of monetary transfers. A review of payment practices, legal disputes, and recent legal theory illustrates the weakness of the first two views and the desirability of further pursuing the third alternative.

From value to values: sustainable consumption at farmers markets

“…Collective action, on the other hand, asks individuals to temporarily sacrifice their own needs for the good of the group (for example, a striking worker giving up wages so that everyone can receive better pay). While economic sociologists have certainly established that markets are embedded in social contexts (Grattnover 1985) and that those contexts can be emotional (Zelizer 2005) and even moral (Beamish and Biggart 2006), economic exchange remains governed by a ''marketness' ' and ''instrumentalism'' that conforms to the individualist logic stated above (Block 1990). According to Hinrichs (2000, p. 297), who applies this ''new'' economic sociology to farmers markets, ''a more critical view of embeddedness recognizes that price may still matter and that self-interest may be at work, sometimes even in the midst of vigorous, meaningful social ties.''…”

Toys as tools of connection and disconnection: ethnographic perspectives on children’s consumption, inequality, and contemporary cultures of care

“…In a broad sense, Millennial Monsters, resonates with other recent work in the anthropology of emotions and kinship, including studies of love and romance that problematize the relationship between sentimentality and commercialization in both commodified and ''traditional'' sexual relationships , Frank 2002, Zelizer 2005, Hochschild 2003; see also Allison's own Nightwork [1994]). For example, Bernstein's 2007 article on postindustrial sexual commerce contends that the most recent forms of commodified sex have tended to be dispersed through urban and suburban landscapes, to trouble boundaries between ''public'' and ''private'' spaces, and to strive toward an experience of ''bounded authenticity'' in which ''real'' emotional experiences are understood to be purchasable (190).…”

Becoming Gay? Immigration Policies and the Truth of Sexual Identity

“…And why presume that interest is necessarily devoid of desire? (Zelizer, 2009). On the one hand, the love shared by the two men does not mean that either forgets how useful the Frenchman can be for his Algerian partner.…”