The Outsourced Self Intimate Life in Market Times

by Hochschild, Arlie Russell

• ISBN13: 9780805088892
• ISBN10: 080508889X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-05-08
• Publisher: Metropolitan Books

Summary

From the famed author of the bestselling The Second Shiftand The Time Bind, a pathbreaking look at the transformation of private life in our for-profit world The family has long been a haven in a heartless world, the one place immune to market forces and economic calculations, where the personal, the private, and the emotional hold sway. Yet as Arlie Russell Hochschild shows in The Outsourced Self, that is no longer the case: everything that was once part of private lifelove, friendship, child rearingis being transformed into packaged expertise to be sold back to confused, harried Americans. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and original research, Hochschild follows the incursions of the market into every stage of intimate life. From dating services that train you to be the CEO of your love life to wedding planners who create a couple's "personal narrative"; from nameologists (who help you name your child) to wantologists (who help you name your goals); from commercial surrogate farms in India to hired mourners who will scatter your loved one's ashes in the ocean of your choiceHochschild reveals a world in which the most intuitive and emotional of human acts have become work for hire. Sharp and clear-eyed, Hochschild is full of sympathy for overstressed, outsourcing Americans, even as she warns of the market's threat to the personal realm they are striving so hard to preserve.

Author Biography

Arlie Russell Hochschild is the author of The Time Bind, The Second Shift, and The Managed Heart. She is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, Her articles have appeared in Harper's, Mother Jones, and Psychology Today, among others. She lives in San Francisco.

Table of Contents

"The nation's leading sociologist of daily life has turned her razor-sharp eye to rapid advance of the commodity frontier. Exposing both extreme (love coaches, wantologists) and ordinary (elder care, party planners) cases, Hochschild has produced a  brilliant, compelling, and hard-to-put-down account of the expansion of market logic and its effects on our culture. This book deserves the country's attention." –Juliet Schor, author of Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth

“What have we given up, Arlie Hochschild worries, when we start paying experts for our most intimate activities? Taking us into a fascinating tour of love coaches, wedding planners, surrogate mothers and more, Hochschild offers her own compelling and controversial answers. Another triumph from this masterful social analyst and a gift to her legion of readers.” –Viviana Zelizer, author of The Purchase of Intimacy