The Purchase of Intimacy

Viviana A. Zelizer

368 pages, parution le 25/03/2007

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Résumé

In their personal lives, people consider it essential to separate economics and intimacy. Challenging this view, this book shows how we use economic activity to create, maintain, and renegotiate important ties, especially intimate ties, to others, thus opening a window on the inner workings of the economic processes that pervade our private lives.In their personal lives, people consider it essential to separate economics and intimacy. We have, for example, a long-standing taboo against workplace romance, while we see marital love as different from prostitution because it is not a fundamentally financial exchange. In The Purchase of Intimacy, Viviana Zelizer mounts a provocative challenge to this view. Getting to the heart of one of life's greatest taboos, she shows how we all use economic activity to create, maintain, and renegotiate important ties--especially intimate ties--to other people. In everyday life, we invest intense effort and worry to strike the right balance. For example, when a wife's income equals or surpasses her husband's, how much more time should the man devote to household chores or child care? Sometimes legal disputes arise. Should the surviving partner in a same-sex relationship have received compensation for a partner's death as a result of 9/11? Through a host of compelling examples, Zelizer shows us why price is central to three key areas of intimacy: sexually tinged relations; health care by family members, friends, and professionals; and household economics. She draws both on research and materials ranging from reports on compensation to survivors of 9/11 victims to financial management Web sites and advice books for same-sex couples. From the bedroom to the courtroom, The Purchase of Intimacy opens a fascinating new window on the inner workings of the economic processes that pervade our private lives.Acknowledgments ix Prologue 1 Chapter 1: Encounters of Intimacy and Economy 7 Chapter 2: Intimacy in Law 47 Chapter 3: Coupling 94 Chapter 4: Caring Relations 158 Chapter 5: Household Commerce 209 Chapter 6: Intimate Revelations 287 References 309 Index 347Viviana A. Zelizer is Lloyd Cotsen '50 Professor of Sociology at Princeton University. Her previous books include "The Social Meaning of Money" and "Pricing the Priceless Child" (both Princeton) and "Morals and Markets".

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	PAPIER
Éditeur(s)	Princeton univ
Auteur(s)	Viviana A. Zelizer
Parution	25/03/2007
Nb. de pages	368
EAN13	9780691130637

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The Purchase of Intimacy

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