Emotions as Commodities: Capitalism, Consumption and Authenticity

Description

Capitalism has made rationality into a pervasive feature of human action and yet, far from heralding a loss of emotionality, capitalist culture has been accompanied with an unprecedented intensification of emotional life. This raises the question: how could we have become increasingly rationalized and more intensely emotional?　 Emotions as Commodities offers a simple hypothesis: that consumer acts and emotional life have become closely and inseparably intertwined with each other, each one defining and enabling the other. Commodities facilitate the experience of emotions, and so emotions are converted into commodities. The contributors of this volume present the co-production of emotions and commodities as a new type of commodity that has gone unseen and unanalyzed by theories of consumption – emodity. Indeed, this innovative book explores how emodity includes atmospherical or mood-producing commodities, relation-marking commodities and mental commodities, all of which the purpose it is to change and improve the self. Analysing a variety of modern day situations such as emotional management through music, creation of urban sexual atmospheres and emotional transformation through psychotherapy, Emotions as Commodities will appeal to scholars, postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers interested in fields such as Sociology, Cultural Studies, Marketing, Anthropology and Consumer Studies. Emotions as Commodities- Front Cover Emotions as Commodities Title Page Copyright Page Contents List of contributors Acknowledgements Introduction: emodities or the making of emotional commodities Rationality, objects, and emotions in consumer culture Emotional commodities, emodities Rethinking the commodity The commodity-emotion chain Liberating the self: emotional experiences and moods Ideal of intimacy: relational emotions The ideal of mental health and self-improvement: emotional self-monitoring as commodity Notes Bibliography PART I: Liberating the self: emotional experiences and moods Chapter 1: “It is all included – without the stress”: exploring the production of relaxation in Club Med seaside resorts Tourism as an emotional industry Demanding relaxation Club Med: relaxation for sale Conclusion Notes Bibliography Chapter 2: Emotional ear drops: the music industry and technologies of emotional management From the sociology of taste to consumption techniques Emotional reflexivity Edison’s mission Playlist medicine becoming obvious Mundane soundtracks Out of context Adorno’s scorn Conclusion Notes Bibliography Chapter 3: Cinema as an emotional commodity: the horror genre and the commodification of fear The first horror movie Market research and the emotionalization of the movie industry Creating the experiences Emotional specification: contemporary horror genre Conclusion Notes Bibliography Chapter 4: Sex cards in Tel Aviv: mood work, recreational sexuality and urban atmospheres Theoretical and methodological approach Recreational sexuality and neoliberal antinomies An atmospheric analysis of sex cards in Tel Aviv Discussion: intense indifference and value under neoliberalism Notes Bibliography PART II: Ideal of intimacy: relational emotions Chapter 5: Understanding authenticity in commercial sentiment: the greeting card as emotional commodity A brief word about the study The high risk territory of emotional connection Greeting cards as consumer objects: communicating time Greeting cards as consumer objects: communicating touch Immaterial sentiment: e-cards Conclusion: when ethnography and critique meet Bibliography PART III: The ideal of mental health and self-improvement: emotional self-monitoring as commodity Chapter 6: (Ex)changing feelings: on the commodification of emotions in psychotherapy Modern psychology and the rise of the emotional Figuring out emotions: changing moods, measuring feelings Emotional utilitarianism and self-realization: the case of life coaching Conclusion Note Bibliography Chapter 7: “Psytizens”, or the construction of happy individuals in neoliberal societies Rekindling, legitimizing and institutionalizing the neoliberal discourse of individualism Happiness and psytizenship: constructing subjectivity through the consumption of happiness Conclusion Notes Bibliography Toward a post-normative critique of emotional authenticity: conclusion Authenticity or the new politics of emotions The problem with critical normativity Is the critique of emotions an internalist critique? Strategies for a post-normative critique of capitalism Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index