Keeping the market afloat: attachments, circuits of clientele, and personalized commodity exchanges in rural shopkeeping

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper questions the conditions of possibility and limits of the most intimate forms of emotional capitalism by studying the everyday working lives of female shopkeepers in rural France. Combining an ethnography of relational work with the sociology of market attachments, it examines how they cultivate customer relationships that border on friendship through affective and caring labor as well as personalized services, without becoming completely entangled in gift-giving exchanges and overwhelming social obligations. Beyond the dynamics of closeness, this article reveals three mechanisms that enable these intimate attachments to operate with little moral or economic tension: a symbolic hierarchization of customers within circuits of clientele; the earmarking of their most personalized commodity exchanges as gifts; and the avoidance of socializing outside the shop and excessive kindness in gift-giving. By expending time and emotions and skillfully balancing closeness with distance, generosity with profitability, shopkeepers can successfully secure a steady income through the personal loyalty of a small group of customers fueled by mutual feelings of affection and indebtedness. Paradoxically, the more emotional capitalism gravitates towards these intimate commercial attachments, the more it requires the simultaneous maintenance of affective and relational distance to preserve the very existence of the market.