Emotional Economy Research Articles

Changing emotional economies: The case of Sweden 1970–2010

This paper discusses processes of emotionalisation and commodification at home and work, a theme that has been a focus of Arlie Hochschild's research in the USA over the last four decades. What happens when you look at similar processes within another national frame? The American experience is contrasted to that of two periods of rapid cultural and economic change in Swedish society during the early 1970s and late 1990s. Some similarities and differences in the emotional economies of these two periods are explored. My perspective is ethnological, with a focus on changes in the emotional landscape of everyday life. The main argument is that a historical perspective can capture some of the contradictory and many stranded aspects of both commodification and de-commodification processes.

Art's emotions: ethics, expression, and aesthetic experience

Introduction 1. The Emotional Economy 2. Perception of Emotion in the World 3. The Varieties of Emotional Experience 4. Art and the Plenary Experience of Emotion 5. The Value of Art and the Practice of Life Conclusion

Singapore. Singapore's borderlands: Tourism, migration and anxieties of mobility. By Johan A. Lindquist. Singapore: NUS Press, 2010. Pp. x + 193. Map, Plates, Notes, Bibliography, Index.

Singapore Singapore's borderlands: Tourism, migration and anxieties of mobility By JOHAN A. LINDQUIST Singapore: NUS Press, 2010. Pp. x + 193. Map, Plates, Notes, Bibliography, Index. doi: 10.1017/S0022463412000252 In Singapore's borderlands, Lindquist sets himself the ambitious task of presenting an ethnography that will offer a new way to theorise globalisation. The challenge he has undertaken is to portray the phenomenon in terms of relationships that bind people together over large distances. His critique of prevailing theories is that they merely comprehend globalisation as movement due to push and pull factors locked in a series of impersonal economic transactions. What he claims is amiss here is the neglect of the 'emotional economy'--that is, 'migrants' emotional debt to home' (p. 8) that keeps them on the move and from returning home if they fail. Lindquist also calls for alternative modes of analysing mobility within an open system unhampered by spatial and temporal constraints. Choosing to locate his study ethnographically among the circulating migrant populations in Batam, Lindquist presents their experiences as they pursue their dreams of globalisation. A quick description of the history of Batam at the start of the book is aimed at scene-setting: how an obscure fishing village lying at the periphery of the Indonesian nation-state has suddenly been encompassed in an economic Growth Triangle plan between Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia. This has led to great hopes that Batam will be dramatically transformed into a booming frontier town. In reality, though, a gloomy sense of temporality surrounds the island's development. Batam as a place and life in it are both characterised by 'the belum', 'not yet' (p. 7), where ubiquitous unfinished and deferred building projects and never-ending personal dreams of globalisation are part and parcel of what constitutes a perpetual state of liminality for one and all. Lindquist focuses on three Indonesian concepts--merantau (circular migration), malu (shame) and liar (wild/unregulated/undomesticated)--that are entangled in this state of liminality. Together they form the basis of the emotional economy that marks the landscape of mobility throughout the region. These concepts, which do not overlap but underscore the problem of belonging, are the analytical tools or anchors for Lindquist's provocative call for a new theorisation of globalisation. Many important questions are raised which illustrate the need to consider the cultural and emotional logic of globalisation. …

The Possibilities with Paradexity

This manuscript explores Howard's concept of paradexity: a convergence of paradox and complexity. Emerging paradigms of paradexity are explored including the emotional economy, sense making, time expansion, and communities of interest. Parse's theory of humanbecoming is presented as a theoretical basis to guide nursing in transcending the challenges of paradexity and cocreating a futuristic role for nursing.

Balikbayan Boxes and the Performance of Intimacy by Filipino Migrant Women in Hong Kong

This article explores how the sending of goods by Filipino migrant women in Hong Kong to their families in the Philippines is a gendered process that “maps” these migrant women back into the emotional economy of the household. I argue that the practice is a performance of intimacy, a way for migrant women to bridge the Hong Kong and Philippine segments of their diasporic and fragmented lives, which enables them to sustain coherent narratives of the self. The kind of intimacy being performed, however, is unconventional and “diasporic” as it is defined by both engagement with and estrangement from the domestic spaces of home.

The Emotional Economy of Capital Sentencing

You often hear that one reason capital jurors condemn capital defendants is that jurors don't empathize with defendants. And one reason they don't empathize is that the process of capital sentencing is rigged against empathy. Using data from the South Carolina segment of the Capital Jury Project, I try to examine the role emotion plays in capital sentencing. Without entering here all the important and necessary caveats, I find that the self-reported emotional responses jurors have toward capital defendants run the gamut from sympathy and pity at one extreme, to disgust, anger, and fear at the other. What causes these responses is hard to say, but it probably depends more on each juror's individual emotional capacities and dispositions, together with the evidence she sees and hears during the trial, than on how well she understands the judge's instructions. The psychology of the juror and the facts of the case seem to matter more than the law. A juror's race, especially in combination with the defendant's race, also appears to make a difference. Two emotions--fear and sympathy--appear to influence how a juror votes. Sympathy cuts in different directions. It understandably prompts some jurors to cast a vote for life. But many jurors who vote for death insist that they too feel sympathy or pity for the defendant. This insistence is puzzling, but only at first. On reflection it makes perfect sense. Some jurors sympathize with the defendant and accordingly vote for life; others sympathize with him because they voted for death. Fear tends to work its greatest influence on the minds of the un-decided, nudging them toward death. Jurors who at the outset of the jury's deliberations cast their first vote for death tend to be no more afraid of the defendant than do jurors who cast their first vote for life. But among jurors who are undecided at the first vote, fear appears to play a distinct role in the decision of those who cast their final ballot for death.

Saving Civilization from the "'Green-Eyed' Monster": Emma Goldman and the Sex Reform Campaign against Jealousy, 1900–1930

Author(s): Hustak, Carla C. | Abstract: This article explores the Anglo-transatlantic dimensions of the early twentieth-century sex reform movement through the lens of an economy, which, Hustak argues, marked a specific historical moment in defining political alliances at the level of embodied felt relations of power. The article examines the importance of the collaboration between British and American sex reformers by focusing on how their radical feminist and socialist politics were underpinned by their attacks on jealousy. Hustak suggests here that new transatlantic relationships were forged by British and American sex reformers through their consideration of the constitution of white middle-class citizens who were similarly shaped by capitalist and patriarchal institutions that crossed national divides, while also articulating a special kinship among white middle-class citizens in cosmopolitan bohemian communities on both sides of the Atlantic. Hustak’s use of the term emotional economy highlights how white middle-class British and American sex reformers shared similar concerns over a declining white middle-class birthrate, the nervous exhaustion of white middle-class bodies, and the eugenic future of white middle-class civilization. She suggests that sex reformers' campaigns against jealousy highlighted communal ties that defied national boundaries by identifying shared constitutions along the lines of whiteness, eugenic reproduction, and professional work regimes. Hustak uses the specific case study of sex reformer and anarchist Emma Goldman's activities in Greenwich Village as an example of an influential early twentieth-century transnational reformer whose attacks on jealousy as the 'green-eyed' monster occurred in the wider context of an Anglo-transatlantic politics of emotion.

Lost in translation? Emotional intelligence, affective economies, leadership and organizational change

Not until the late 1990s did the rational/emotional binary embedded in mainstream literature on educational leadership and management come under challenge. Now the emotional dimensions of organisational change and leadership are widely recognised in the leadership, organisational change and school improvement literature. However, the dissolution of the binary did not draw from feminist social theory, critical organisational theory, the sociology of emotions or critical pedagogy. Instead, the strongest influence in educational leadership and administration has been from psychological theory, management theory and brain science, mobilised particularly through Goleman's notion of emotional intelligence. This article undertakes a feminist deconstruction of two texts: one from organisational theory by Goleman and the other on educational leadership and school improvement, in order to explore how ‘emotion’ has been translated into educational leadership. As a counterpoint, I identify the gaps and silences, appropriations and marginalisation identified from feminist perspectives. I argue that the emotional labour of teaching and leading cannot be individualised because emotion is both relational and contextual.

Bringing Gender into the Evangelical-Capitalist Resonance Machine

While William Connolly convincingly analyzes the pervasive anger and drive for revenge inhabiting much evangelical Christian writing, he overlooks the possibility that the emotional economies of evangelical women might differ from those of men. Several studies of right-wing Christian women suggest that grief, specifically grief over a loss related to children, is more formative of their political views than is rage. In contrast to the nostalgia expressed by Connolly's cowboy capitalists for an alleged pure market, these women long for a fictional time in America when the fetus was safe. Conservative religious women's grief and desire to protect vulnerable persons could resonate with progressive political projects of generosity and forbearance toward difference.

Scham- und Schuldgefühl: Zur ökonomischen Bedeutung zweier kulturell motivierter Emotionen / Shame and Guilt: On the economic meaning of two emotions gained with culture

Zusammenfassung In diesem Beitrag wird zunächst geklärt, was die zeitgenössische Psychologie/ Soziologie unter Scham und Schuld versteht. In einem zweiten Schritt dokumentieren wir, wie die experimentelle und die psychologische Spieltheorie sowie die traditionelle Wirtschaftstheorie versuchen, vorliegende Scham- und Schuldgefühle aufzudecken. Es zeigt sich, dass sowohl die politische Ökonomie von Emotionen, die psychologische Spieltheorie als auch die experimentelle Spieltheorie teilweise eine große Unschärfe bei der Verwendung und der Trennung beider Begriffe aufweisen. Anschließend wird die Lenkungs- und Selektionsfunktion von Scham- und Schuldgefühlen für das Verhalten der Wirtschafsubjekte auf Märkten/in Verhandlungen thematisiert. Daraus werden Thesen entwickelt, ob und gegebenenfalls wo für den Staat Handlungsbedarf, insbesondere durch „weichen Paternalismus“ besteht. Ein Fazit und ein Ausblick beenden die Ausführungen.

Design Management as Strategic Action to Emotional Society and Experiential Economy: Focused on MMMG Design Stationary Brand

Design Management as Strategic Action to Emotional Society and Experiential Economy: Focused on MMMG Design Stationary Brand

Paradexity: the convergence of paradox and complexity

PurposeThe aim of this paper is to propose a theory about the convergence of paradox and complexity and the consequences of this.Design/methodology/approachThe author conducts an ongoing series of conversations with a range of thinkers in the academic and commercial domainsFindingsThe paper finds that paradox and complexity are merging into “paradexity”. This can be observed in technological advancements that depersonalise, saturate, accelerate, and fragment the world we experience. It is contributing to the emergence of a new set of paradigms – the emotional economy, sense‐making, time expansion, and communities of interest – that will require developing four core capabilities: care, wisdom, attention and conversation.Research limitations/implicationsFurther rigorous testing would be required to confirm the validity of the views expressed.Practical implicationsThis paper has significant implications for the way people engage with one another and the way we organise our workforces, and offers suggestions for ways individuals and society can flourish in this environment.Originality/valueThe paper recognises the convergence of paradox and complexity and the need to work within this construct, rather than eliminate or minimise either. It would be of value to senior business leaders, human resource directors, and those involved with public policy who wish to design more effective organisations and societies.

On emotions and salsa: some thoughts on dancing to rethink consumers

Abstract Dance forms are a big business, highly marketable commoditized cultural universes, with a plethora of markets constructed around their spirit, vitality and possibilities. In this paper, we explore one particular dance form, that of Salsa, arguing that as consumer researchers we look for a more vibrant vocabulary and mindset with which to capture the experiential and transcendental nature of such social associations. We demonstrate that the metaphor of dancing is useful to revitalize our notions of consumer actions; taking them out of the grey mundane of calculative and rational action into the possibilities of emotional economies constructed around the effervescence and vitality of the social (cf. Maffesoli, 1996). Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Sound Ecologies

Discussions about what constitutes ‘the rural’ invariably focus on notions of spatial location – of inhabiting spaces apart from that of the metropolitan. Deeply embedded in our images of what it means to be Australian, nonetheless our intellectual framing of ‘the rural’ as something outback and beyond has significant implications for our relations with these spaces. The relatively recent phenomenon of sea- and tree-changes has struck many unawares, and not simply because a good latté is so hard to find. Although a frivolous remark, such an apparent lack does shift our focus to a bodily scale of the rural; how is rural place re/made through our experiences of it? This article originates out of on-going research that explores the practice of listening and sound and the ways in which the body can draw attention to the intuitive, emotional, and psychoanalytical processes of subjectivity and place-making. Drawing on Nigel Thrift’s concept of an ecology of place, I suggest that contemporary heightened concerns with regards to loss and lack in rural Australia has led to a nascent emotional economy – one in which individual and intimate connections to the rural require a rethinking of how we live community and belonging. In such a terrain, what does it mean to be rural?

Power, Resistance, and Emotional Economies in Women’s Relationships With Mothers-in-Law in Chinese Immigrant Families

This interview study interrogates how cultural values of filial piety inform Chinese American daughters-in-law’s understanding of their relationship and power dynamics with immigrant Chinese American mothers-in-law. Ideals of filial respect accord limited authority to mothers-in-law, who engage other mechanisms of power, such as their domestic expertise. Using the concept of emotional economies, this study finds that this strategy works when daughters-in-law feel gratitude for their mother-in-law’s domestic expertise and child care but not when they resent it as intrusive or unnecessary. Mothers report more conflicts with their mothers-in-law than do childless respondents, and often strike “patriarchal bargains” by enlisting husbands to mediate conflicts on their behalf. Many respondents covertly resist by feigning compliance in the presence of their mother-in-law but disobeying in her absence. These findings suggest scholars should not assume Asian cultural ideals dictate actual family practices or that ritualistic displays of deference indicate powerlessness.

Scent and the City: Perfume, Consumption, and the Urban Economy1

In human geography, and economic geography in particular, research has traditionally focused on economic activity that is productive and has regarded production and consumption as distinguishable spheres. This study puts that focus into perspective, challenges it from a cultural economy perspective, and characterizes the production and consumption of perfumes in an urban economy. Perfumes serve as an example to claim that the spheres of production and consumption blend, and that the production and consumption of perfumes reflexively fuel and are fueled by the register of passion in an urban emotional economy. The study also seeks to add insights concerning the challenge of spatializing and illustrating the cultural economy of cities.

Rex in fabula : travailler l'inquiétude dans la correspondance adressée aux autorités métropolitaines depuis le Canada (1700-1760)

Abstract : The official correspondence sentfrom Canada to the French authorities in the eighteenth century offers a view of a special group of letter-writers at work, the colony's governors and intendants. Writing to the Minister of Marine and in a sense, to the king, these colonial administrators necessarily took into account the power their influential readers held over them. Three examples (a shipwreck, an infestation and popular subordination) are used to illustrate the letter-writers' techniques of persuasion. The article shows how they exploited the register « worry /reassurance » (an aspect of A. L. Stoler's « emotional economy of the archive ») to justify their decisions and their requests.

The Emotional Economy of Housing

This paper offers an interpretation of the role of emotions in animating housing markets which complements more traditional economic and behavioural studies of locally based house-price inflation. Looking to debates within social psychology and cultural studies we suggest that emotions permeate the materiality and meaning of housing markets as well as the experience of individuals acting within them. Drawing on qualitative interviews conducted in Edinburgh, with households who bought in a rising market, we argue that housing transactions are emotional as well as economic affairs. We reconsider the fears that underpin what might appear to be ‘irrational exuberance’ and we argue that housing markets are propelled by a search for returns on emotional as well as financial investments.

Feminist Scholarship in International Relations and the Politics of Disciplinary Emotion

The article engages with the relationship between feminist scholarship and the discipline of International Relations. Taking a step back from the recurrent concerns with marginality and those with the absent feminist revolution in IR, we recast the problem of the complicated ménage between feminism and the field of IR as a case of a failure to love. Drawing on the sociology of thinking of Randall Collins and his theory of interaction ritual chains, we read the logic of practice in intellectual fields as one rooted in emotion. In this framework, we theorize citation practices as bearing the trace of intellectuals' emotion-loaded coalitions of the mind. The article maps out the intellectual coalitions in IR with respect to the feminist question by reconstructing the citation networks emerging from the special issue of Millennium, published in 1988 on 'Women in IR'. The maps we put together are read as snapshots of the emotional economy of IR, allowing further reflection about the status of feminist scholarship in IR, about intellectual creativity and about change and stasis in our discipline. We conclude that it is IR which is in trouble, not feminists, with regard to creative potential. Feminists are not marginal in or to IR; instead they are part of a ring of creativity connecting the emotional energies of different disciplinary fields.

Power, Ideology and Resources within Families: A Theoretical Context for Empirical Research on Sleep

The aim of this article is to outline and discuss theoretical approaches to the study of family life and to make suggestions about how these approaches might apply in planning and carrying out empirical research on sleep. It argues that, while theories about power and gender can inform research on sleep, the findings from research on sleep will help to extend and enrich theoretical approaches to family life and the social order. The article is concerned especially with gendered power relations and with ‘sharing sleep’. It draws on Morgan's sociological analysis of family life, and on the distinction he makes between the political economy, the moral economy and the emotional economy. It uses research findings on the allocation of money and on domestic violence to examine different theoretical approaches and to consider how these theories might be used in research on sleep. In the past many of the battles which rage within bedrooms were individualised as ‘her’ or ‘his’ fault. Applying sociological understanding and theoretical approaches may enable some of these individual and very private troubles to be seen as more general issues, while making a contribution to the new sociology of sleep.