Table Of ContentEva Illouz, one of sociology’s most innovative thinkers, brings together an
engaging group of scholars to explore the complex relations between our con-
sumption practices and the world of emotion. Framed by Illouz’ theoretical
vision, Emotions as Commodities takes us into a varied tour that includes Club
Med resorts, Israeli sex cards, greeting cards, psychotherapy and more. The book
contributes to the sociology of consumption markets but its insights will also
appeal to a general audience.—Viviana A. Zelizer, Lloyd Cotsen ’50 Professor
of Sociology at Princeton University and author of Economic Lives: How
Culture Shapes the Economy
Through intriguing theoretical discussions and fascinating empirical case studies,
this book throws new light on the paradox of contemporary capitalism furthering
both increased rationalization and an unprecedented intensification of emotional
life. A must read for sociologists, marketing scholars and anyone interested in
contemporary consumer capitalism, a culture ever more centered on emotional
commodities or ‘emodities’.—Adam Arvidsson, Associate Professor, Department
of Social and Political Sciences, University of Milano, Italy
Emotions as Commodities
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 unanalysed by theories of consumption –
emodity. Indeed, this innovative book explores how emodity includes atmospher-
ical 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 transforma-
tion 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.
Eva Illouz is Rose Isaacs Professor of Sociology at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem, Israel and Directrice d’Etudes at the EHESS, Paris.
Routledge Studies in the Sociology of Emotions
Further information on the series is available at: www.routledge.com/sociology/
series/RSSE
Titles in this series:
1 Love and Society
Special Social Forms and the Master Emotion
Swen Seebach
2 Emotions as Commodities
Capitalism, Consumption and Authenticity
Edited by Eva Illouz
Emotions as Commodities
Capitalism, Consumption and Authenticity
Edited by Eva Illouz
First published 2018
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
2018 selection and editorial matter, Eva Illouz; individual chapters, the
contributors
The right of Eva Illouz to be identified as the author of the editorial
material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-138-62823-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-21074-2 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK
Contents
List of contributors ix
Acknowledgements xii
Introduction: emodities or the making of emotional commodities 1
EVA ILLOUZ
PART I
Liberating the self: emotional experiences
and moods 31
1 “It is all included – without the stress”: exploring the
production of relaxation in Club Med seaside resorts 33
YAARA BENGER ALALUF
2 Emotional ear drops: the music industry and technologies
of emotional management 56
ORI SCHWARZ
3 Cinema as an emotional commodity: the horror genre and
the commodification of fear 79
DANIEL GILON
4 Sex cards in Tel Aviv: mood work, recreational sexuality
and urban atmospheres 102
DANA KAPLAN
PART II
Ideal of intimacy: relational emotions 121
5 Understanding authenticity in commercial sentiment:
the greeting card as emotional commodity 123
EMILY WEST
viii Contents
PART III
The ideal of mental health and self-improvement:
emotional self-monitoring as commodity 145
6 (Ex)changing feelings: on the commodification of emotions
in psychotherapy 147
MATTAN SHACHAK
7 “Psytizens”, or the construction of happy individuals in
neoliberal societies 173
EDGAR CABANAS
Toward a post-normative critique of emotional authenticity:
conclusion 197
EVA ILLOUZ
Index 214
Contributors
Yaara Benger Alaluf is a PhD candidate at the Department of History of
The Free University of Berlin and a member of the International Max
Planck Research School for Moral Economies of Modern Societies at the
Research Center “History of Emotions” at the Max Planck Institute for
Human Development in Berlin. Her research explores the entanglement of
emotional and economic discourses from the nineteenth century onward
and its moral implications. Her work examines the history and sociol-
ogy of emotions in the tourism industry; the construction spatiotemporal
characteristics of emotional experience; and the impact of psychological
repertoires on the conceptualization of work and leisure. She has published
on the evolution of the consumer as an emotional agent, the phenome-
nology of consumption, and the relation between therapeutic culture and
economic rationalization.
Edgar Cabanas has a PhD in Psychology from the Universidad Autónoma
de Madrid. He is currently Associate Professor at the Universidad Camilo
José Cela and Adjunct Researcher at the Center for the History of Emotions
(Max Planck Institute for Human Development), in Berlin, where he held a
Postdoctoral Research position for two years. His main field of research focuses
on the political, economic, and social uses of the contemporary psychologi-
cal notion of happiness. He has published several papers and book chapters
on this topic, such as Rekindling Individualism, Consuming Emotions: The
Construction of Psytizens in the Age of Happiness; Inverting the Pyramid of
Needs: Positive Psychology’s New Order for Labor Success; and The Making
of a ‘Happy Worker’: Positive Psychology in Neoliberal Organizations. He
has been a visiting scholar in the Center for the Study of Rationality at The
Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2011 and 2013, and he is a team member of
several R&D International Projects.
Daniel Gilon is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology and
Anthropology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a Clinical
Psychologist. His main research interests are the sociology and cultural
