The Purchase of Intimacy

by Viviana A. Zelizer

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.

Genres: Sociology, Nonfiction, Economics, Research, History, Gender

368 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Lauren Levitt · Rating 3 out of 5]

I agree with Zelizer's argument in this book, that economics plays a part in all intimate relationships without totally defining those relationships. However, I felt that she covers these issues just as well and more succinctly in Economic Lives.

[Alexa Doran · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is a lot of fascinating legal knowledge in this book and insightful points made. If you are looking for something up to date tho this may not be your jam.

My biggest qualm with the book is that it regularly exposes huge discrepancies in the way people are treated but takes the easy way out by saying its approaching the info objectively and for the purpose of proving the relationship between relationships, media, and transactions. What? You have an opportunity to influence positive change and you bypass it?

So that's not awesome but I still immensely enjoyed the discussions and info within.

[Julio César · Rating 5 out of 5]

Por fin un libro de sociología pura y dura. Esto es la sociología: comparar, hacerse preguntas, mirar el mundo dejando de lado prejuicios y contrastando teorías con la realidad.
Viviana Zelizer se pregunta de qué manera se intersectan la intimidad y las prácticas económicas de la vida cotidiana. Para ello recurre, en caso de ser necesario, a sentencias y casos judiciales de la historia de EEUU desde el siglo XIX hasta nuestros días (el libro es de 2005). Se enfrenta a las dos teorías que han tratado de comprender esta relación: la de los "mundos hostiles"/"esferas separadas" (que sostiene que la intimidad es un acto sagrado, y el contacto con la economía no hace más que corromperla) y la del "nada-más-que" (la casa no es "nada-más-que" un mercado, una cultura particular, etc), propone una visión de "vidas conectadas".