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El capital sexual en la Modernidad tardía
Eva Illiouz y Dana Kaplan ofrecen un interesante análisis sociológico de las sexualidades como una nueva forma de desigualdad bajo el capitalismo neoliberal.
Dada la creciente comercialización del sexo y de las identidades sexuales, Eva Illiouz y Dana Kaplan utilizan la idea del «capital sexual» como un prisma a través del cual indagar sobre las formas en que el sexo puede generar desigualdades, especialmente aquellas relacionadas con el género y la clase social.
El presente libro empieza con una revisión general de la transición histórica que empieza desde las formaciones modernas del sexo y lo erótico hasta las que surgen en la modernidad tardía. Esta exploración histórica y teórica permite desarrollar la noción del capital sexual tardomoderno. Para las autoras, el foco de atención se centra, sobre todo, en la relación entre la sexualidad y la empleabilidad, pues esta ha surgido como forma distintiva del capital sexual en nuestra actualidad. A través de la perspectiva analítica del capital sexual y erótico, este ensayo ofrece un análisis sociológico de las sexualidades como una nueva forma de desigualdad bajo el capitalismo neoliberal.
Dada la creciente comercialización del sexo y de las identidades sexuales, Eva Illiouz y Dana Kaplan utilizan la idea del «capital sexual» como un prisma a través del cual indagar sobre las formas en que el sexo puede generar desigualdades, especialmente aquellas relacionadas con el género y la clase social.
El presente libro empieza con una revisión general de la transición histórica que empieza desde las formaciones modernas del sexo y lo erótico hasta las que surgen en la modernidad tardía. Esta exploración histórica y teórica permite desarrollar la noción del capital sexual tardomoderno. Para las autoras, el foco de atención se centra, sobre todo, en la relación entre la sexualidad y la empleabilidad, pues esta ha surgido como forma distintiva del capital sexual en nuestra actualidad. A través de la perspectiva analítica del capital sexual y erótico, este ensayo ofrece un análisis sociológico de las sexualidades como una nueva forma de desigualdad bajo el capitalismo neoliberal.
62 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 20, 2020
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About the author
Eva Illouz
50 books644 followersEva Illouz (Hebrew: אווה אילוז) is a professor of sociology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Since October 2012 she has been President of Bezalel Academy of Art and Design. She is Bezalel's first woman president. Since 2015, Illouz has been a professor at Paris's School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (École des hautes études en sciences sociales).
The research developed by Illouz from her dissertation onward focuses on a number of themes at the junction of the study of emotions, culture and communication:
The ways in which capitalism has transformed emotional patterns
One dominant theme concerns the ways in which capitalism has transformed emotional patterns, in the realms of both consumption and production.
Consuming the Romantic Utopia
Illouz's first book addresses a dual process: the commodification of romance and the romanticization of commodities. Looking at a wide sample of movies and advertising images in women’s magazines of the 1930s, Illouz finds that advertising and cinematic culture presented commodities as the vector for emotional experiences and particularly the experience of romance. Commodities of many kinds – soaps, refrigerators, vacation packages, watches, diamonds, cereals, cosmetics, and many others – were presented as enabling the experience of love and romance. The second process was that of the commodification of romance, the process by which the 19th-century practice of calling on a woman, that is going to her home, was replaced by dating: going out and consuming the increasingly powerful industries of leisure. Romantic encounters moved from the home to the sphere of consumer leisure with the result that the search for romantic love was made into a vector for the consumption of leisure goods produced by expanding industries of leisure.
Cold Intimacies and Saving the Modern Soul
In Cold Intimacies and Saving the Modern Soul Illouz examines how emotions figure in the realm of economic production: in the American corporation, from the 1920s onward emotions became a conscious object of knowledge and construction and became closely connected to the language and techniques of economic efficiency. Psychologists were hired by American corporations to help increase productivity and better manage the workforce and bridged the emotional and the economic realms, intertwining emotions with the realm of economic action in the form of a radically new way of conceiving of the production process. So whether in the realm of production or that of consumption, emotions have been actively mobilized, solicited and shaped by economic forces, thus making modern people simultaneously emotional and economic actors.
The role of popular clinical psychology in shaping modern identity
Illouz argues that psychology is absolutely central to the constitution of modern identity and to modern emotional life: from the 1920s to the 1960s clinical psychologists became an extraordinarily dominant social group as they entered the army, the corporation, the school, the state, social services, the media, child rearing, sexuality, marriage, church pastoral care. In all of these realms, psychology established itself as the ultimate authority in matters of human distress by offering techniques to transform and overcome that distress. Psychologists of all persuasions have provided the main narrative of self-development for the 20th century. The psychological persuasion has transformed what was classified as a moral problem into a disease and may thus be understood as part and parcel of the broader phenomenon of the medicalization of social life. What is common to theme 1 and theme 2 is that both love and psychological health constitute utopias of happiness for the modern self, that both are mediated through consumption and that both constitute horizons to which the modern self aspires. In that sense, one overarching theme of her work can be called
The research developed by Illouz from her dissertation onward focuses on a number of themes at the junction of the study of emotions, culture and communication:
The ways in which capitalism has transformed emotional patterns
One dominant theme concerns the ways in which capitalism has transformed emotional patterns, in the realms of both consumption and production.
Consuming the Romantic Utopia
Illouz's first book addresses a dual process: the commodification of romance and the romanticization of commodities. Looking at a wide sample of movies and advertising images in women’s magazines of the 1930s, Illouz finds that advertising and cinematic culture presented commodities as the vector for emotional experiences and particularly the experience of romance. Commodities of many kinds – soaps, refrigerators, vacation packages, watches, diamonds, cereals, cosmetics, and many others – were presented as enabling the experience of love and romance. The second process was that of the commodification of romance, the process by which the 19th-century practice of calling on a woman, that is going to her home, was replaced by dating: going out and consuming the increasingly powerful industries of leisure. Romantic encounters moved from the home to the sphere of consumer leisure with the result that the search for romantic love was made into a vector for the consumption of leisure goods produced by expanding industries of leisure.
Cold Intimacies and Saving the Modern Soul
In Cold Intimacies and Saving the Modern Soul Illouz examines how emotions figure in the realm of economic production: in the American corporation, from the 1920s onward emotions became a conscious object of knowledge and construction and became closely connected to the language and techniques of economic efficiency. Psychologists were hired by American corporations to help increase productivity and better manage the workforce and bridged the emotional and the economic realms, intertwining emotions with the realm of economic action in the form of a radically new way of conceiving of the production process. So whether in the realm of production or that of consumption, emotions have been actively mobilized, solicited and shaped by economic forces, thus making modern people simultaneously emotional and economic actors.
The role of popular clinical psychology in shaping modern identity
Illouz argues that psychology is absolutely central to the constitution of modern identity and to modern emotional life: from the 1920s to the 1960s clinical psychologists became an extraordinarily dominant social group as they entered the army, the corporation, the school, the state, social services, the media, child rearing, sexuality, marriage, church pastoral care. In all of these realms, psychology established itself as the ultimate authority in matters of human distress by offering techniques to transform and overcome that distress. Psychologists of all persuasions have provided the main narrative of self-development for the 20th century. The psychological persuasion has transformed what was classified as a moral problem into a disease and may thus be understood as part and parcel of the broader phenomenon of the medicalization of social life. What is common to theme 1 and theme 2 is that both love and psychological health constitute utopias of happiness for the modern self, that both are mediated through consumption and that both constitute horizons to which the modern self aspires. In that sense, one overarching theme of her work can be called
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December 25, 2020
This is an odd book, as it is a Spanish translation of a kind of booklet that is not listed amongst the works of Illouz and Kaplan. Has ever been published in English? Perhaps is it just a long paper? No that really matters for the quality of the book, but my opinions may be completely misled, as it would be if I was commenting on Nôtre Dame seeing only a random stone.
The main point of the book is the classification of sexual capital into four types: chastity, sex-work, sexiness, and Tinder value. These are not their words, but I think these four models can give a rough idea. If you want to go into detail, please, read the book, but their classification is certainly comprehensive, well structured and functional.
But apart from that key, neat classification, the rest of the book is quite messy. I don't know whether that incoherence comes to this book at birth (being a fragment of something bigger and better structured), or if the problem is caused by the poor Spanish translation. Badly punctuated some times, impenetrable on other occasions, I wonder whether all the multiple imperfections of the book could be pinned to the translator.
For instance, at some point, it is said that "most things that pass as sexual capital happen in the domain of heterosexuality", which sounds like a very clumsy sentence. What does it really mean? I would say that I disagree with this affirmation, as I understand that sexual capital is not linked to a particular practice, but to the individual: my sexual capital as a man fluctuates in the market as a high-tech company in the stock market, depending on who is assessing my value and regardless if I prefer to sell my onlyfans content mostly to men or to women, or if I currently have a man or a woman as a partner (or a non-binary person). Also, and that's not mentioned in the book despite both authors living in Israel, sexual capital varies a lot depending on the social context. My sexual capital of a mature, pale white gay man in Scotland was not the same as when I was living in Spain, and clearly not the same as when on holidays in Taiwan (and to be honest, it wasn't the same in Cuba either, yet for different reasons).
By the end of the book, they add or clarify that sexual capital is not a gender thing, but that it is very linked to class. At least, when referring to the fourth type of sexual capital (the 'Tinder' sexual capital). According to them, sexual capital is more specifically a middle-class thing. I don't think they explain in this booklet exactly why is that (or rather why lower and upper classes can't put their sexual capital into play, or can't derive self-esteem from their sexual behaviour). At this point, I have to admit that I am not sure whether Kaplan and Illouz are Marxist (I couldn't recognize the red signs), but they play like Marxist when try to forcibly fit sexual capital into class. And that connection was not needed.
And yet they say, very interestingly, that "sexual capital may have become a strategy of (potential) workers to confront the insecurities imposed by neoliberal capitalism". But are insecurities not affecting lower classes? At some point, they even say that the most vulnerable people in Neoliberalism are the middle class, which is in my opinion quite a bold affirmation. Are those insecurities real or perceived, I mean, does the middle-class feel insecure in their lives because the work market is now changing at a higher speed than before, or because it is changing at a speed that they can't control? That question may not be relevant to talk today in the pub or the coffee shop, but it is important when we want to link sexual behaviour to a particular economic system which we didn't see starting and it looks like we will not see it finishing.
I can't help to crash on what the authors define as 'neoliberal'. In my opinion, it is not rigorous to use such a vague concept in a formal essay, but in this case, as it happens often, Kaplan and Illouz use the word neoliberal to convey such a long list of negative concepts that is hard to take them seriously. Not surprisingly, there is not in this booklet an explicit definition of what Neoliberalism is. They use it to refer to 'contemporaneity' (everything from politics to society, style, etc), but also to 'consumerism' (and therefore a market concept), and on other occasions they refer it explicitly as opposition to Fordism (and then limiting it to the sphere of industrial production) or they mention Neoliberal as the byword for the changes in speed and diversity of the economy of the last two decades (globalization perhaps?), yet always from a very Western perspective.
To wrap up, the authors open some interesting ways of defining sexual capital, but they got lost in a forest of Marxist terminology, heteropatriarchy and Westerncentrism that, added to an unhelpful translation, results in an overcomplicated book without data to support their affirmations. At least, it is a short book.
The main point of the book is the classification of sexual capital into four types: chastity, sex-work, sexiness, and Tinder value. These are not their words, but I think these four models can give a rough idea. If you want to go into detail, please, read the book, but their classification is certainly comprehensive, well structured and functional.
But apart from that key, neat classification, the rest of the book is quite messy. I don't know whether that incoherence comes to this book at birth (being a fragment of something bigger and better structured), or if the problem is caused by the poor Spanish translation. Badly punctuated some times, impenetrable on other occasions, I wonder whether all the multiple imperfections of the book could be pinned to the translator.
For instance, at some point, it is said that "most things that pass as sexual capital happen in the domain of heterosexuality", which sounds like a very clumsy sentence. What does it really mean? I would say that I disagree with this affirmation, as I understand that sexual capital is not linked to a particular practice, but to the individual: my sexual capital as a man fluctuates in the market as a high-tech company in the stock market, depending on who is assessing my value and regardless if I prefer to sell my onlyfans content mostly to men or to women, or if I currently have a man or a woman as a partner (or a non-binary person). Also, and that's not mentioned in the book despite both authors living in Israel, sexual capital varies a lot depending on the social context. My sexual capital of a mature, pale white gay man in Scotland was not the same as when I was living in Spain, and clearly not the same as when on holidays in Taiwan (and to be honest, it wasn't the same in Cuba either, yet for different reasons).
By the end of the book, they add or clarify that sexual capital is not a gender thing, but that it is very linked to class. At least, when referring to the fourth type of sexual capital (the 'Tinder' sexual capital). According to them, sexual capital is more specifically a middle-class thing. I don't think they explain in this booklet exactly why is that (or rather why lower and upper classes can't put their sexual capital into play, or can't derive self-esteem from their sexual behaviour). At this point, I have to admit that I am not sure whether Kaplan and Illouz are Marxist (I couldn't recognize the red signs), but they play like Marxist when try to forcibly fit sexual capital into class. And that connection was not needed.
And yet they say, very interestingly, that "sexual capital may have become a strategy of (potential) workers to confront the insecurities imposed by neoliberal capitalism". But are insecurities not affecting lower classes? At some point, they even say that the most vulnerable people in Neoliberalism are the middle class, which is in my opinion quite a bold affirmation. Are those insecurities real or perceived, I mean, does the middle-class feel insecure in their lives because the work market is now changing at a higher speed than before, or because it is changing at a speed that they can't control? That question may not be relevant to talk today in the pub or the coffee shop, but it is important when we want to link sexual behaviour to a particular economic system which we didn't see starting and it looks like we will not see it finishing.
I can't help to crash on what the authors define as 'neoliberal'. In my opinion, it is not rigorous to use such a vague concept in a formal essay, but in this case, as it happens often, Kaplan and Illouz use the word neoliberal to convey such a long list of negative concepts that is hard to take them seriously. Not surprisingly, there is not in this booklet an explicit definition of what Neoliberalism is. They use it to refer to 'contemporaneity' (everything from politics to society, style, etc), but also to 'consumerism' (and therefore a market concept), and on other occasions they refer it explicitly as opposition to Fordism (and then limiting it to the sphere of industrial production) or they mention Neoliberal as the byword for the changes in speed and diversity of the economy of the last two decades (globalization perhaps?), yet always from a very Western perspective.
To wrap up, the authors open some interesting ways of defining sexual capital, but they got lost in a forest of Marxist terminology, heteropatriarchy and Westerncentrism that, added to an unhelpful translation, results in an overcomplicated book without data to support their affirmations. At least, it is a short book.
March 17, 2022
Una estafa más. Es un paper hecho libro sobre literalmente los capitales y mercados más intimos.
Pero me ha gustado mucho como introducción y dejar la miel en los labios a las futuras obsesas
Pero me ha gustado mucho como introducción y dejar la miel en los labios a las futuras obsesas
October 27, 2021
Me encanta todo lo que escribe Eva Illouz , ya he leído tres títulos suyos. Creo que es la mejor autora de la Sociología del amor, de las emociones y de la sexualidad. Este libro es preciso y conciso, más en formato paper que libro. Cita a la polémica Catherine Hakim y el Capital Erótico, libro que también lo leí- y que además de controversial por su tesis del "déficit sexual masculino" y su recomendación de que las mujeres deben explotar su capital erótico para mejorar su estatus en el mundo laboral y social - , es de obligada lectura para abordar el uso del sexo para generar beneficios económicos como no económicos en la modernidad, y comprender cómo la sexualidad o el capital sexual especialmente reproduce distintos tipos de desigualdades preexistentes. Lo recomiendo totalmente aunque por su lenguaje técnico , sugiero comenzar por el capital erótico de Hakim para una mayor comprensión.
October 1, 2020
“(...) hay una amplia serie de industrias que derivan de un valor extra del cuerpo sexual y del yo sexual. Básicamente esto significa que ‘el sexo vende’, y más especialmente, que las personas atractivas, sexys, atraen no solo la atención de los consumidores (como en la industria de los famosos), sino también la de los empleadores”.
.
De vez en cuando hay que descansar de la ficción y de la literatura y pararse a mirar el mundo actual y para ello pocas autoras mejores que Eva Illouz. Colecciónalos
.
De vez en cuando hay que descansar de la ficción y de la literatura y pararse a mirar el mundo actual y para ello pocas autoras mejores que Eva Illouz. Colecciónalos
October 11, 2021
Em deixa força indiferent. El llegia amb unes expectatives concretes, pensant que potser m’ajudaria a acabar de posicionar-me en l’etern debat sobre si la remuneració del sexe allibera o esclavitza. Però ara encara tinc més dubtes.
May 25, 2023
3,5✨
A veces desordenado y confuso en su uso de "capital sexual", otras deliberadamente conservador, aún así, no está mal y tiene ideas muy interesantes. Pa' su tamaño, bastante bien.
A veces desordenado y confuso en su uso de "capital sexual", otras deliberadamente conservador, aún así, no está mal y tiene ideas muy interesantes. Pa' su tamaño, bastante bien.
December 29, 2025
Un libro muy cortito pero no por eso menos interesante. Plantea una hipótesis sobre el lugar que ocupa hoy en día el sexo y lo sexual en las sociedades, en ese valor que tiene mostrarse y venderse sexualmente. Ese sex appel del que algunos hablan y muestran y lo usan como elemento de valor personal en este mundo mercantilista.
September 23, 2021
Un libro corto pero a la vez complicado de abordar en algunas ocasiones. Las autoras dejan claras sus clasificaciones del capital sexual desde el inicio del libro (lo cual es muy positivo) pero luego se pierden en el desarrollo de sus ideas, o por lo menos yo me pierdo en la terrible traducción del libro.
Si bien no deja claro la definición del propio capital, las intervenciones del marxismo y el neoliberalismo no ayudan a comprender hacia dónde quieren llevarnos las autoras.
Hay párrafos e incluso páginas salvables de todo el texto, pero en general todo él se encuentra muy desordenado en una primera lectura. He tenido que releer varias veces ciertas frases sin acabar de comprenderlas del todo.
Puede que le dé otra oportunidad más adelante al ser un libro corto.
Si bien no deja claro la definición del propio capital, las intervenciones del marxismo y el neoliberalismo no ayudan a comprender hacia dónde quieren llevarnos las autoras.
Hay párrafos e incluso páginas salvables de todo el texto, pero en general todo él se encuentra muy desordenado en una primera lectura. He tenido que releer varias veces ciertas frases sin acabar de comprenderlas del todo.
Puede que le dé otra oportunidad más adelante al ser un libro corto.
January 19, 2023
Breve ensayo sobre la configuración del capital sexual tardomoderno y el papel que hoy cumple como legitimador del capitalismo contemporáneo.
Lectura relativamente sencilla si se está familiarizada con el tema. Como introducción resulta muy estimulante, y en apenas 80 páginas se presentan varias ideas interesantes a las que dar alguna vuelta. Sin embargo, y tratándose de Illouz, esperaba un análisis algo más amplio y profundo.
Lectura relativamente sencilla si se está familiarizada con el tema. Como introducción resulta muy estimulante, y en apenas 80 páginas se presentan varias ideas interesantes a las que dar alguna vuelta. Sin embargo, y tratándose de Illouz, esperaba un análisis algo más amplio y profundo.
October 21, 2024
el sexo vende.
consciso, fácil de digerir. pone en palabras grandes lo que sucede en la dinámica laboral y social respecto al valor que le damos al sexo. no lies were told.
consciso, fácil de digerir. pone en palabras grandes lo que sucede en la dinámica laboral y social respecto al valor que le damos al sexo. no lies were told.
May 17, 2022
Las autoras desgranan el capital sexual, identificando a 4 valores que lo conforman: 1. La castidad (la reputación de una persona se denigra al perder la virginidad) 2. Trabajo sexual directo (sacar rédito económico de forma explícita del propio cuerpo y la propia sexualidad ) . 3. Trabajo sexual indirecto (es el mismo que en el anterior punto pero de forma no evidente, como utilizar nuestro atractivo sexual para acceder a un determinado trabajo). 4. Capitalizar el propio atractivo en los mercados matrimoniales y de citas (lograr estatus en sitios como Instagram o Tinder).
Es un libro especialmente ferragoso, frío y académico, si le quitáramos tantas citas y retórica se podría sintetizar en 4 páginas en lugar de las 77 que ocupa. Más que un libro se deberia tratar como la introducción de lo que deberia ser el libro. El tema del capital sexual es sumamente importante y muy poco tratado (solo he encontrado dos libros que lo traten abiertamente, empezando por el famoso “capital erótico” de Catherine Hakim que aunque no esté de acuerdo con sus propuestas o enfoque, su analisis es mucho mas profundo que el de Illouz), de hecho, es un tema tabú debido a su incorrección política, crea grandes jerarquias sexuales y lo ideal seria romperlas pero nadie quiere perder el derecho a discriminar sexualmente. Seria muy interesante profundizar en este tema asi como todas las desigualdades y problemáticas que produce el capital sexual. Por eso me parece una lástima que sea un libro tan corto y que no trate ni mencione muchos otros temas como por ejemplo el capital social y cultural que también contribuyen al capital sexual.
Es un libro especialmente ferragoso, frío y académico, si le quitáramos tantas citas y retórica se podría sintetizar en 4 páginas en lugar de las 77 que ocupa. Más que un libro se deberia tratar como la introducción de lo que deberia ser el libro. El tema del capital sexual es sumamente importante y muy poco tratado (solo he encontrado dos libros que lo traten abiertamente, empezando por el famoso “capital erótico” de Catherine Hakim que aunque no esté de acuerdo con sus propuestas o enfoque, su analisis es mucho mas profundo que el de Illouz), de hecho, es un tema tabú debido a su incorrección política, crea grandes jerarquias sexuales y lo ideal seria romperlas pero nadie quiere perder el derecho a discriminar sexualmente. Seria muy interesante profundizar en este tema asi como todas las desigualdades y problemáticas que produce el capital sexual. Por eso me parece una lástima que sea un libro tan corto y que no trate ni mencione muchos otros temas como por ejemplo el capital social y cultural que también contribuyen al capital sexual.
March 18, 2021
Buena Introducción al Capital Erótico en la Era de la Modernidad Tardía
December 12, 2021
Esta señora tiene otras cosas más interesantes tbh
Read
May 8, 2023Un paper largo y muy introductorio.
November 19, 2025
Livre trop long malgré qu’il soit tout petit. Beaucoup trop de jargon sociologique pour pas grand chose
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews