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The Outsourced Self: intimate life in market times

Date:
-
Location:
Student Center Rm. 211
Speaker(s) / Presenter(s):
Dr. Arlie Hochschild

This lecture is based upon her book of the same title in which she interviews "love coaches, wedding planners, surrogate mothers, nannies, household consultants and elder-care managers and their clients. These consumers buy hyperpersonal services because they lack the family support or social capital or sheer time to meet potential mates, put on weddings, whip up children’s birthday parties, build children’s school projects, or care for deteriorating parents. Or these folks think they just couldn’t perform such tasks as well as the pros. The providers sell their services because the service economy is where the money is, or because they take pleasure in helping others. Everybody worries about preserving the human element in the commercial encounter. Very few succeed." Judith Shulevitz, May 25, 2012, NY Times, Sunday Book Review. This lecture is open to public including campus and the community, and there will be a book signing following the event.

Arlie Hocschild is professor emerita in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of such notable books as The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home, The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling, The Outsourced Self: Intimate Life in Market Times, and So How's the Family and Other Essays?. Through her work, Dr. Hochschild has contributed to our understanding of emotional relationships in relation to changing social contexts and cultural definitions. Her work is significant in and of particular interest to those working the fields of sociology, psychology, gender and women's studies, social work, and family studies.

Event Series: