Sunday, February 8, 2015

Do markets poison intimacy?

Zelizer's main idea in her article is that the intimacy space and the economic space are not separated as society tends to think but that they are mingled and there are constant exchanges and interactions between them. Furthermore she argues that these interactions doesn’t affects either one negatively. Even though I agree that the separation as how she describes it is a myth, I don’t agree with the author when she says that there are no negative effects or consequences.

The idea (and the practice) of markets contaminating the intimacy space doesn’t just means that there are negotiations and exchanges between a couple or between parents and children. It also means that there is a process of commodification of things that were not commodities before. The economy has invaded all spheres, including the love one, and  there is a belief in the principle of promoting and cultivating relationships that  produce us benefits and discarding those that bother us even if they are family.

A commodity doesn't  have the same characteristics of a human being, that much is obvious, but what happens to human relationships if almost every aspect of social life is converted into commodities? 

3 comments:

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  2. That's a great question, Guillermo, because I'm having trouble thinking about any aspect of our lives that isn't commodified in some place, by some people. In this way, the idea Weiner raises of the social dynamics of how and when we resist exchange is a new and engaging perspective for me. It’s an window to understanding of how socially constructed strategies for giving and keeping simultaneously, might work as a sort of political and economic conversation with cultural values.

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  3. (Ergh!!...."a" window....

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