The Purchase of Intimacy

Viviana A. Zelizer

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781400826759
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

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.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Prologue
• Chapter 1: Encounters of Intimacy and Economy
• Chapter 2: Intimacy in Law
• Chapter 3: Coupling
• Chapter 4: Caring Relations
• Chapter 5: Household Commerce
• Chapter 6: Intimate Revelations
• References
• Index