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| So How’s the Family?: And Other Essays
ISBN: 9780520956780
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / University of California Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Families -- United States; Women -- Social conditions; United States -- Social conditions -- 1980–;
In this eloquent collection of 13 essays, noted sociologist Hochschild (The Outsourced Self: Intimate Life in Market Times) links public trends-such as free market capitalism, branding, and globalization-to the intimate world of the family. Exploring the impact of social changes on the family unit's emotional state, she studies "online daters, migrant nannies, commercial surrogate mothers" and other modern phenomena, which serve as catalysts for reflection on changes in public discourse from 1900-2007. Her overriding concern is the ongoing struggle between the demands of the marketplace and the needs of families-how people can strengthen bonds to keep their personal lives personal, and how empathy needs to "cross the barriers of class, race, and gender." She highlights the enormous emotional toll (for both mother and child) on female migrant workers from poor countries who leave their own children behind. Grounded in sociology, Hochschild introduces ideas such as an "emotional commons"-a rich, social ecology-for comprehending how the market of wealthy countries in the "Global North" erodes the social fabric of countries in the Global South and East. The book illuminates the challenges of a deregulated, impersonal global economy and offers suggestions for restoring emotional connections. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Arlie Russell Hochschild, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author of two New York Times Notable Books of the Year, THE SECOND SHIFT and THE MANAGED HEART. She has received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a research grant from the National Institute of Mental Health. Her articles have appeared in Harper's, Mother Jones, and Psychology Today, among others. She lives in San Francisco with her husband, the writer Adam Hochschild. (Publisher Provided) |
