Impact of Capitalism on emotions, subjectivity, and gender relations

One dominant theme in Illouz's research concerns the ways in which capitalism has transformed emotional patterns, in the realms of both consumption and production.^[1][13] Illouz’ first book, Consuming the Romantic Utopia, addresses 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, advertising and cinematic culture presented commodities as the vector for emotional experiences and particularly the experience of 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.^[14][15][16]

Another dimension of Illouz's work has been to understand the intersection of social class and emotion in two ways. First, how does class shape emotional practices? Are there emotional forms which we can associate with social domination? And second: If emotions are strategic responses to situations – that is, if they help us cope with situations and to shape them – do middle and upper-middle classes have an advantage over the poor and the destitute in the emotional realm? How do they establish this advantage and what is its nature?

In her book Why Love Hurts she centers on the notion of choice. The book makes the somewhat counter-intuitive claim that one of the most fruitful ways to understand the transformation of love in modernity is through the category of choice. Illouz views choice as the defining cultural hallmark of modernity because in the economic and political arenas, choice embodies the two faculties that justify the exercise of freedom, namely rationality and autonomy. She extends this insight to the emotional realm and studies the various mechanisms through which in modernity choice of a mate have changed and have transformed the emotions active in the will of partners who meet in a market situation. In this sense, choice is one of the most powerful cultural and institutional vectors helping us understand modern individualism. Given that choice is intrinsic to modern individuality, how and why people choose – or not – to enter a relationship is crucial to understanding love as an emotion and a relationship.^[17][18][19]

This approach differs from that of economists and psychologists for whom choice is a natural feature of the exercise of rationality, a fixed and invariant property of the mind, as the capacity to rate preferences, to act consistently based on these hierarchized preferences. Yet, choice in general and choice of a mate in particular is no less shaped by culture than are other features of action.

Sociological critique of Psychology and self-help culture

Illouz argues that psychology has been 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 utopia of happiness and its interaction with the utopia of consumption.^[20][21]

In Saving the Modern Soul she delves into the reasons why the discourse of therapy, which has been developed by academic scientists, quickly became the privileged language for the self. Other books on this subject include: Oprah Winfrey and the Glamour of Misery, and Manufacturing Happy Citizens (with: Edgar Cabanas)

Cold Intimacies: The Making of Emotional Capitalism (2007)

This book analyzes and, eventually, changes the common (sociological) conception, which claims that capitalism has created an unemotional world which is dominated by bureaucratic rationality; that economical behavior is in conflict with intimacy and authentic relationships; that public and private spheres are opposed and irreconcilable with one another; and that true love is opposed to calculations and private interests. Against such suppositions, Illouz claims that the culture of capitalism has nurtured a powerful emotional culture – in own work place, in the family, and in our relations with ourselves. Economical relations have become emotional, while close and intimate relationships have become more and more defined by economical and models of contractualism and profit making.

Other works

Illouz's research has become increasingly diversified: one part continues to ask what makes cultural items take on global popularity and success (Hard Core Romance); another part of her research continues to explore the effect of capitalism on love and romantic emotions (Why Love Hurts and The End of Love); a third aspect of her research deals with Israel and the demise of democratic civic culture (Israel: Sociological Essay, The Emotional Life of Populism).