Arlie Russel Hochschild, The Commerialization of Intimate Life: Notes from Home and Work

Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, Sept, 2004 by James Midgley

Arlie Russel Hochschild, The Commerialization of Intimate Life: Notes from Home and Work. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003. $19.95 papercover.

Although most social policy writing has focused on the state and non-profit sectors in the provision of welfare, the importance of the family in meeting needs and managing social problems has now been recognized. This has come about largely through the efforts of feminist social policy scholars who have stressed the way most people's well-being is shaped by nurturing and caring behaviors within families. However, while much more attention is now being paid to the family in social policy scholarship, it has not changed the focus on state provision within the subject. Most of the literature continues to view the state as the primary institution for promoting people's welfare.

Arlie Hochschild's latest book is not written from a social policy perspective but it makes a major contribution to the field by showing that an understanding of the changing family and its interface with the market--that other neglected dimension of social policy analysis--is crucial for the analysis of social support, caring and social welfare today. Hochschild is a highly respected sociologist at the University of California, Berkeley whose previous books on family issues, feminism and social care have attracted widespread attention. This book is a collection of essays, and although many were published previously, the author had added some new papers and organized the material in a readable yet challenging way.

The book is concerned with the way family relationship (and caring in particular) have changed as modern society has become more marketized. She argues that the family and its unique culture, relationships and supports have been profoundly affected by the market. The family cannot now be viewed as a separate domain from the market. Indeed, she argues that the market has today affected family life to a remarkable degree. The intimate and caring world of the family has been commercialized and families increasingly purchase care on the market. As adult family members are preoccupied with the world of work and material achievement, as family disintegration and divorce now characterized family life, families are compelled to purchase care to meet the needs of children, the elderly and even their working adult members. This involves a complex set of interaction with market based institutions such as day care centers, private schools, nursing homes and nannies who are imported from developing countries to provide the care and affection and even the love that middle class families find increasingly difficult to provide. The book's first page contains a brief reference to a conversation which Hochschild had with a Thai nanny in the San Francisco Bay Area who reported that she loved her employer's children more than her own who had remained in Thailand. Hochschild asks whether this is an example of a new form of global marketism that extracts love from poor countries to meet the deficit in our own.

Startling observations such as these pepper this highly original and important analysis of the way family care, intimacy, relationships, and love are being modified by market relations and consumer capitalism. The book is wide ranging and covers numerous topics that will stimulate much reflection and debate. These topics include the use of advice books in family affairs, relationships between children and parents, mothers and daughters and women and men and, of course, the marketization and commercialization of family life. The book is of great importance to social policy scholars who have not adequately grasped the extent to which market capitalism is penetrating the domain of family life, and presenting new challenges for those who seek to formulate social policies that enhance social well-being.

James Midgley, University of California, Berkeley