Working with Arlie Hochschild: connecting feelings to social change

Though Arlie Hochschild is a leading contemporary sociologist, her theoretical framework is hardly used outside her own field. The purpose of this article is to critique Hochschild’s theoretical framework in order to make it more broadly applicable. The main problem I identify is an analytical gap between her core microlevel concepts “feeling and framing rules” and macro-level phenomena such as “commercialization.” I propose the concept of “citizenship regimes” to bridge this gap. “Citizenship regimes” are located at the same (meso-) level as “ideologies”, the concept Hochschild uses. Ideologies, however, only concern ideas, while citizenship regimes include tangible practices and routines, laws and informal rules, and organizational and material arrangements. Citizenship regimes, like ideologies, change. But due largely to their material presence, earlier regimes linger on; individuals thus often live under the influence of several regimes, and the tensions between them explain the conflicts they experience among their feelings, feeling rules, and framing rules. The wider phenomenon of commercialization is thus experienced very differently, and can be traced back to the influence of competing citizenship regimes. The claim is illustrated through an empirical study of informal care in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.