In this Book
- The Purchase of Intimacy
- Book
- 2009
- Published by: Princeton University Press
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
- Title Page, Copyright
- pp. i-vi
- Acknowledgments
- pp. ix-xii
- CHAPTER 2 Intimacy in Law
- pp. 47-93
- CHAPTER 3 Coupling
- pp. 94-157
- CHAPTER 4 Caring Relations
- pp. 158-208
- CHAPTER 5 Household Commerce
- pp. 209-286
- CHAPTER 6 Intimate Revelations
- pp. 287-308
- References
- pp. 309-346