The Social Meaning of Extra Money

Why do ordinary people who used to engage in domestic and leisure activities for free now try to make a profit from them? How and why do people commodify their free time? This book explores the marketization of blogging, cooking, craftwork, gardening, knitting, selling second-hand items, sexcamming, and more generally the economic use of free time. It outlines how the development of web platforms, the current economic context and post-Fordist values can account for this extension of market and labor.

Drawing on a range of interviews, ethnographic observations, and quantitative surveys, the contributors question the empowering effects of commodification, with a specific focus on how gender and class inequalities affect the social meanings of extra money. Ultimately, the collective findings demonstrate how commodification pervades even the most mundane social activities. This research will be invaluable to scholars and students with a focus on gender and digital sociology,the sociology of work and labour, and the marketization of leisure.

Offers insight into the 'entrepreneurialisation' of society, and how the associated effects of the expansion of capitalism on an individual and collective level Cross-cuts separate bodies of literature, bringing together the social sciences of capitalism, markets and work on one side, and the sociology of leisure, domesticity and gender on the other, to provide new insight into the marketisation of everyday life Brings to the forefront widely practised activities that have otherwise been considered trivial and understudied because they are feminine and/or popular practices

Autorentext

Sidonie Naulin is Associate Professor of Sociology at Sciences Po Grenoble and Researcher at PACTE, France.

Anne Jourdain is Associate Professor of Sociology at Paris-Dauphine University and Researcher at IRISSO, France.

Inhalt

1. Introduction: The Marketization of Everyday Life; Anne Jourdain and Sidonie Naulin.- Part 1: Pin Money.- 2. Commodifying Leisure and Improving Its Social Value: Knitters' Conspicuous Production on Ravelry.com; Vinciane Zabban.- 3. Making Money Out of Leisure: The Marketization of Handicrafts and Food Blogging; Anne Jourdain and Sidonie Naulin.- 4. Selling Second-Hand Items on the Web: New Skills for Everyone?; Adrien Bailly, Renaud Garcia-Bardidia and Coralie Lallemand.- Part 2: Savings.- 5. Comorian Women at Work: Juggling Insecure Jobs with the Transnational Suitcase Trade; Abdoul-Malik Ahmad.- 6. Domesticity as Value: The Commodification of Foodstuffs in Precarious Rural Russia; Glenn Mainguy.- 7. Nonstandard Working Hours and Economic Use of Free Time in the Upper Class: The Gender Gap; Anne Lambert.- Part 3: Low Labor Income.- 8. Performing Amateurism: A Study of Camgirls' Work; Pierre Brasseur and Jean Finez.- 9. Making Money from TVSeries: From Viewer to Webmaster with Financial Rewards; Anne-Sophie Béliard. - Having or Blurring It All? Capitalism's Work at the Frontier.