In their personal lives, people consider it essential to separate economics and intimacy. Challenging this view, this book shows how we use economic activity to create, maintain, and renegotiate important ties, especially intimate ties, to others, thus opening a window on the inner workings of the economic processes that pervade our private lives.

"Zelizer offers a perspective that focuses attention on incomplete commensurability, an essential task where markets and supposedly non market realms intersect. In doing so, Zelizer's approach gives judges, academics, lawyers, and lay people a vantage point on markets and intimacy that reflects how people actually live their lives."---Martha M. Ertman, Law & Social Inquiry

Autorentext

Viviana A. Zelizer is Lloyd Cotsen '50 Professor of Sociology at Princeton University. Her previous books include The Social Meaning of Money and Pricing the Priceless Child (both Princeton) and Morals and Markets.

Inhalt
Acknowledgments ix Prologue 1 Chapter 1: Encounters of Intimacy and Economy 7 Chapter 2: Intimacy in Law 47 Chapter 3: Coupling 94 Chapter 4: Caring Relations 158 Chapter 5: Household Commerce 209 Chapter 6: Intimate Revelations 287 References 309 Index 347