Arlie Russell Hochschild

Remote assistants respond to calls and emails. Life coaches assist with personal decisions. Smartphone apps tell us where to eat dinner. Nameologists help choose names for babies that will be raised by live-in au pairs.

Welcome to an emerging world, where the individual is a client in every interaction. Traditional functions of family and friends have been replaced by hired help and consultants. It may save us time, but what do we lose by handing over control of our personal lives to third-parties? Who are we if our jobs, our houses, our furniture, and our spouses are all recommended to us by experts or algorithms? If we are the sum of our decisions, then what’s left when those decisions have been handed over entirely to others?

Sociologist Arlie Hochschild looks at the long-term consequences of a frictionless existence and the implications of replacing the community with a marketplace in favour of faster, lonelier lives.

Arlie Hochschild is a professor emerita of sociology at University of California, Berkeley. She is author of several books, including The Outsourced Life: Intimate Life in Market Times and The Managed Heart: The Commercialization of Human Feeling. (rodneyvc)… (more)

From nannies to personal trainers to professional wedding planners, there’s someone to hire for almost every need, however personal. In her wake-up call to people who still care about keeping private life private, Hochschild, a sociology professor at UC Berkeley and the author of The Second Shift, warns of increasing economic incursions into areas previously free of marketplace calculations.

Street: 5015 Connecticut Ave NW City: Washington, Province: District Of Columbia Postal Code: 20008 Country: United States (added from IndieBound)… (more)

Arlie Hochschild reads from Global Woman, Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy.

Arlie Russell Hochschild discusses her work, and her books: Global Woman, Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy, The Managed Heart and The Commercialization of Intimate Life. "Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy …. examines the phenomenon of the feminization of migrant labor, "legal" and "illegal," on a global scale in the last few decades—especially that involving the typical pattern of migration from poor to rich countries—and shines a light on important aspects of how this serves to perpetuate the imperialist system and the "lifestyles" of those in more privileged positions within the imperialist citadels, such as the U.S., a parasitism which, to no small degree, requires the hardships and often brutal exploitation—including outright slavery, particularly in the case of many trapped in the "sex industry"—endured by millions and millions of these women migrant workers. ” from Bob Avakian’s talk, “Unresolved Contradictions and Driving Forces for Revolution.” A sociologist at U.C. Berkeley, Arlie Hochschild is the winner of the A.S.A. Jessie Bernard Award, and the 2000 Public Understanding of Sociology Award. Three of her books were selected as “notable books of the year” by the New York Times Book Review and plays were based on two. Her work has been translated into 14 languages. She’s finishing a book to be called, So Close to Home: intimate life on the market frontier. (RevolutionBooks)… (more)