From the famed author of the bestselling The Second Shift and The Time Bind, a pathbreaking look at the transformation of private life in our for-profit world

The family has long been a haven in a heartless world, the one place immune to market forces and economic calculations, where the personal, the private, and the emotional hold sway. Yet as Arlie Russell Hochschild shows in The Outsourced Self, that is no longer the case: everything that was once part of private life—love, friendship, child rearing—is being transformed into packaged expertise to be sold back to confused, harried Americans.

Drawing on hundreds of interviews and original research, Hochschild follows the incursions of the market into every stage of intimate life. From dating services that train you to be the CEO of your love life to wedding planners who create a couple's "personal narrative"; from nameologists (who help you name your child) to wantologists (who help you name your goals); from commercial surrogate farms in India to hired mourners who will scatter your loved one's ashes in the ocean of your choice—Hochschild reveals a world in which the most intuitive and emotional of human acts have become work for hire.

Sharp and clear-eyed, Hochschild is full of sympathy for overstressed, outsourcing Americans, even as she warns of the market's threat to the personal realm they are striving so hard to preserve.

网友对The Outsourced Self: What Happens When We Pay Others to Live Our Lives for Us的评论

This book is very thought-provoking in terms of how we use people to handle our personal life responsibilities; it continues to perpetuate an upper and under-class of workers and people with available fluid monetary funds. Especially significant was the chapter on women in India are part of the international mills for supplying their bodies as surrogate mothers to women, mostly in America, who cannot conceive or maintain a pregnancy and do not consider adoption. The chapter on the problems of taking care of elderly, no longer independent relatives, is poignant and relevant to today's society.

Hochshild used her sociologist lens to take a good look at how modern, busy, affluent people rely on the expertise of others to "make our lives happen." Brilliant observation, in-depth interviews.

Great read. Good and interesting ideas written in a sometimes comical, convincing way. You feel very personal and as if you are friends with Arlie. Highly recommended.

Very informative about the direction society is headed and the pros and cons. The book ends with a scene from the past that awakens what we have lost.

Purchased as needed for book review group. Not too keen on what the book was about. Too many people have too much money!!

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