Skeggs, Bev. 2010. The Value of Relationships: Affective Scenes and Emotional Performances. Feminist Legal Studies, 18(1), pp. 29-51. ISSN 0966-3622 [Article]

No full text available

Abstract or Description

Many theorists have charted for some time how capital extends its lines of flight into new spaces, creating new markets by harnessing affect and intervening in intimate, emotional and domestic relationships, and into bio-politics more generally. Feminists have known for a long time that women’s ‘domestic’ labour has been central to the reproduction of capital but that it has been made invisible, surplus and naturalised and is rarely taken into account in theories of value. Yet we are now in a bizarre historical moment wherein a format has emerged (reality television) in a major capitalist industry (the media) that is premised upon spectacularly visualising women’s labour in all its forms, especially through its focus on relationships, dispositions and emotional performance. Drawing on an ESRC research project, ‘Making Class and the Self through Mediated Ethical Scenarios’, this paper demonstrates how very different spheres of exchange—economy and affect—have come together, offering possibilities for fusing calculation and care. This process bears remarkable similarity to the legal adjudication of property and propriety in intimate relationships. Yet the paper shows how, as attempts are made to commodify affect, it is precisely affect that exposes and disrupts exchange and enables reality television as a technology of affect to visualise the different types of person-value that are constituted through class and gender relations.

Item Type:	Article
Identification Number (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.1007/s10691-010-9144-3
Departments, Centres and Research Units:	Sociology
Dates:	Date Event 2010 Submitted
Item ID:	7730
Date Deposited:	12 Mar 2013 11:23
Last Modified:	07 Jul 2017 12:46
Peer Reviewed:	Yes, this version has been peer-reviewed.
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/7730

Available Versions of this Item

• The Value of Relationships: Affective Scenes and Emotional Performances. (deposited 19 Oct 2010 09:18)
  • The Value of Relationships: Affective Scenes and Emotional Performances. (deposited 12 Mar 2013 11:23) [Currently Displayed]

Edit Record (login required)