Throughout the world, democracy is under assault from various populist movements and ideologies. And, throughout the world, the same enigma: why is it that political figures or governments, who have no qualms about aggravating social inequalities, enjoy the support of those whom their ideas and policies affect and hurt the most? To make sense of this enigma, the sociologist Eva Illouz argues that we must understand the crucial role that emotions play in our political life. Taking the case of Israel as her prime example, she shows that populist politics rest on four key emotions: fear, disgust, resentment, and love for one’s country. It is the combination of these four emotions and their relentless presence in the political arena that nourishes and underpins the rise and persistence of populism both in Israel and in many other countries around the world.   This highly original perspective on the rise of populism will be of interest to anyone who wishes to understand the key political developments of our time.

Throughout the world, democracy is under assault from various populist movements and ideologies. And, throughout the world, the same enigma: why is it that political figures or governments, who have no qualms about aggravating social inequalities, enjoy the support of those whom their ideas and policies affect and hurt the most? To make sense of this enigma, the sociologist Eva Illouz argues that we must understand the crucial role that emotions play in our political life. Taking the case of Israel as her prime example, she shows that populist politics rest on four key emotions: fear, disgust, resentment, and love for one’s country. It is the combination of these four emotions and their relentless presence in the political arena that nourishes and underpins the rise and persistence of populism both in Israel and in many other countries around the world.   This highly original perspective on the rise of populism will be of interest to anyone who wishes to understand the key political developments of our time.

Capitalism has made rationality into a pervasive feature of human action and yet, far from heralding a loss of emotionality, capitalist culture has been accompanied with an unprecedented intensification of emotional life. This raises the question: how could we have become increasingly rationalized and more intensely emotional? Emotions as Commodities offers a simple hypothesis: that consumer acts and emotional life have become closely and inseparably intertwined with each other, each one defining and enabling the other. Commodities facilitate the experience of emotions, and so emotions are converted into commodities. The contributors of this volume present the co-production of emotions and commodities as a new type of commodity that has gone unseen and unanalyzed by theories of consumption - emodity. Indeed, this innovative book explores how emodity includes atmospherical or mood-producing commodities, relation-marking commodities and mental commodities, all of which the purpose it is to change and improve the self. Analysing a variety of modern day situations such as emotional management through music, creation of urban sexual atmospheres and emotional transformation through psychotherapy, Emotions as Commodities will appeal to scholars, postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers interested in fields such as Sociology, Cultural Studies, Marketing, Anthropology and Consumer Studies.

Capitalism has made rationality into a pervasive feature of human action and yet, far from heralding a loss of emotionality, capitalist culture has been accompanied with an unprecedented intensification of emotional life. This raises the question: how could we have become increasingly rationalized and more intensely emotional? Emotions as Commodities offers a simple hypothesis: that consumer acts and emotional life have become closely and inseparably intertwined with each other, each one defining and enabling the other. Commodities facilitate the experience of emotions, and so emotions are converted into commodities. The contributors of this volume present the co-production of emotions and commodities as a new type of commodity that has gone unseen and unanalyzed by theories of consumption - emodity. Indeed, this innovative book explores how emodity includes atmospherical or mood-producing commodities, relation-marking commodities and mental commodities, all of which the purpose it is to change and improve the self. Analysing a variety of modern day situations such as emotional management through music, creation of urban sexual atmospheres and emotional transformation through psychotherapy, Emotions as Commodities will appeal to scholars, postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers interested in fields such as Sociology, Cultural Studies, Marketing, Anthropology and Consumer Studies.

"A tour de force of critical insights and broad scholarship that provides a rich banquet of ideas for those interested in a broader understanding of the modern soul. It is one of those rare books that forces the reader, whether he agrees or disagrees, to think in new and creative ways."--Charles W. Smith, author of "Success and Survival on Wall Street"
"Eva Illouz has made another seminal contribution to cultural sociology. Forty years ago, Philip Rieff announced the advent of a new 'therapeutic culture' wherein self-realization, once achieved as a byproduct of commitment to a communal purpose, is pursued as an end in itself. How the therapeutic culture affects selfhood, on the other hand, has remained a mystery. To clarify the matter, Illouz shows how therapeutic values insinuate themselves into the corporate world, the state, mass media, civil society, the family, and the bedroom. Eva Illouz has given to our generation the fullest and clearest account of therapeutic individualism ever written."--Barry Schwartz, author of "Abraham Lincoln in the Post-Heroic Era"
"Located within a cultural history of introspection, Eva Illouz has given us a highly original treatise-a cultural critique-of therapeutic discourse as one of the principal historical formations, languages, and codes that both articulate and shape what modern selfhood is today. An important work in cultural sociology and the sociology of emotions, Illouz will change many of our ideas about the emotions and late capitalism."--E. Doyle McCarthy, author of "Knowledge as Culture: The New Sociology of Knowledge"

From its beginnings in "Twilight" fan-fiction to its record-breaking sales as an e-book and paperback, the story of the erotic romance novel "Fifty Shades of Grey" and its two sequels is both unusual and fascinating. Having sold over seventy million copies worldwide since 2011, E. L. James's lurid series about a sexual ingenue and the powerful young entrepreneur who introduces her to BDSM sex has ingrained itself in our collective consciousness. But why have these particular novels--poorly written and formulaic as they are--become so popular, especially among women over thirty? In this concise, engaging book, Eva Illouz subjects the "Fifty Shades" cultural phenomenon to the serious scrutiny it has been begging for. After placing the trilogy in the context of best-seller publishing, she delves into its remarkable appeal, seeking to understand the intense reading pleasure it provides and how that resonates with the structure of relationships between men and women today. "Fifty Shades," Illouz argues, is a gothic romance adapted to modern times in which sexuality is both a source of division between men and women and a site to orchestrate their reconciliation. As for the novels' notorious depictions of bondage, discipline, and sadomasochism, Illouz shows that these are as much a cultural fantasy as a sexual one, serving as a guide to a happier romantic life. The "Fifty Shades" trilogy merges romantic fantasy with self-help guide--two of the most popular genres for female readers. Offering a provocative explanation for the success and popularity of the "Fifty Shades of Grey" novels, "Hard-Core Romance" is an insightful look at modern relationships and contemporary women's literature.

To what extent are our most romantic movements determined by the portrayal of love in film and on television? In this study of American love in the 20th century, the author unravels the mass of images that define our ideas of love and romance, revealing that the experience of "true" love is deeply embedded in the experience of consumer capitalism. She studies how individual conceptions of love overlap with the worlds of cliches and images she calls "Romantic Utopia". This Utopia lives in the collective imagination of the nation and is built on images that unite amorous and economic activities in the rituals of dating, lovemaking and marriage. Since the early 1900s advertisers have tied the purchase of beauty products, sports cars, diet drinks and snack foods to success in love and happiness. The author reveals that, ultimately, every cliche of romance - from an intimate dinner to a dozen red roses - is constructed by advertising and media images that preach a democratic ethos of consumption: material goods and happiness are available to all. The study begins with readings of ads, songs, films and other public representations of romance and concludes with individual interviews in or

Oprah Winfrey is the protagonist of the story to be told here, but this book has broader intentions, begins Eva Illouz in this original examination of how and why this talk show host has become a pervasive symbol in American culture. Unlike studies of talk shows that decry debased cultural standards and impoverished political consciousness, "Oprah Winfrey and the Glamour of Misery" asks us to rethink our perceptions of culture in general and popular culture in particular.

At a time when crises of morality, beliefs, value systems, and personal worth dominate both public and private spheres, Oprah's emergence as a cultural form -- the Oprah persona -- becomes clearer, as she successfully reiterates some of our most pressing moral questions. Drawing on nearly one hundred show transcripts; a year and a half of watching the show regularly; and analysis of magazine articles, several biographies,

"O Magazine, " Oprah Book Club novels, self-help manuals promoted on the show, and hundreds of discussions on the Oprah Winfrey Web site, Illouz takes the Oprah industry seriously, revealing it to be a multilayered "textual structure" that initiates, stages, and performs narratives of suffering and self-improvement that resonate with a wide audience and challenge traditional models of cultural analysis. This book looks closely at Oprah's method and her message, and in the process reconsiders popular culture and the tools we use to understand it.

Melodrama, it is said, has expanded beyond the borders of genre and fiction to become a pervasive cultural mode. It encompasses distinct signifying practices and interpretive codes for meaning-making that help determine the parameters of identification and subject formation. From the public staging of personal suffering or the psychologization of the self in relation to consumer capitalism, to the emotionalization and sentimentalization of national politics, contributions to this volume address the following question: If melodramatic models of sense-making have become so culturally pervasive and emotionally persuasive, what is the political potential of melodramatic victimhood and where are its political limitations? This volume represents both a condensation and an expansion in the growing field of melodrama studies. It condenses elements of theory on melodrama by bringing into focus what it recognizes to be the locus for subjective identification within melodramatic narratives: the victim. On the other hand, it provides an expansion by going beyond the common methodology of primarily examining fictive works - be they from the stage, the screen or the written word - for their explicit or latent commentary on and connection to the historical contexts within which they are produced. Inspiration for the volume is rooted in a curiosity about melodramatic forms purported to increasingly characterize aspects of both the private and the social sphere in occidental and western-oriented societies.