The fall of the European currency continuesTo be wanting that can prevent says conventional wisdomToday this secular commitment is less obviousThe bulk of the depreciations is now passedToday 360 employees working on its sitesIt must faithfully transpose them into national lawThe burst of the compensation fund of VAT 5As the Government is not resorting to the 49By helping people to better understand what we do we help build loyalty themIn France the activity should plunge of 0THE FEELINGS
OF CAPITALISM
by Eva Illouz
Editions of the threshold, 204 pages,
15 euros.
The economic sphere as an emotional desert has long been presented. Instead of the capitalist labour, governed by a cold rationality, would ban the feelings, reserved to the private sphere. The thesis of Eva Illouz radically takes this stereotype on its head. It shows how developed a true "emotional capitalism", how the economic self is, somehow, sentimentalisé, how what was reserved to the private sphere invaded the public sphere.
It is sufficient, in support of this demonstration, resume history taken into account by enterprises of the concept of "human relations". From the time it was understood that the behaviour of the men at work was determined by their feelings and their psychology, the company is found in the obligation to become a psychologist. The manager was summoned to listen to his subordinates, to encourage the expression of their emotions, show them how they could do their work the tool of choice for their self-fulfilment. The most striking sign of this evolution has been the paramount importance of the communication.
The advent of emotional capitalism was formalized by the mutation of the concept of jurisdiction. It is defined only by the detention of technical know-how, but by the ability to manage emotions and those of others. The illustration is given by the fact that it only more measure "intelligence" of an employee, but estimated its "emotional intelligence", i.e. its ability to control his emotions and those of others. Also well is it not surprising that the company invest today in training actions focused on "personal development" of its members.
The ambiguity of this mutation is clear. While the promotion granted to personal emotions can be interpreted as progress: me individuals says now in the public sphere, and each sees increase its chance to be recognized in its particularity. But, on the other hand, emotions may, at the same time, be integrated into productive force: they trigger the involvement in the work, they encourage cooperation which defused in the industrial world conflicts. It recognizes the feelings, but they are used.
New culture
Analysis of Eva Illouz exceeds this criticism fairly classic to point a more fundamental dimension. It highlights how the introduction of psychology in the enterprise is translated by streamlining experienced feelings. Practicing introspection, individuals have come to consider their emotions as "entities evaluable, reviewable, questionable, quantifiable and tradable." "Objects" emotions do leads finally to transform me into a commodity. More specifically, the rules of good communication assume that we suspend any emotional investment to remain objective. But this is put in brackets the emotional cement that binds us to the other.
As in any marriage, each spouse is transformed by the other. If the introduction of the emotions in the capitalism could make it more humane, the same process turned emotions in goods obeying the logic of the market. Nothing better illustrates this transformation that the analysis of Eva Illouz of relationships developed on the Internet sites of meetings. Each user is certainly exhibits the most intimate traits of his psychology, but he sees the site as a vast market where it will select its prospective partner to the outcome of an objective of cost calculation and the upcoming relationship profits. Find only with the author that the abolition of the old separation between private and public sphere creates a new culture where each integrates the modes of action of the other: the claim of emotional life is introduced in the economic sphere at the same time that the instrumental reason intervened in private emotions.