140 Theory, Culture & Society 30(3)

treats the material side of social life as unpremeditated, he writes

as though it is instinctual, unthinking action, not a form of thought
(p. 219). She does not entirely agree with him, seeing the Canal du
Midi as a consequence of creative responses to partly recognized situ-
ations. She also lauds Latour, Callon and Knorr-Cetina for pointing to
the signicance of infrastructures, but she questions whether roads, com-
puter systems and canals simply express forms of power. Perhaps the
dierence between working with and working around is more important
than might be thought.

Roy Boyne is the Standard Issues Editor of Theory, Culture & Society and
a board member of the recent journal Creative Industries. He has pub-
lished books on French philosophy, the sociology of art and cinema, and
cultures of risk, and is currently writing a book for Sage on regional and
international cultural strategy. [email: rdboyne@gmail.com]

The Outsourced Self: Intimate Life in Market Times

Arlie Russell Hochschild
New York: Metropolitan Books, 2012
Reviewed by Maciej Musial

The most recent book by Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Outsourced Self:
Intimate Life in Market Times, like her previous work, concentrates on
the relationship between intimate life and the market or, in other words,
between emotions and capitalism. The Outsourced Self is obviously a
development in the eld of sociology of intimacy and sociology of emo-
tions; however, it may also be considered as an interesting diagnosis of
contemporary western culture in general. In a similar fashion to her
earlier books, The Managed Heart or The Commercialization of
Intimate Life, in The Outsourced Self Hochschild investigates how
deeply economic logic penetrates thinking about the family, love rela-
tionships and, as the title suggests, ourselves and our self-identities. In the
following, some new results of Hochschilds study as presented in
The Outsourced Self will be analysed.
The book begins with an introduction, in which the author builds a
contrast between two ideal types. The rst one, the villager, is based on
the memories of Hochschilds family history from the beginning of the
20th century. The second type is drawn from the observations of con-
temporary culture, in which people have become outsourcers. By creating
these ideal types of the villager and the outsourcer, Hochschild builds
two contrasts. To be precise, the rst is between the culture based on
spontaneous help (the logic of just do as the author puts it) and the
spirit of a gift, whereas the second is built between the culture of calcu-
lated transactions and the spirit of consumption. The author

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Book Reviews 141

dierentiates the culture of personal relationships from the culture of

economic transactions. Instead of the undermined community, peoples
bonds have become relations of buyers and sellers, providers and con-
sumers. Such a contrast seems to be a way of persuasion that the con-
temporary situation of relations between intimacy and capitalism is not
as obvious as people who easily forget how quickly things that only
yesterday seemed bizarre have become the norm today (p. 225) believe
it to be. As a matter of fact, Hochschild shows that contemporary intim-
acy is light years away from the intimacy of her great-grandparents
generation, and that the basic dierence is the way in which it is increas-
ingly regulated by the market.
The main part of The Outsourced Self contains 14 chapters, each of
them concerning a peculiar area in which villagers are gradually becom-
ing (or sometimes have already become) outsourcers. The chapters also
present specic ways in which the market invades intimacy. In each one
Hochschild introduces particular situations of people she has inter-
viewed. At this point it can be mentioned that the language and style
of Hochschilds writing is outstandingly approachable and lively. All of
the individuals are vividly characterized, and their appearance and per-
sonality are well presented. The book is also rich in descriptions of
houses, gardens and other locations where the interviews and research
take place. From the scientic point of view, these stylistic decorations
may seem unnecessary or even unwanted; yet, on the other hand, the
specic style makes the book accessible and potentially attractive for a
regular reader. As a matter of fact, Hochschilds mode of writing seems
to be somewhere between formal and informal, and her language is also
placed between scientic analysis and colloquial discourse.
Turning away from form and returning to the content, a closer look
will now be taken at the chapters, where Hochschild argues for her main
theses. One of them is, as mentioned above, that the market invades love
life by the process of outsourcing, by hiring experts to help their clients
deal with their intimate lives. Each chapter concerns a particular type of
specialist in intimacy. It seems possible to distinguish two types of spe-
cialist. The rst shows these experts as those who do some things that
their clients cannot or do not want to do themselves. Such services
involve wedding planning (chapter 2), kids party organization (chapter
7), childcare (beginning with nannies and ending with experts such as
potty trainers, thumb-sucking specialists chapters 9 and 10) or elders
care (chapters 11 and 13). However, experts are needed not only to help
to take care of children or the house, but also to guide people in how to
take care of their own families. The latter is the second type of expert, the
ones whose job is not to do something instead of their clients but to
instruct them how to do it on their own.
The rst type of specialist seems more obvious (though no less import-
ant); therefore, the second type is more interesting in terms of analysis.

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142 Theory, Culture & Society 30(3)

The rst chapter of the book revolves around the topic of love coaches
and dating via the internet. The sociologist tells a story of Grace, who
decides to search for a soul mate on the web and hires Evan, a love coach
whose task is to help her achieve her goal. Hochschild presents statistics
which show the great scale of e-dating and the popularity of love coach-
ing. In this light, Grace is not a kind of special case or a curious exception
but an example of a wide phenomenon, which is still growing larger and
stronger. In fact, a lot has been said about online relationships, especially
about their dangers; yet Hochschilds perspective seems innovative and
original as she concentrates on the way in which economic logic invades
love life. The rst level of such an invasion is the language, especially
the language of metaphors. Evan claims that searching for love is
like searching for a job (p. 24), and that the internet is a love mall
(p. 25). However, there are also further and deeper mechanisms, one of
which is branding. Love coaches suggest that people should create their
virtual images to attract as many viewers as possible. Their photos and
their notes on the web should be the brand which will enable them to
reach the appropriate target eectively. By an appropriate target Evan
and other love coaches mean stimulating the interest of someone with the
same or a higher rank. Rank is another mechanism of the market invad-
ing love. People who have their accounts on e-dating websites get marks
that depend on their age, physical appearance, social status, number of
children, etc. Therefore, a person who hires a love coach should observe
the rise of his or her RoI (return on investment rate) (p. 27). RoI shows
how many high-rank people have been attracted by ones prole.
Although Grace does not get fully absorbed by branding, ranks
and RoI ratings, and eventually her adventure with love coaching and
e-dating is successful, Hochschild argues that economic logic makes
people believe in dangerous illusion. In particular, one aspect of such
an illusion is that there is always someone who will fully meet their
expectations, just as there is always a product, be it a television set or
a car, which will respond to ones needs if one searches with enough
precision. The sociologist states that people are told to train their atten-
tion on nding not making connection. They were preparing to
become consumers, not creators, of love (p. 41). Furthermore,
Hochschild claims that, according to love coaches, creating a good
brand, attaining a high rank and an eort to search is enough to achieve
a successful relationship. Therefore, building up love is not as important
as nding it, which, according to Hochschild, is a disturbing illusion that
the market brings into thinking about love and intimate life.
Love coaching does not only involve interfering in ones intimate life
and implementing a market logic in it. An even more striking example of
this process is the functioning of the company called Family360, which
appears as a response to the success of Management360, a service that
aims to improve the eciency of big companies. As Hochschild puts it,

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Book Reviews 143

Family360 brings these ideas home (p. 132) by composing question-

naires for family members. They are designed to show the strong and
weak sides of a rated person who, as a result, gains expertise through
suggestions like stimulate communication during dinner. Put preselected
questions on (or under) the dinner plates of family members or audit
your family conversations (p. 133). For example, Peters intentions seem
absolutely clear: he wants only to be a better father and husband, and to
create happy memories in the heads and hearts of his family members.
However, the means he chooses to achieve this goal, namely schedules,
questionnaires and procedures, seem to be full of the aura of the market.
Some people claim that the end justies the means. Yet the results that
are positive family memories that Family360 oers as one of their main
products are not as obvious as they seem to be. At the end of the chapter,
Hochschild raises a signicant question: What will the memories
of Peters kids be like? Will they contain moments of joy and happiness
or rather a picture of a father constantly noting something down and
handing out questionnaires?
Michaels attitude is very similar to the approach of April, whose story
is presented in chapter 6. April says: I apply to myself the same logic my
company applies to itself (p. 106). As a result, April believes that no one
should invest oneself in things that he or she is not good at (pp. 1067).
She sees family as a company that needs a professional management. As
Hochschild claims, April appeared to be bringing the corporate
approach of dened goals to her mission of family management (pp.
1078). Both Michael and April perceive intimate life as another task to
be coped with. They hire professionals and try to become professionals
themselves. Intimate life becomes a kind of work, a second shift which
does not really dier from the rst one.
The important leitmotif of The Outsourced Self is something that one
may call, using the title of one of Hochschilds essays, the commodity
frontier. The sociologist observes that most of the people she has been
interviewing draw a line that distinguishes the area of normal outsour-
cing from an exaggerated one. Most of the people feel that, at some
point, outsourcing becomes out of line, over the top. For some this may
mean hiring a nameologist to choose a childs name, for others it can be
something else. Yet Hochschild also presents cases in which it seems that
no frontier exists. In chapter 13, with a signicant title, Anything you
pay for is better, the reader meets Rose, who does not want to draw a
line. She believes that families cannot be happy by themselves, they
always need some experts, and the more the better. In her opinion,
help from a specialist is, in each case, better than a family members help.
At the end of the book, in the chapter entitled The wantologists,
Hochschild summarizes the previous chapters and draws a radical con-
clusion suggested by the books title. She presents another kind of expert:
the wantologist, whose task is to help people cope with their desires.

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144 Theory, Culture & Society 30(3)

In Hochschilds opinion existence of a paid wantologist indicates just

how far the market has penetrated our intimate lives. Can it be that we
are no longer condent to identify even our most ordinary desires with-
out a professional to guide us? (p. 222). The disturbing question that the
sociologist puts is whether a wedding organized by an expert is still a
wedding of a bride and a groom; and, if so, is it theirs only because they
have paid for it? Is a baby raised by nannies and taught by experts, a
baby whose name has been chosen by a nameologist, still a baby of its
parents? And what happens if a person hires a wantologist who decides
about their desires? Does ones self-identity really belong to oneself? Can
one say I am mine or maybe one should say I am outsourced, therefore
I am? Villagers become outsourcers, the community and spontaneous
just do is replaced by the market and professional experts. Hochschild
claims that the degradation of community and expansion of the market
are interconnected in a very subtle way, namely:

[a] cycle eect gets going: The more anxious and isolated we are and
the less help we receive from nonmarket sources, the more we feel
tempted to ll the void with market oerings . . . . greater isolation
results in greater demand for market services and professionals life
coaches, party planners, photograph-album assemblers to ll in
whats missing. (p. 222)

In other words, degradation of the community creates confusion and

loneliness and, consequently, the market becomes a form of therapy
and escape. In particular, if one worries about something one hires a
specialist, one feels lonely so one goes to a (love) mall.
To conclude, The Outsourced Self can undoubtedly be considered as
an outstanding development in the eld of sociology of intimacy and,
probably to some extent, of sociology of emotions. It concerns phenom-
ena ranging from love coaching, through marriage consulting to the, not
mentioned above, surrogate service (chapters 4 and 5). However,
Hochschilds book is not only a research on contemporary intimacy
but may also be interpreted as a diagnosis of contemporary society
and culture in general. Hochschild earnestly presents the transition of
the villagers into outsourcers. One could say that recently Habermas
drew similar conclusions by writing about colonization of the lifeworld.
However, the German philosopher has not shown how deep this process
goes. It seems that he diagnosed this change mostly in the area of the
public sphere, while Hochschild shows that it is invading deeper and
deeper into peoples intimacy. She provocatively puts forward a question
of whether there is any part of peoples lives that is really theirs, since
people have decided to outsource almost everything. The sociologist also
wonders if people are still self-conscious and autonomic subjects or only
the products of external conditions, especially the market.

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Book Reviews 145

Despite all the valuable aspects of The Outsourced Self, the book also
has some weak points that should not be ignored. The rst issue is the
lack of a theoretical approach. Although in The Managed Heart the
sociologist creates an interesting theory of emotions, her recent books
seem to be examples of a withdrawal from sophisticated theoretical
accounts. The second drawback is that Hochschild strictly limits her
dialogue concerning contemporary intimacy with other authors. It
would be very interesting and stimulating to read her (probably critical)
opinion of Giddens Transformation of Intimacy or (perhaps in a more
approving tone) Baumans Liquid Love, not to mention the work of Eva
Illouz, who like Hochschild is strongly interested in relations between
emotions and capitalism. However, the above-mentioned factors (which
for some people may not be issues at all) do not change the total value of
The Outsourced Self. The book is still an important diagnosis of disturb-
ing transformations in contemporary culture and helps in understanding
the world in which human beings live.

Acknowledgement
This review was funded by the Polish National Science Centre on the basis of decision
number DEC-2012/05/N/HS1/03338.

Maciej Musiab is a PhD student in the Institute of Philosophy at Adam

Mickiewicz University in Poznan. His doctoral thesis concerns issues
of contemporary transformations of intimacy analysed in philosophical
perspective. [email: m.musial@amu.edu.pl]

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