Department of Sociology
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720
Telephone: None Give
ahochsch@berkeley.edu
I suppose what's really animating my research these days is the triumph of the market over so much else in life. I'm currently working on several projects. One is the commercialization of intimate life. How, I want to know, does market culture gain acceptance as a carrier of personal identity? A recent essay, "On the Edge of the Time Bind" explores that question from the vantage point of temporal strategies. I've also taken that question global, in an essay called "Love and Gold." Here I look at care workers who leave their children and elderly in the South (the Philippines, Mexico, Sri Lanka for example) to care for the children and elderly of the North (the U.S. for example). What is the emotional effect of this "heart transplant" on everyone involved? Whatever problem I'm trying to figure out, I keep a close eye on people's emotions. See a short statement I wrote on that in the Spring 2008 issue of Contexts. I also write occasional essays on current political issues. For example, "The Chauffeur's Dilemma" an essayexploring why many poor Americans supported President Bush's tax cuts favoring the wealthy. This essay appears in a book recently edited by Tom Engelhardt (June 2008) http://www.tomdispatch.com/p/watts.
