Emotions and Capitalism

Deadline: 15.07.2011

Is there a nexus between emotions and capitalism? Following recent
debates on the financial crisis or consumer capitalism, "yes" becomes
the likely answer: greed is generally identified as the reason for the
disastrous developments in the global finance system; craving,
artificially created longings as much as fear and envy are said to lie
at the foundation of mass consumption. In this strain of public
discourse, emotions appear as an innate drive, something irrational and
ravaging. Yet, the underlying explanatory model of cause and effect
remains largely unclear: while some define human drives and emotions as
the originators of capitalism, others claim that destructive emotions
are evoked by capitalism in the first instance.

Besides these contemporary discussions, there is an older line of
thought in which capitalism is on the one hand associated with the
emergence of a specific emotional culture. On the other hand, the idea
that certain emotional practices were constitutive for the development
of capitalism is not new either. For over 250 years these questions have
been discussed in disciplines like philosophy, economics and sociology.
What these debates have in common is not only a skeptical stance towards
emotions, but also an understanding that emotions are "natural",
"universal" entities. This understanding has been challenged lately:
emotions have become a lively object of current research in the
humanities and the social sciences; this research has highlighted the
fact that emotions are culturally coded and therefore subject to change
in history. Research on capitalism has undergone similar revisions as a
consequence of several "turns" in the humanities: the homo oeconomicus
no longer counts as a compelling explanatory model and the traditional
conceptionalizations of capitalism, its types and phases have been
rethought - a process from which new research agendas have emerged
taking capitalist cultures as a conceptual point of departure rather
than "capitalism" as an allegedly homogeneous phenomenon.

However, the question how emotions were and are shaped in capitalist
cultures and vice versa: how capitalist cultures are shaped through
emotional discourses and practices is still widely under-researched. The
conference on emotions and capitalism wants to help to fill this gap:
the aim is to offer a platform for new perspectives on the intimate
connections which exist between emotional and capitalist practices. To
approach this agenda, five major foci have been set for the conference:

In a first step, the conference will analyze the hitherto produced
meta-narratives of capitalism and the assumptions they produced
regarding the relationship between emotions and capitalism.

The following three sections will be concerned with the
interdependencies of emotional and capitalist practices in three central
loci - the market, the work place and the field of consumption.

The last section on subjectification and habitus asks about
the modes
and contents of becoming an emotional being in capitalism.

We invite researchers (PhD level or advanced) to a productive exchange
among the disciplines of history, sociology, ethnology, economics,
culture and literature studies as well as all others who want contribute
on the matter.

The conference is organised by Sabine Donauer and Anne Schmidt in
cooperation with Christoph Conrad (University of Geneva) and will take
place at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin from
27 to 30 June 2012. Travel and accommodation costs will be covered by
the Max Planck Institute for Human Development.

Interested applicants should send a short CV and a paper proposal (max.
700 words) to capitalism@mpi-berlin.mpg.de until 15 July 2011.

All applicants will receive a reply by 15 Sept. 2011.