Lecture
Friday, Dec 7, 2007, 3:30 PM
Filmhaus am Potsdamer Platz, Potsdamer Str. 2, 10785 Berlin

Eva Illouz

Professor of Sociology, Hebrew University, Jerusalem

From Homo Economicus to Homo Communicans

This paper addresses two different questions: 1. How can we explain the fact that the 20th century witnessed an explosion of discourses on emotions, simultaneously commanding us to express and to constrain emotions? 2. What is the cultural and social meaning of emotional self control?

Eva Illouz is Professor of Sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She received her Ph.D in 1991 from the University of Pennsylvania. In 2004 she was visiting professor at Princeton; in the same year she was invited to deliver the Adorno lectures in Frankfurt am Main. Her main research interests include the role of culture in social action, the history of emotional life and the impact of knowledge systems on emotions. Among her publications is Consuming the Romantic Utopia. Love and Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1997); Gefühle in Zeiten des Kapitalismus (2006); Cold Intimacies. The Making of Emotional Capitalism (2007).

The event will be held in English