This article introduces and explores the concept of emotional consumption through an
analysis of an exotic dance club in the New England area. Through understanding how
regular customers consume the services offered in an exotic dance club, I show how
consuming service labor differs dramatically from consuming objects of exchange.
Emotional consumption involves psychosocial dynamics, which emerge from the
intersubjective relationships between the consumer and the dancer who is providing a
service. In this exchange, the consumer engages in an interaction where the boundary
between pure economic exchange begins to merge with a sense of relationality.
AndrÈ, S.
(1999) What Does a Woman Want?New York: Other Press
.
2.
Barton, B.
(2002)
‘Dancing on the Mobius Strip: Challenging the Sex War Paradigm’
, Gender & Society16(5):
585–602
.
3.
Baudrillard, J.
(1993) Symbolic Exchange and Death.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
.
4.
Bauman, Z.
(2003) Liquid Love.
Cambridge: Polity Press
.
5.
Berman, M.
(1970) The Politics of Authenticity: Radical Individualism
and the Emergence of Modern Society.
New York: Atheneum Press
.
6.
Bordo, S.
(1999) The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and
Private.
New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
.
7.
Bourdieu, P.
(1984) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of
Taste.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
.
8.
Brewster, Z.W.
(2003)
‘Behavioral and Interactional Patterns of Strip Club Patrons:
Tipping Techniques and Club Attendance’
, Deviant Behavior: An Interdisciplinary Journal24(2):
221–243
.
9.
Bruckert, C.
(2002) Taking it Off, Putting it On: Women in the Strip
Trade.
Toronto: Women's Press
.
Deleuze, G.
(1991) Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty.
New York: Zone Books
.
12.
Durkheim, E.
and
M. Mauss
(1963) Primitive Classifications.
London: Cohen and West
.
13.
Dworkin, A.
(1987) Intercourse.
London: Secker and Warburg
.
14.
Egan, R.D.
(2003)
‘I'll Be Your Fantasy Girl, If You'll Be My
Money Man: Mapping Desire, Fantasy and Power in an Exotic Dance Club’
, Journal of Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society8(1):
109–120
.
15.
Egan, R.D.
(2004)
‘Eyeing the Scene: The Uses and (RE)uses of Surveillance Cameras
in an Exotic Dance Club’
, Critical Sociology30(2):
299–319
.
16.
Egan, R.D.
(2005) Dancing for Dollars and Paying for Love: The
Relationship Between Exotic Dancers and their Regulars.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan
.
17.
Emmison, M. (2003) ‘Social Class and Cultural Mobility:
Reconfiguring the Cultural Omnivore Thesis’, Journal of Sociology39(3): 211–30.
18.
Erikson, D.
and
R. Tewksbury
(2000)
‘The Gentlemen in the Club: A Typology of Strip Club Patrons’
, Deviant Behavior: An Interdisciplinary Journal21(4):
271–293
.
19.
Ewick, P.
(1993)
‘The Commodification of Social Control’
, Studies in Law, Politics and Society13(2):
137–157
.
20.
Faludi, S.
(1991) Backlash: The Undeclared War against American
Women.
New York: Crown
.
21.
Farough, S.
(2004)
‘The Social Geographies of White Masculinities’
, Critical Sociology30(2):
241–264
.
22.
Forsyth, C.J.
and
T. Deshotels
(1997)
‘The Occupational Milieu of the Nude Dancer’
, Deviant Behavior: An Interdisciplinary Journal18(2):
125–142
.
23.
Frank, K.
(1998)
‘The Production of Identity and the Negotiation of Intimacy in a
Gentleman's Club’
, Sexualities1(2):
175–201
.
24.
Frank, K.
(2002) G-strings and Sympathy: Strip Club Regulars and Male
Desire.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press
.
25.
Freud, S.
(1927) Sexuality and the Psychology of Love.
New York: Collier Press
.
26.
Fuss, D.
(1995) Identification Papers.
New York: Routledge
.
27.
Goldman, R.
and
S. Papson
(1996) Sign Wars: The Cluttered Landscape of
Advertising.
New York: Guilford Press
.
28.
Goldman, R.
and
S. Papson
(1998) Nike Culture: The Sign of the Swoosh.
London: Sage
.
29.
Goldman, R.
,
S. Papson
and
N. Kersey
(2003) Landscapes of Capital: Representing Time, Space, and
Globalization in Global Advertising, URL (consulted July 2005): http://it.stlawu.edu/%7Eglobal/index.html
30.
Grimal, P.
(1986) Love in Ancient Rome, trans. A. Train Jr.
Tulsa: University of Oklahoma Press
.
31.
Grosz, E.
(1994) Volatile Bodies: Towards a Corporeal Feminism.
Bloomington: University of Indiana Press
.
32.
Hochschild, A.
(1983) The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human
Feeling.
Berkeley: University of California
.
33.
hooks, b.
(2001) All about Love: New Visions.
New York: Perennial Press
.
34.
Irigaray, L.
(2003) Way of Love.
New York: Continuum Press
.
35.
Kimmel, M.
(1996) Manhood in America: A Cultural History.
New York: Free Press
.
36.
Kopytoff, I.
(1986) ‘The Cultural Biography of
Things’, in
A. Appaduri
(eds) The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural
Perspective.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
.
37.
Lacan, J.
(1975) Encore: Seminar XX.
New York: Norton
.
38.
Lacan, J.
(1977a) …crits: A Selection.
New York: Norton
.
39.
Lacan, J.
(1977b) Four Fundamentals of Psychoanalysis.
New York: Norton
.
40.
Lacan, J.
(1988) The Seminar, Book 1: Freud's Papers on
Technique.
New York: Norton
.
41.
Liepe-Levinson, K.
(2002) Strip Show: Performances of Gender and Desire.
New York: Routledge
.
42.
MacKinnon, C.
(1989) Towards a Feminist Theory of the State.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
.
43.
Marx, K.
(1971) Capital, vol. 1.
New York: Modern Library
.
44.
Messner, M.
(1997) Politics of Masculinities: Men in Movements.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
.
45.
Murphy, A.
(2003)
‘The Dialectical Gaze: Exploring the Subject–Object
Tension in the Performances of Women Who Strip’
, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography32(3):
305–335
.
46.
Nagle, J.
(1997) Whores and Other Feminists.
London: Routledge
.
47.
Queen, C.
(1995) Exhibitionism for the Shy.
San Francisco: Cleiss Press
.
48.
Rambo-Ronai, C.
(1992) ‘The Reflexive Self through Narrative: A
Night in the Life of an Erotic Dancer/Researcher’, pp.
45–57 in
C. Ellis
and
M.G. Flaherty
(eds) Investigating Subjectivity: Research on Lived Experience.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
.
49.
Rambo-Ronai, C. (1993) ‘Deviance and Resistance in the Biographical
Work of Exotic Dancers’, PhD thesis, University of Florida.
50.
Schor, J.
(1998) The Overspent American: Upscaling, Downshifting and
the New Consumer.
New York: Basic Books
.
51.
Tewksbury, R.
(1993) ‘Men Objectifying Men: The Case of Male
Strippers’, in
C.L. Williams
(eds) Doing Women's Work: Men in Nontraditional
Occupations.
Newbury Park, CA: Sage
.
52.
Verhaeghe, P.
(1997) Does the Woman Exist? From Freud's Hysteric
to Lacan's Feminine.
New York: Other Press
.
53.
Verhaeghe, P.
(2000) Love in the Time of Loneliness: Three Essays on Drive
and Desire.
New York: Other Press
.
54.
Weseley, J.
(2003)
‘Where am I Going to Stop? Exotic Dancing, Fluid Body Boundaries,
and Effects on Identity’
, Deviant Behavior24:
483–503
.
55.
Williams, L.
(1999) Hard Core: Power, Pleasure and the Frenzy of the
Visible.
Berkeley: University of California Press
.
56.
Wood, E.A.
(2000)
‘Working in the Fantasy Factory: The Attention Hypothesis and the
Enacting of Masculine Power in Strip Clubs’
, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography29(1):
5–31
.
57.
Zizek, S.
(1999) Public Address with Cornell West,
Harvard University
, November.
