Introduction

Chapter 5 looks at a broad range of emotional intersections with class, which has played an important part in understanding emotions. The chapter is divided into three parts. The first part considers traditional conceptions of emotional capital and social class, where the focus of this early work drew on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and his analysis of capital. Pierre Bourdieu's (1984) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste is crucial in understanding emotions. The importance of this perspective highlights the link of cultural capital and emotional capital. While Bourdieu's work emphasized gender, he did not refer to emotions explicitly or to ‘emotional capital’. While class is important in understanding emotions, it is also the intersection of gender and class in understanding emotions which is significant. The author reviews the work of some of the key feminist theorists: Storr (2002); Reay (2004) and Skeggs (2010), who in different ways develop work around class, emotions and emotional capital.

Part II of the chapter, ‘emotions, consumption and commodities’, shows how this work has moved on to discussions of emotions, consumption and commodities (Illouz, 1997a, 2009, 2018; Cabanas and Illouz, 2016) through the work of a range of feminists and cultural theorists. Part III of the chapter looks at the further development of the work, through the intersection of capitalism, neoliberalism and the ‘confidence culture’, reflected in the work of an exciting range of contemporary feminists, including Illouz (2007); Rottenberg (2014a); Banet-Weiser (2015); Gill and Orgad (2015, 2017); Gill and Kanai (2018); Kanai and Gill (2020).

Part I. Traditional conceptions of emotional capital and social class

In recent years, discussions about social class and emotional capital have moved on to debates around neoliberalism, consumption and the ‘confidence culture’. However, it is worth reviewing some of the important feminist research (Storr, 2002; Reay, 2004 and Skeggs, 2010 among others) that anticipated these later conceptual and theoretical analyses.

Reay (2005), in ‘Gendering Bourdieu's concept of capital: emotional capital, women and social class’, focuses on the intersection of class and emotions. There are also a range of intersecting studies which incorporate this perspective, including Skeggs's (2009) ‘The moral economy of person production: the class-relations of self-performance on ‘reality’ television.’