From Intimacy to Collective Crisis. Eva Illouz’s Structural Sociology of Emotions
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21142/DES-1804-2026-0097Keywords:
Capitalism, political sociology, cultural sociology, digital platforms, emotions, democracyAbstract
Eva Illouz develops a structural sociology of emotions that integrates political economy, field theory, and a genealogy of power to explain how advanced capitalism produces, governs, and stratifies affective life. This article reconstructs the internal logic linking her major works from 1997 to 2024, offering a systematic reading of her intellectual trajectory. Methodologically, it maps five stages—from consumerist love to populist resentment—and identifies four enduring analytical continuities: affective rationalization; the articulation of structure, culture, and subjectivity; historicity; and a sustained critique of psychologism. It also traces key theoretical shifts that expand the object of analysis without compromising conceptual coherence. Grounded in concepts such as emotional capitalism, affective capital, and negativity without synthesis, the article concludes that emotions function simultaneously as mechanisms of domination and as indicators of the structural fractures of late capitalism, providing a critical account of the affective crisis of liberal democracies that does not exclude the Latin American experience.
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Esta obra está bajo una licencia http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
