Defining Love Beyond Romance

This is an preview of the Patreon episode "The Political Economy of Love in Capitalism w/ Kristen Ghodsee." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

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In this episode we're joined by Kristen Ghodsee to discuss the political economy of love in capitalism. Kristen Ghodsee is Professor of Russian and East European Studies and a member of the Graduate Group in Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the critically acclaimed author of Everyday Utopia: What 2,000 Years of Wild Experiments Can Teach Us About the Good Life, Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism and Red Valkyries: Feminist Lessons From Five Revolutionary Women.

The conversation opens with an exploration of the three components of love and how capitalism co-opts, commodifies, and ultimately destroys them. We explore how different components of love, like attention and affection, are transformed from a use-value to an exchange-value in capitalism and how capitalism transforms and transactionalizes friendship and love. We also talk about the concept of "reciprocal flow" and how this is another component of relationality that is being distorted and corrupted by market relations and the commodification of everything.

Finally, we end the conversation exploring what we can do to fight against the commodification of friendship and love and how we can incorporate activities that facilitate trust, social bonds, and relationality that is not dominated and dictated by capitalist relations of production.

Further resources:

• "The Political Economy of Love in Capitalism," Kristen R. Ghodsee
• Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism: And Other Arguments for Economic Independence, Kristen Ghodsee
• Everyday Utopia What 2,000 Years of Bold Experiments Can Teach Us About the Good Life, Kristen R. Ghodsee
• Red Valkyries: Feminist Lessons From Five Revolutionary Women, Kristen Ghodsee
• "Make way for Winged Eros: A Letter to Working Youth," Alexandra Kollontai (1923)
• "The Anti-Social Century," by Derek Thompson (a diamond in the rough of The Atlantic)
• Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Robert D. Putnam
• Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, Robin Wall Kimmerer
• The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World, Robin Wall Kimmerer

Related episodes:

• Post Capitalist Parenting Pt. 2: Reimagining the Family w/ Kristen Ghodsee
• Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism w/ Kristen Ghodsee
• Everyday Utopia and Radical Imagination with Kristen Ghodsee
• Dialectical Materialism w/ Josh Sykes
• Stolen Focus with Johann Hari
• Life Beyond the Clock with Jenny Odell
• Documentary #9: Debunking the Myth of Homo Economicus
• The Spirit Level with Richard Wilkinson & Kate Pickett

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