Inspired by Nigel Dodd’s The Social Life of Money, this lecture proposes an analysis of entangled economic lives, that is, how meaning, structure and politics jointly shape the flow of monies within households.
The past decades have marked a shift from “childrearing expenditures” to “parenting investments” that align with new visions of both children and parents. The new social life of money for children revolves no longer around what Viviana Zelizer famously called “a priceless child,” but in support of human capital development of children and invested parenting identities. The new ideational schemas are scaffolded by financialization, exploding parenting product industry, and an aloof state offloading provision for children onto individual parents. Leading entangled economic lives, parents engage in emotional relational work in which they match the sacred child-parent bond with not only culturally appropriate but structurally accessible monies for children, creating a new political economy of parenting.
Nina Bandelj (@BandeljNina) is Chancellor’s Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine, where she is also associate vice provost for faculty development. An economic sociologist, she is interested in the study of money, and how social forces influence the economy. Her research connects individuals’ emotions, beliefs and struggles with systemic transformations of communism, capitalism and the global economy.
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