[ecrea] New book announcement – The Emotions Industry

New Book - The Emotions Industry

Editor: Mira Moshe, Ph.D. (Ariel University, Israel)


Hardcover:https://www.novapublishers.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=50736

E-ook:https://www.novapublishers.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=50811


Book Description:

This book deals with the multi-cultural phenomenon of the emotions 
industry, as well as the cynical manner in which that industry exploits 
its consumers in various cultures. The book was written in order to 
illuminate the fact that the culture industry has developed a “new” 
configuration dominated by the production and distribution of emotions – 
the emotions industry. The emotions industry is an industry that 
provides an incentive to exaggerate emotions in order to accumulate 
social, cultural or economic wealth. It endeavors to create emotional 
needs by connecting between the realization of these needs and consumer 
culture; by blurring the boundaries between authentic and simulated 
emotions, between real and imagined authenticity; by encouraging the 
externalization of inner worlds for financial gain, generating income or 
any other result; by revealing emotional worlds that gradually become 
merchandise, an effective and productive means of promoting economic, 
political, social or cultural processes. Obviously this is only possible 
on the condition that we are capable of controlling emotional processes, 
responding or delaying reactions, opening up and including or closing up 
and excluding our surroundings. This ability to regulate emotions lies 
at the foundation of the emotions industry, which shapes the interaction 
between emotion, cognition and behavior, commercial-economic and private 
interests, social-cultural and spiritual needs. Thus emotional 
regulation is transformed into a production line of emotional 
expectations and reactions, which specializes in creating emotional 
products and marketing them to the public in the framework of mass 
consumer culture.

Media’s attempts to create and distribute emotional content blur the 
distinction between “original” and “reproduction”, between “truth” and 
“pseudo-authenticity,” by activating a broad spectrum of emotional 
vibrations in the audience. These are ultimately directed towards 
maintaining an emotional market, exchanging emotional currency for 
material products or services. The result is active, immediate, and 
vigorous emotional trading that is taking place on our television, 
computer, and cell phone screens. Thus individuals are being emotionally 
stimulated by unceasing, around-the-clock reports of emotional 
experiences, and in many cases broadcast live before they have been 
processed or passed through any type of filter. Emotions such as love, 
hate, courage, fear, pain, pleasure, sadness, pride and shame are no 
longer a person’s private business, or that of close friends and family, 
but have become a subject for discussion in other people’s offices, 
workrooms, living rooms and bedrooms.

Furthermore, since in the emotions industry traditional and new media 
create, maintain and promote emotional trading, individuals have learned 
to capitalize on and translate their emotional worlds into current 
financial values. Clearly a process of capitalizing on emotions demands 
emotional intelligence, carefully monitored emotions and the deliberate 
use of emotional information for the purpose of directing behavior. 
However, this is a procedure that deviates from the familiar use of 
emotions for the purpose of social influence. Thus, as a result of a 
gradual increase in intensive emotional disclosures and intimate 
confessions, it seems that we are all involved in seeking the rewards to 
be gained in including others in our intimate worlds.

============

Dr. Mira Moshe

Senior Lecturer

Ariel University

P.B 1543, Shoham, Israel

Cell: 972-52-4584493

Fax: 972-77-4494831

E-mail: (miram /at/ ariel.ac.il)

www.ariel.ac.il/sites/mira-moshe



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