Contribution to Book
“Understanding Authenticity in Commercial Sentiment: The Greeting Card as Emotional Commodity"
Emotions as Commodities: Capitalism, Consumption, and Authenticity
(2018)
Abstract
What could be a more quintessential emotional commodity, or “emodity” as coined by Illouz, than the greeting card? Perhaps no other brand, at least in the United States, is as associated with emotion than Hallmark, estimated to control 44% of the greeting card market, including both paper and e-cards (Turk 2014). The core promise of Hallmark’s brand is to deliver reliable and effective emotional products to use in interpersonal communication, most often for people with whom we are already close. And yet, the propriety of relying on the market to communicate personal emotions is in question. When we use a greeting card to communicate emotion, are we taking a shortcut, an easy way out? Are we becoming deskilled in the practice of connecting with others, or expressing our feelings with words? Are we allowing the market to intrude ever more into a “sacred sphere” of personality and intimate life? In other words, are greeting cards – or commodified sentiment - a threat to the authenticity of emotion?
Keywords
- authenticity,
- commodification,
- emotion,
- ecards,
- sentiment
Disciplines
Publication Date
2018
Editor
Eva Illouz
Publisher
Routledge
Citation Information
Emily West. "“Understanding Authenticity in Commercial Sentiment: The Greeting Card as Emotional Commodity"" New YorkEmotions as Commodities: Capitalism, Consumption, and Authenticity (2018) p. 123 - 144 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/emily_west/27/