On Sat, 19 Jun 2004, Doug Henwood wrote:
> That's a rather tendentious way of describing it. Having been there,
> I can testify it's really a lot more complicated than tiring of a
> commodity. I'd also say that expecting deep emotional rewards out of
> an intimate partnership is a good thing.
No, it's not just that: even in my most anti-humanist moments I agree
that there's more to intimate relationships than the commodification
I talked about in the last post. The idea, though, of "expecting
deep emotional rewards" definitely reflects the logic of financial
exchange! When so much is bought and sold, I think it leads that
cost/benefit mentality to creep into our intimate relationships
more and more.
>
> But California and New York, states where capitalism is very well
> developed and tertiary industries are dominant, have relatively low
> divorce rates. The south, which is in many ways our internal colony,
> with relatively low incomes and other social indicators, where
> tertiary industries still mostly take a back seat to the primary and
> secondary, has a high divorce rate. I'd guess that it's the infulence
> of religion, which forces people to marry whenever they feel like
> fucking.
Religion is definitely important, above and beyond the stuff I brought up. The contrast between the South and CA doesn't really contradict my point: according to most attitude indicators, people in the South are more effectively indoctrinated into the ideology of capitalism (govt shouldn't own stuff, poverty is due to laziness, etc). --Mainstream repubs in CA aren't trying to eliminate the minimum wage! So even if the South is an internal colony--and I agree that's an apt description of the economic arrangements--the ideology of the market is an ingrained part of everyday life there. To put it bluntly, people in Texas are more likely to think of people as things/commodities than people in CA do. (Okay, insert joke about Hollywood here, but my point stands.)
The thing that's most interesting to me about the divorce trend in the U. S. is the significant drop since about 1980 (20-25% decrease, depending on the specific divorce statistic). I have to say I don't know why the hell that's happening (my "market" argument doesn't help there at all, and the trend also undermines the conservative claim that no-fault divorce laws make it too easy to get unhitched).
Miles