Avoiding the transactional “feel” while getting paid

Affect and relational work in sugar dating

Bibliographic Data

ID12925944
AuthorsCatherine Lavoie Mongrain (0009-0000-3602-802X, Victoria University, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume61
Issue4
Pages392-408
Publication date2024-10-09
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCanadian Review of Sociology/Revue canadienne de sociologie (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1755-6171 • E-ISSN: 1755-618X
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/cars.12486
PMID39381844
OpenAlexW4403256625
LanguageEN
References cited41

Following Viviana Zelizer's extensive scholarship on the interweaving of money and intimacy, this paper discusses the often overlooked yet critical role of affect in the production of relational work and in the success of relational packages. Drawing from the results of a grounded-theory-driven research study on sugar dating, the motions through which affect seeps through and structures negotiations of payments and emotional attachment are explored. The paper discusses the management of feelings as a component of relational work-so that arrangements neither feel too transactional nor too intimate-as well as the role that affect plays in differentiating sugar dating from illicit sexual transactions. It also contributes to the literature on sugar dating and sex work by critically discussing the limits of the commodification of intimate services and affect under a dominant belief system that rejects the possibility of selling "real" intimacy

Affect (linguistics · Commodification · Economics · Economy · Feeling · Negotiation · Political science · Scholarship · Social science · Sociology · Transactional leadership · Work (physics · Communication · Engineering · Law · Marriage and Sexual Relationships · Psychology · Sex work and related issues · Sexuality, Behavior, and Technology · Social Psychology

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