Hostile worlds

{{Short description|Sociological concept}}

Hostile worlds is sociologist Viviana Zelizer's term for the view that the market must be kept separate from intimate, sacred, and otherwise important spheres if they are to retain their value and importance.

Zelizer argues that the hostile worlds view assumes

"that the entry of instrumental means such as monetization and cost accounting into the worlds of caring, friendship, sexuality, and parent-child relations depletes them of their richness, hence that zones of intimacy only thrive if people erect effective barriers around them."{{cite book|last1=Zelizer|first1=Viviana|authorlink1=Circuits within Capitalism|editor1-last=Nee|editor1-first=Victor|editor2-last=Swedberg|editor2-first=Richard|title=The Economic Sociology of Capitalism|date=2005|publisher=Princeton University Press|pages=289–321}}

Zelizer contrasts hostile worlds with the "nothing but" view. In contrast to hostile worlds, the "nothing but" view does not divide social relations into separate spheres of money, on the one hand, and intimate relations, on the other. For the "nothing but" view, there is nothing but the market (or culture, or politics).{{Cite book|title=The Purchase of Intimacy|last=Zelizer|first=Viviana A.|publisher=Princeton University Press|year=2009|isbn=9781400826759|location=Princeton|pages=29–32}}

This theory has been used to study intimate relations, as in Zelizer's other work,{{cite web|last1=Zelizer|first1=Viviana|title=The Purchase of Intimacy|url=http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8023.html|publisher=Princeton University Press}} but also to examine care relationships,{{Cite journal|last1=Bandelj|first1=Nina|last2=Morgan|first2=Paul James|last3=Sowers|first3=Elizabeth|title=Hostile Worlds or Connected Lives? Research on the Interplay Between Intimacy and Economy|journal=Sociology Compass|volume=9|issue=2|pages=115–127|doi=10.1111/soc4.12242|year=2015|url=http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/0mh972wk}} art and other areas. For example, Olav Velthuis used this to understand the views of contemporary artists and their hostility to investment interests.{{cite book|last1=Velthuis|first1=Olav|title=Talking Prices: Symbolic Meanings of Prices on the Market for Contemporary Art|date=2005|publisher=Princeton University Press}} Erica Coslor found the hostile worlds view the prevalent view for collectors and art lovers, though not necessarily all gallerists.{{cite book|last1=Coslor|first1=Erica|authorlink1=Hostile Worlds and Questionable Speculation: Recognizing the Plurality of Views About Art and the Market|editor1-last=Wood|editor1-first=Donald|title=Economic Action in Theory and Practice: Anthropological Investigations|date=2010|publisher=Emerald|location=Bingley, UK|pages=209–224}}