The Business of Emotions in Modern History

Description

The Business of Emotions in Modern History shows how businesses, from individual entrepreneurs to family firms and massive corporations, have relied on, leveraged, generated and been shaped by emotions for centuries. With a broad temporal and global coverage, ranging from the early modern era to the present day in Africa, Asia, Europe and North America, the essays in this volume highlight the rich potential for studying emotions and business in tandem. In exploring how emotions and emotional situations affect business, and in turn how businesses affect the emotional lives of individuals and communities, this book allows us to recognise the emotional structures behind business decisions and relationships, and how to question them. From emotional labour in family firms, to affective corporate paternalism and the role of specific emotions such as trust, fear, anxiety love and nostalgia in creating economic connections, this book opens a rich new avenue of research for both the history of emotions and business history.

Mandy Cooper is Lecturer of History at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA. Her current project shows how enduring practices, focused on emotional family ties, informed conceptions of business and government among the nation's political leaders in the decades between the American Revolution and Reconstruction. Andrew Popp is Professor of History at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark, and Editor-in-Chief of Enterprise and Society: The International Journal of Business History. His book Entrepreneurial Families: Business, Marriage and Life in the Early Nineteenth-Century (2012) provided a sustained exploration of the relationshipbetween business and familial emotions.