Intimate revelations.

• Author: Howley, Kerry
• Position: Viviana A. Zelizer - Interview

From mandatory sexual harassment training to crackdowns on prostitution, Americans spend an awful lot of time erecting barriers between business and pleasure. The assumption, reflected in our legal system and countless advice columns, goes something like this: Business vulgarizes intimacy, and intimacy corrupts business.

Princeton's Viviana A. Zelizer doesn't buy it. Zelizer is a leading figure in economic sociology, a field that tries to explain economic institutions from a sociological perspective. In The Purchase of Intimacy, she argues that economic exchange is a crucial part of our quest to create, define, and maintain intimate relationships--and that if money can't buy love, it can at least help sustain it.

Assistant Editor Kerry Howley spoke with Zelizer in September.

Q: Why the horror over mixing love and money?

A: It's a kind of magic spell to keep away the evils of the wrong relationship. You say: "I'm not a whore; I'm your date," "I'm not a hired maid; I'm a mother to your kid," "You're not my lover; you're my lawyer." You're protecting these valued relationships from others that seem bad. But this blinds people to the actual economic activity that goes on. Somebody is paying for the date.

Q: Is there a general discomfort with money at play?

A: The standard argument is that when you have intimacy in the economic realm, necessarily you will have corruption. What I'm saying is, yes, sometimes, but not always--and in fact by...