The Business of Emotions in Modern History

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.

Peter N. Stearns is Professor Emeritus in the Dept of History at George Mason University. His most recent publications include, as author, Cultural Change in Modern World History (Bloomsbury, 2018), Peacebuilding Through Dialogue (Virginia, 2018), Shame: A Brief History (Illinois, 2017), Sexuality in World History, Ed.II (Routledge, 2017), The Industrial Revolution in World History Ed.IV (Westview, 2016), Globalization in World History, Ed.II (Routledge, 2016), Childhood in World History, Ed.III (Routledge, 2016), The Industrial Turn in World History (Routledge, 2016), Gender in World History (Routledge, 2015), Debating the Industrial Revolution (Bloomsbury, 2015); and as editor, The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World: 1750 to the Present (Oxford, 2008).

Peter N. Stearns is Provost of George Mason University, and teaches courses in world history and social history. Stearns is a past vice president of the American Historical Association, in charge of the Teaching Division. He currently serves as chair of the Advanced Placement World History committee, founded and continues to serve as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Social History. Stearns is the author or editor of over 85 books.

Andrew Popp is Professor of History at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. He is Editor of Enterprise and Society: The Journal of Business History. His publications include Entrepreneurial Families: Business, Marriage and Life in the Early Nineteenth Century and People, Places and Business Cultures (co-edited with Paolo di Martino and Peter Scott).

Susan J. Matt is Presidential Distinguished Professor of History at Weber State University, USA. She is author of Keeping Up with the Joneses: Envy in American Consumer Society, 1890-1930 and Homesickness: An American History, and co-author with Luke Fernandez of Bored, Lonely, Angry, Stupid: Changing Feelings about Technology from the Telegraph to Twitter. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Journal of American History.