From Harmony to E-Harmony: Fourier, Social Science, and the Management of Love

Hsiung, Hansun

Abstract

This essay examines techniques of amorous matching in the work of the “utopian socialist” Charles Fourier (1772–1837), recovering the practices and the institutions he proposed for the management of love, as well as his political arguments for their centrality in a perfected society. In doing so, it argues more broadly for the need to position the management of love at the origin of early social science. Much as early defenses of capitalism had at their core a discourse of the passions, so too was Fourier’s socialism invested in exploring how problems of political economy were those of passional economy. To rectify the latter, Fourier attempted to articulate both a mathematical system—a calcul des passions—and a centralized information system for the gathering and sorting of personal data. The recovery of his vision thus has the potential to inform critically a radical politics of algorithmic matching through Big Data—the province today not of utopian socialism but of online dating apps.

Citation

Hsiung, H. (2021). From Harmony to E-Harmony: Fourier, Social Science, and the Management of Love. Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society, 112(4), 786-794. https://doi.org/10.1086/716883

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: 2021-12
• Deposit Date: Sep 15, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Dec 31, 2022
• Journal: Isis
• Print ISSN: 0021-1753
• Electronic ISSN: 1545-6994
• Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 112
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 786-794
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/716883
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1250533