Sexuality & Culture

, Volume 17, Issue 4, pp 598–616 | Cite as

Love as a Fictitious Commodity: Gift-for-Sex Barters as Contractual Carriers of Intimacy

  • Christopher S. Swader
  • Olga Strelkova
  • Alena Sutormina
  • Viktoria Syomina
  • Volha Vysotskaya
  • Irene Fedorova
Original Paper
First Online:

Abstract

Gift-for-sex (GFS) barters are a niche practice potentially representing the commodification of everyday dating practices. We inquire how GFS exchanges are practiced and understood in contemporary Russia. Second, we situate these in relation to contemporary economic culture. Our project provides answers in two steps based on online content. First, we identify GFS exchange practices within a major dating website. Next, we take the signals exchanged in those dating profiles and display their intersubjective meanings in Russia based on blogs and discussion fora. Our analysis focuses on gender roles and inter-gender conflicts, the use of economic jargon, the link between luxury consumption and sexuality, and understandings of gift-giving and generosity, in order to show how GFS barters, despite being contractual, carry emotional and romantic content. As such, love is under a constant conversion process, through the medium of the contractual gift, into the fictitious commodity form.

Keywords

Compensated dating Fictitious commodification Gift-exchange Post-socialist transformation Economic jargon Sexuality 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

Funded by a ‘teacher-student’ grant from the Academic Fund of the National Research University—Higher School of Economics. Significant research support was provided by Margarita Goldberg and Ekaterina Bounich. The authors are grateful to colleagues Grigory Yudin, Rafael Mrowczynski, Vadim Radaev, Tatiana Karabchuk, Leon Kosals, and Inna Deviatko for their critical remarks and suggestions.

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2012

Authors and Affiliations

  • Christopher S. Swader
    • 1
  • Olga Strelkova
    • 1
  • Alena Sutormina
    • 1
  • Viktoria Syomina
    • 1
  • Volha Vysotskaya
    • 1
  • Irene Fedorova
    • 1
  1. 1.Department of SociologyNRU-Higher School of EconomicsMoscowRussia

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