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

Hsiung, Hansun

doi:10.1086/716883

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

Hsiung, Hansun

Authors

Dr Hansun Hsiung hansun.hsiung@durham.ac.uk
Assistant Professor

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