Theor Soc (2009) 38:401–422

DOI 10.1007/s11186-009-9085-5

An odd and inseparable couple: Emotion

and rationality in partner selection

Eva Illouz & Shoshannah Finkelman

Published online: 29 April 2009

# Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2009

Abstract The dichotomy between emotion and rationality has been one of the most
enduring of sociological theory. This article attempts to bypass this dichotomy by
examining how emotion and rationality are conjoined in the practice of the choice of
a mate. We posit the fundamental role of culture in determining the nature of this
intertwinement. We explore the culturally embedded intertwining of emotion and
rationality through the notion of modal configuration. Modal configuration includes
five key features: reflexivity, techniques, modal emphasis, modal overlap, and modal
sequencing. We apply this framework to the topic of partner selection. Comparing
primary and secondary sources on pre-modern partner selection and on internet
dating, we show that emotion and rationality were intertwined in both periods but
that what differs between them is precisely the emotion-rationality modality.

The distinction and opposition between rationality and emotion have been the
touchstone of Western philosophical conceptions of human nature, and have obliquely
penetrated sociological theory. As Neil Smelser pointed out in his 1997 ASA
presidential address, in sociology, the conceptual gap between rational choice theory
and anti-rationalist trends (cultural studies, postmodernism, neo-Marxism, critical
theory, and some schools of phenomenology and feminism), has led to “a polarization
between various kinds of rationality and a reactive anti-rationality” (Smelser 1998, p.
3). Both sides of this debate—rational choice theory and the so-called anti-rationalist
trends—have tended to portray rationality and emotion as mutually exclusive
categories of action, thus perpetuating and further reinforcing the dichotomy.
In the last two decades however, this dichotomy has grown increasingly difficult
to sustain. The challenge has come from several fronts. Reviving a Humean
approach to reason, neuropsychologist Antonio Damasio argued in a groundbreaking
work that emotion and reason are contiguous with each other and that effective
rational decision-making is actually predicated on emotional processes, thus making

E. Illouz (*) : S. Finkelman

Sociology & Anthropology Department, Hebrew University, Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem 91905, Israel
e-mail: illouz@mscc.huji.ac.il
402 Theor Soc (2009) 38:401–422

the sharp distinction between reason and emotion impossible to maintain, on

neurological and cognitive grounds. (Damasio 1994) His research shows that
emotions are crucial to prioritizing preferences and constitute the necessary
background to all rational weighing of costs and benefits.
In the field of economics, Gary Becker has been perhaps the first to introduce
emotion directly into economic theory, most notably in his account of the so-called
altruism that parents deploy vis-à-vis children (Becker 1991) Becker argues that
parents invest “altruistically” in children with the hope that children will pay them
back in old age. This expectation of reciprocity explains why parents instill in their
children a sense of guilt, obligation, and filial love that indirectly, but still effectively,
commits children to helping them in the future. In a somewhat different vein,
economist Robert Frank has also undermined the reason-emotion dichotomy; he
points to the crucial role emotions play in signaling our commitment to our interests
and to carrying out appropriate actions to defend these interests. “[P]assions often
serve our interests very well indeed,” he writes (Frank 1989, p. 4). Taking this idea a
step further, Jon Elster suggests that economic interests are not only signaled by
emotions but actually rooted in them. Bringing our attention to the fundamental role
of desire and emotions in economic transactions, Elster argues that “economics is
concerned with the best ways of promoting human satisfaction in a world of scarce
resources…[and that] all human satisfaction comes in the form of emotional
experiences” (Elster 1996, p. 1386; Frank 1989; also see Kaplow and Shavell 2007,
and Loewenstein 2000).
Sociologists have slowly begun to recognize that emotion and rationality are
complementary rather than exclusive categories. Yet, they have failed to explore just
how these two notions are actually conjoined in real practices. Nor have sociologists
addressed the important role of culture in shaping precisely the way in which
emotion and rationality are intertwined. In this article, we present a conceptual
strategy for describing the interaction between emotion and rationality as embedded
in and organized by culture. By “rationality” we refer to the Weberian definition as a
pervasive, calculating, reflexive consciousness associated with the principles of
personal utility maximization (Swidler 1973). Rationality is a specific form of
cognition that demands a good deal of information processing, the comparison and
weighing of different possible courses, and the targeting of the preferred outcome.
Rationality can take several forms (practical, substantive, theoretical, and formal)
(Kalberg 1980), but in modernity it is particularly characterized by “intellectualiza-
tion,” that is, the use of technical means and mental calculations to reach one’s end.
We adopt Elster’s definition of emotion as a valenced response of physiological
arousal to a particular intentional object (Elster 1996). Following Elster we also
argue that cognitive processing necessarily precedes and often follows the
experience of emotion. We must cognitively assess multiple aspects of a situation
to determine how or whether to respond to it emotionally. Furthermore, the
experience of emotion often has cognitive consequences, inspiring us to reassess the
initial situation. Precisely because emotion is so intimately intertwined with
cognition, there are points of junction between emotion and the hyper-cognized
activity of rationality.
The realm of partner selection is particularly appropriate for exploring the
intertwining of rationality and emotion, for two reasons: 1) partner selection
Theor Soc (2009) 38:401–422 403

typically entails rational and emotional considerations, and 2) standard historical

accounts have traditionally suggested that the move from pre-modernity to
modernity involved a sequential move from (pragmatic) reason to emotional love.
In contradistinction with this view, we show that the division between modern and
pre-modern partner selection does not follow the classic rationality-emotion
dichotomy. Rather, pre-modern and modern partner selection are better understood
as a difference in the modal relation linking emotion to rationality. By “modal,” we
mean that the interaction between emotion and rationality varies in shape, scope, and
strength, depending upon the cultural context.

Sociology and the rationality-emotion dichotomy

Although numerous sociologists have tackled the question of the relation between
emotion and rationality, their treatment has been, more often than not, indirect. In his
revision of rational choice theory, Raymond Boudon identified the interdependence
between emotion and rationality. As he put it, “Reason is the servant of passions….
but passions need Reason” (Boudon 2003, p. 18). Unfortunately, the subject receives
no more attention than this brief though eloquent mention.
Arlie Hochschild’s Managing the Heart represents a more significant attempt to
explore empirically the encroachment of rationality upon the realm of emotion
(Hochschild 1983). In her classic study of flight attendants, Hochschild argued that
attendants’ emotional expression and emotional experience on the job were
increasingly shaped by and subject to capitalist rationality. Using Goffman’s
dramaturgic model of action, Hochschild argued emotions were made to conform
to rational economic scripts through deep and superficial play acting. Yet, despite her
innovative claim that the emotional makeup of women working in the service
economy was undergoing a process of rationalization, Hochshild ultimately lapsed
into the notion that the realm of rationality debases the “authentic” realm of
sentiment, thus perpetuating the view that the two realms are antithetical and
ultimately failing to grasp their inherent mutual interdependency.
Viviana Zelizer’s pathbreaking work, The Purchase of Intimacy, comes much
closer to transcending the traditional dichotomy in that she rejects what she refers to
as the “hostile worlds” argument—the normative view that sentiments and economic
calculus are antithetical (Zelizer 2005). Examining how actors deal with monetary
transactions in the context of intimate relationships, she shows that rationality and
emotion are co-produced and mutually sustaining: there is no simple opposition
between personal relationships and so-called impersonal exchange, between rational
and so-called irrational action. However, because Zelizer focuses on how actors cope
with situations in which emotion and rationality are a priori inextricably linked, she
does not address an issue of central concern to us, namely the question of just where
and how rationality and emotion meet.
Randall Collins’s work on interaction ritual chains delves deeper into the
intertwinement, offering a conceptualization of the mechanism behind human
motivation, which he claims involves both emotion and rational maximization
(Collins 1981, 2004). Collins asserts that social interactions function as rituals,
creating emotional energies that bind or separate actors. These emotional energies
404 Theor Soc (2009) 38:401–422

are exchanged in a market based on emotional (rather than purely cognitive)

negotiations. The goal of this social exchange is to maximize emotional energies.
Thus, while Collins acknowledges that when actors are engaged in micro-situations
they often do little calculation, he also views emotional energy as a kind of resource
actors try to capitalize on. Emotions themselves—emotional energy more specifi-
cally— are thus the object of rational strategies because they are goods that can be
maximized. While his focus is on emotion, Collins thus significantly incorporates
the notion of rationality and maximization from the field of economics and thus
offers one of the most successful and promising attempts to combine rationality and
emotion in the analysis of action.
Yet, while Collins discusses the role that culture plays in shaping interactions,
symbols, and interests, he leaves unadressed the question of how culture may
actually shape the definition and experience of emotional energy. This is because
Collins suggests that culture shapes emotional energy at the level of the rituals that
give rise to it, yet not at the level of emotional experience itself. Moreover, Collins
understands rationality differently from the way we take it. He locates rationality
mostly in the fact that actors will want to apportion their time rationally so as to
maximize their overall flow of emotional energy (Collins 2004, p. 145). To be
rational is to move toward the highest emotional energy payoff. This approach
essentially differs from ours because it does not specify the cultural content of
rationality, nor that of the emotional experience. In contrast, we view the form of
rationality as culturally variable and we argue that the question of how two aspects
of action—the emotional and the rational—interlock, cognitively and practically,
remains to be examined empirically.
Another explicit attempt to overcome the polarization between rationality and
emotion can be found in Neil Smelser’s work on the emotional preferences involved
in rational decision-making (Smelser 1998). Specifically, Smelser argues that
decision-making is often guided by multiple, contradictory preferences, such as
love and hate, which insert a great deal of ambivalence into the decision process.
However, while Smelser’s postulate of ambivalence illuminates the emotional
considerations involved in traditionally rational realms, he does not delve into the
nature of this entertwining and the broader implications it carries for theories of
action.
Berezin offers one of the most explicit theoretical attempts to reveal the emotional
aspects of rational realms. As Berezin puts it, she endeavors here to “reinscribe
emotion in social and economic action,” ushering sentiment out of its “disciplinary
exile” (Berezin 2005, p. 109). Rereading the classics of social theory, she points to
the central role of emotions in works such as Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the
Spirit of Capitalism, Elias’s The Civilizing Process, and Adam Smith’s The Theory
of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations, simultaneously tracing the exile of
sentiment from the field of sociology. In an effort to remedy this situation, Berezin
proposes an analytic typology of choice, in which she distinguishes the type of
decisions that are determined by rationality from those governed by emotion. For
example, according to her model, pure rational choice occurs only in stable,
predictably “non-emotional” situations with open outcomes. On the other hand, in
such unstable emotional realms as those of love and erotic attraction where outcomes
are equally unpredictable, gut feelings control action. Yet, although Berezin’s is one
Theor Soc (2009) 38:401–422 405

of the first attempts to tackle the interaction between emotion and rationality from
the standpoint of sociology of culture, her typology ultimately gives way to the
traditional dichotomy between rationality and emotion, distinguishing different
forms of action by their guiding mode, rational or emotional.
We begin where these theorists leave off, namely, at the very juncture between
rationality and emotion, and we explore more specifically the role of culture in this
interaction. We make two broad claims: the first is a general one, and probably the
least innovative one—specifically, that rational and emotional constituents of action
are coterminous rather than opposite to each other and that processes of
rationalization do not contradict, but on the contrary play a significant role in
organizing the inner realm of authentic feelings. Our second claim is that rationality
and emotion interact along specific cultural patterns, in turn determined by
knowledge systems, technology, and economic relations. These patterns of
interaction modally connect rationality and emotions.

Rationality, emotion, and culture

While students of culture have had no problem bringing emotion within the purview
of cultural analysis, viewing it as a subcategory and mechanism of culture, they have
tended to be more resistant to do the same with rationality, often viewing it as
antithetical to cultural action. Numerous sociologists of culture have criticized RCT,
arguing that 1) the theory is based on a simplistic view of action because actors
actually do very little calculation in real concrete interactions; 2) RCT ignores the
influence of cultural, moral, and affect variance on the decision making process; 3)
RCT cannot explain such phenomena as altruism or social solidarity in general; 4)
actors do not have a common metric that would enable them to compare costs and
benefits across different spheres of action (Collins 2004 p. 144); and 5) RCT is
ultimately descriptively invalid. (Smelser 1990, Alexander 1992; Munch 1992,
1994; Crane 1994; DiMaggio 1994; Somers 1998; Vaughan 1998; Boudon 2003;
Berezin 2005). Given this antipathy towards RCT, it should not come as a surprise
that many students of culture have focused on the emotional content of culture.
For example, in Jeffrey Alexander’s essay “The Sacred and Profane Information
Machine,” following Durkheim, religion serves as the basic model for culture, so
that emotional attachments and effervescence are viewed as key mechanisms to
explain culture membership. Thus, Alexander claims, “we are not anywhere as
reasonable or rational or sensible as we would like to think. We still lead lives
dictated more by unconscious than conscious reason. We are still compelled by
feelings of the heart and the fearful instincts of the gut” (Alexander 2003, p. 3,
emphasis added). Alexander asserts that what seems to be rational is actually
underpinned by myths, moral plays, “feelings of the heart,” and the “gut.” Analyzing
the development of modern technology, such as the computer, Alexander alleges that
its rationality is actually spawned, guided, and surrounded by an expansive
eschatological discourse that finds its roots in Christianity (Alexander 2003, pp.
179-192). Although Alexander acknowledges the growing rationalization of
modernity, he often takes the position that a “culture of rationality” is a contradiction
in terms (Alexander 2003, pp. 179-192; see also, Alexander 1987). In this sense,
406 Theor Soc (2009) 38:401–422

Alexander associates himself with the Parsonsian dichotomy that portrays

instrumental rationality as an abstract universal, essentially separate from culture—
the repository of meaning and emotion (see Dobbin 1994, p. 119). Although we
entirely subscribe to Alexander’s various and highly successful attempts to assert the
autonomy of culture,
(Alexander 2003 (2); Alexander et al. 2006; Alexander and Smith 1993;
Alexander 1990; Alexander 2006) we believe culture is neither inherently emotional
nor rational—rather it is what patterns thought and practice, forging the connections
between rationality and emotion and shaping the forms they take.
Furthermore, while we agree with Alexander that culture is heavily influenced by
religion, we note that even traditional religious life involves a certain, culturally-
bound, synthesis of emotion and rationality (see Collins 1993, Jerolmack and
Porpora 2004, on emotion and rationality in religion). In contrast to the classic
Durkheimian approach to religion, a growing literature in the sociology of religion
shows the important role of rationality in religious life, applying RCT to the field
(for example see Young 1997; Rodney and Bainbridge 1987; Iannaccone 1995;
Verter 2003; Sherkat and Wilson 1995; Bankston 2002, 2003; Stark 1999; Ellison
1995; Chaves 1995) As Frank Dobbin writes: “By neglecting rationality as a cultural
construct we have acted the part of indigenous anthropologists who treat every
aspect of social life as cultural except the elaborate, purposive customs designed to
win the deity’s help with the crop yield and fertility” (Dobbin 1994, p. 118). We thus
agree with proponents of RCT that rationality is an essential feature of action, while
we part company with them on the question of its priority and universal character. In
other words, we argue that rationality is not more primary than the emotional/
symbolic constituents of action (there are many reasons to suspect the reverse is true)
and its forms are culturally shaped and patterned.
What we mean by this latter point is that rationality is a historically-bound
cultural practice and that as a cultural practice it has become a powerful constituent
of action. As Bourdieu put it: “Against the a-historical vision of economics, we
must, then, reconstitute….the genesis of the economic dispositions of economic
agents and, especially, of their tastes, needs, propensities or aptitudes (for
calculation, saving or work itself…)” (Bourdieu 2005, p.5; emphasis added). What
Bourdieu suggests here is twofold. Firstly, the form rationality takes varies with
the historical milieu, a point that echoes Weber’s most central claims about the
nature of modernity, namely, that rationality has become an institutionalized
cultural force, generating its own beliefs, emotional commitments, and symbolic
practices. (Weber 2002 [1930], Sica 2000; see also Meyer and Scott Richard 1992,
Dobbin 1994, Boli and Thomas 1999). Secondly, Bourdieu implies that rationality
itself is a component of habitus, that is, a learned and acquired predisposition, a set
of cognitive tools that help actors cope with institutions and act strategically within
them.
This second point is consistent with recent research in cognitive psychology
which has shown that rationality does not necessarily take the form of a conscious
weighing of costs and benefits. For example, several cognitive psychologists
working on “intuitive” judgment have shown that reasoning can take shorter and
faster routes, using a non-conscious form of evaluation that is “fast and frugal”
(Klein 2004, 1998; Myers 2002; Sinclair and Ashkanasy 2005; Schooler and
Theor Soc (2009) 38:401–422 407

Engstler-Schooler 1990; Wilson and Schooler 1991). What cognitive psychologists

call “thin slicing” is the ability to make accurate snap judgments about people,
problems, and situations by drawing on non-conscious thought processes, by
mobilizing past experiences and by zeroing in and focusing on the emotional
meaning of the object judged. Although emotions tend to be visceral, and are often
relatively unpredictable (Elster 1996, Schurmans and Dominice Loraine 1998), they
are nonetheless forms of appraisals and judgments about the world and cannot be
dissociated from this type of non-conscious reasoning. (Damasio 1994; Solomon
2004, 2003; Ben-Ze’ev 2000; Nussbaum 1992; Berezin 2005; Lutz 1988; Abu-Lughod
1986). They are “hot” cognitions, which enable us to appraise situations in a
nonformal and nonconscious way and can still be said to be rational in the sense that
they meet actors’ interests and are conducive to decision-making. What this research
makes clear is that a purely emotional world rarely exists.
Yet the opposite is also true. Here we concur with Alexander, who puts it as
follows: “….[B]oth action and its environment are indelibly interpenetrated by the
non-rational, [thus] a pure….rational world cannot exist” (Alexander 2003, p. 180).
To claim that scripts of rationality institutionalize action does not mean that
rationality obliterates emotion. In fact, modern conceptions of the subject
simultaneously intensified both its rational and emotional dimensions (Taylor
1991). For example, in her study of the uses and impact of clinical psychology in
American society, Illouz (2008) has argued that theories of management in the
American corporation actually aimed at making workers and managers simulta-
neously more emotional and more rational. Anger, love, envy, jealousy, and many
other emotions have become the object of rational scripting by clinical psychology,
which prescribes reflexive awareness of personal emotional make-up as well as
conscious emotion management in order to defend one’s personal interests
strategically.
Thus, if, as William Reddy argues, all “communities construe emotions as an
important domain of effort” (Reddy 2001, p. 55, our emphasis), modern culture is
particularly prone to regulate emotional life according to scripts of rationality,
making it increasingly difficult to separate emotion from rationality. With this point
in mind, we ask how emotion and rationality are actually intertwined, that is, what
cultural form their intertwinement takes. Another term we use for this cultural form
is “modal configuration.”

Emotion-rationality modal configurations

The linkage between emotion and rationality is one of interdependence and the
nature of this interaction is determined by its historico-cultural context. In other
words, we describe a three-way relationship among rationality, emotion, and culture,
in which culture not only molds the prevailing forms of emotion and rationality but,
to adopt Weber’s classic analogy, “determine[s] the tracks” of the interaction
between these two modes (Weber 1946a, p. 280).
We assert that a particular emotion-rationality modal configuration may be
characterized by five key features: “reflexivity,” “techniques,” “modal emphasis,”
“modal overlap,” and “modal sequencing.”
408 Theor Soc (2009) 38:401–422

Reflexivity: The relationship between emotion and economic rationality varies in

the extent to which it is an explicit and reflexive feature of action and consciousness:
it can be part of an actor’s explicit cognitive and motivational structure (as when one
consciously tries to control one’s anger according to the prescriptions of Gautama
Buddha or the advice of a guidebook to successful leadership) (Illouz 2007, 2008),
or it can be an implicit and non-conscious feature of one’s practices (consumption,
for example, often involves a non-reflexive intertwining of rationality and emotions
as when a purchase is motivated, say, both by envy, and by rational considerations of
one’s budget (see Illouz 2009 forthcoming, special issue on Consumption and
Emotions). We denote this feature by the term “reflexivity.”
Techniques: We posit that different modal relationships between emotion and
rationality involve different techniques. By “techniques” we mean the set of
cognitive exercises, technologies, artifacts, and bodily routines through which
rationality and emotion are actually instilled, experienced and transacted. For
example, religious discipline as well as clinical psychology have provided numerous
yet importantly different techniques to attend to emotional life and manage it (Illouz
2008; Foucault 1999, 1995, 1988 (1965); Rose 1998).
Modal emphasis: This term indicates the extent to which an action or interaction
is perceived to be dominated by one mode, emotional or rational. For example, while
modern economic transactions are no less subject to emotionally-driven evaluations
than they were in the pre-industrial era, such transactions have become heavily
dominated by an ideology of rationality (see Dobbin 2006; Shenhav 1999). Similarly
and conversely, although modern mate selection is governed by rational as well as
emotional considerations, the ideology of romantic love largely dominates modern
conceptions of mate selection (Lystra 1989; Campbell 1987; Wright Wexman 1993;
Coontz 2005), thus suggesting that emotions, more than rationality, are discursively
emphasized in modern marriage.
Modal overlap: We note that emotion and rationality overlap at specific social
sites and conjunctures. As our discussion of modern psychological techniques
reveals, the vast cultural apparatus of therapy has been central in connecting
emotional romantic ideals and calculative rationality (Illouz 2007, 2008). The rise of
consumerism is another additional point of modal overlap. For instance, in
Consuming the Romantic Utopia, Illouz (1997) argued that with the advent of
consumer capitalism, so-called irrational feelings of romance have been increasingly
mediated and institutionalized by the market of consumption, transforming the
notion of romantic love into a vector for the consumption of goods produced by
expanding industries of leisure. The emotional scripts through which people
experience their own and others’ feelings as romantic have become inseparable
from the consumption of leisure commodities, indicating one way in which
economic and emotional practices are intertwined with each other in consumption.
Modal sequences: A modal configuration of rationality and emotion may be
distinguished by the sequences of rationality and emotion it promotes. Sometimes
sequences begin with an emphasis on rationality, eventually incorporating more
emotion, and sometimes an initial focus on emotion gradually integrates more
rationality. For example, as we show below, one of the important differences
between nineteenth and twentieth century partner selection may lie precisely in the
sequencing of rationality and emotion.
Theor Soc (2009) 38:401–422 409

The notion of modal configuration of rationality and emotion involves two

different processes: emotional rationality—or the way in which we defend our
interests and pursue strategic goals through emotions (e.g., expressing anger as a
way of asserting one’s interests); and rational emotionality—or the way in which
rational decisions are grounded on and shaped by emotions (as when an actor falls in
love with someone who is socially, economically, and educationally compatible with
him/her).

Marriage: love or interest?

The scholarship on marriage and courtship has been rife with the dichotomies
between rationality and emotion we have questioned,1 and makes this topic
particularly appropriate to the discussion of emotion and rationality. On the rational
end of the spectrum, exchange theorists view matching in terms of maximization of
utility and intimate relations at large as nothing but a form of economic exchange
(Becker 1991). According to this approach, each participant chooses his or her
partner in a rational way so that if Y pairs up with X then Y is the most attractive
person to X, in the set of people who are willing to be matched with X. In other
words, the fact that a woman X is matched to a man Y implies that there is no other
man Z whom X prefers to Y and such that Z prefers X to the woman with whom Z is
matched (see Roth et al. 1992 for a development of the economic approach to
pairing).
But this “exchangist” approach suffers a number of flaws: a) it does not take into
account the possibility of tension between conflicting desires or utilities; b) it ignores
the fact that the realm of romantic relations is notoriously rife with choices that are
actually detrimental to some aspect of the self; c) it fails to take into account that (at
least in the pre-Internet era) actors had relatively few alternatives to “choose” from
and thus engaged very little in extensive comparisons between different potential
partners, suggesting that the metaphor of a market is largely inadequate; and d) last
but far from least, it misses the fact that choices based on, say, attractiveness do not
tap into the same motivational and cognitive structure as a choice based on, say,
education or social status. From the standpoint of a sociological theory of action, it is
important to distinguish marrying someone for their attractiveness from marrying
someone after a deliberate, systematic, and goal-oriented consideration of their
social, educational, and economic assets. Some decisions, such as those associated
with “love at first sight,” involve little rational weighing of costs and benefits,
deliberation and calculation, and they must be distinguished from those that entail a
great deal of comparison, weighing, and evaluation.
On the opposite side of the academic spectrum, numerous historians and
sociologists have declared that the ideal of romantic love that arose in the eighteenth
century has played an increasingly central role in mate selection, thus making
modern marriage far more disinterested and emotional than its precursor. For
example, an important strand of thought in the history of the family claims that
capitalism has liberated people from the oppressive yoke of economic considerations

1
For an exception from the field of psychology see Shoshana Shilow and Shenhav-Sheffer (2004).
410 Theor Soc (2009) 38:401–422

in the mate selection process (Zaretsky 1976; Zeldin 1993; Coontz 2005). Along
these lines, taking a macroscopic view of the changes undergone by the Western
family, historian Edward Shorter asserts that women’s access to the labor market has
emancipated marriage from its economic mission (Shorter 1977). According to this
view, then, access to economic independence provided by the market has freed
romantic attachments from economic pragmatism.2
In parallel, sociologists have argued that love is the most frequently cited reason
for marriage in the modern world and this trend seems to have actually accelerated
with the intensification of the capitalist labor market. A study undertaken in the mid-
1960s by William Kephart, for example, found that women were still likely to say
they would marry someone whom they were not in love with but who had “all the
qualities [they] desired” (Kephart 1967). When this study was revisited some twenty
years later, women’s priorities were found to have grown significantly more
romantic in nature (Simpson et al. 1986).
The authors offered a number of reasons for this change, the most salient being
women’s entry into the work force: less dependent on the institution of marriage for
their economic survival, women could now “afford” to marry for purely romantic
reasons. Like the historians, these sociologists assume that the development of the
capitalist market “freed” individuals from pre-modern economic constraints,
enabling them to exert greater individual choice and providing them with the
flexibility to pursue purely romantic relationships.
But it is incorrect to assume that increased autonomy from parents, greater
economic independence, and the adoption of romantic love as a wholesale ideal for
marriage entail a demise of rationality in choosing a mate. If we have learned
anything from Weber, Foucault, Norbert Elias, the Frankfurt School, and Robert
Bellah it is: that modern expressive, emotional individualism has gone hand in hand
with an increasing refinement of rational techniques of self conduct; that rather than
being neatly separated, cultural models and repertoires of action spill over from one
domain to another (eg., from the realm of the market to that of personal and
interpersonal relations); and finally that actors can be (and in fact most often are)
bearers of simultaneously conflicting modes of action, say, the rational and the
romantic.3 Swidler, for example, has showed how actors regularly shift from a
realist-mundane repertoire of love to a romantic-mythical one (Swidler 2001).
Whereas modern love marriage is usually considered to be more emotional and
less rational than the pre-modern arranged marriage model, we argue counter-
intuitively that modern methods of partner selection are no less rational than their
pre-modern equivalent, rather the difference between them lies in the modal
configuration of their inter-relation.

2
Feminist studies of the emergence of the private sphere have also perpetuated the dichotomy between
rationality and emotion. The rational-emotional dichotomy, the feminist literature argues, has been
institutionalized in these two separate spheres—the private sphere is the site of emotions and the public
sphere is the site of calculated rationality and competitition.
3
Of course, we do not mean to imply here that emotion and rationality are in opposition, rather that
rationality is in opposition to the notion of romantic love. As Zelizer rightly argues in The Purchase of
Intimacy, the “hostile worlds” approach that pits rationality against sentiment is particularly strong in the
romantic impulse (2005, p. 121).
Theor Soc (2009) 38:401–422 411

From arranged marriage to online matching

The observations offered below are based on primary and secondary sources
intended to illustrate our previous discussion and to suggest new directions to
overcome the rational-emotional divide.

Pre-modern partner selection

A pre-modern4 actor looking for a mate typically considered a fairly limited amount
of criteria including dowry size, a candidate’s personal or family wealth and
reputation, education and family politics. But the calculation stopped here. Given the
limited options, beyond general and rudimentary requirements of character and
appearance, actors made very few demands from prospective partners, and more
often than not, settled for the first available satisfactory marriage prospect. Thus, to
pre-modern authorities on arranged marriage, choice involved little reflexive
calculation as people had few emotional, educational, and life-style prerequisites.
Giovanni di Pagolo Morelli, a member of the elite in Renaissance Italy, advised
young men not to get carried away by desire, but simply to “take a girl who pleases
you” (di Pagolo Morelli 2005 [1986, exact original year unknown]). Pragmatic
consideration of prospects’ status, reputation, character, and appearance was
essential, albeit tempered by the limited pool of potential partners and the mores
of the milieu. The hope was that partners would gradually develop a general
affection for each other. No strong or intense emotion was expected in marriage
partner selection. Rather, the decision was based on a kind of rough assessment of
the person, not on an extensive attempt to gather information about the tastes,
personality, and lifestyle of the potential partner. In another Italian advice manual,
Lodovico Dolce suggests that fathers put themselves in their “daughters’ shoes”
when searching for a potential son-in-law. (Dolce 2005 [1547], p. 118) He
recognized that there was no way for a father to calculate rationally what type of
person his daughter would find attractive and emotionally compatible; instead, this
decision ultimately required him to trust his “gut feelings” and make a pragmatic
decision about what his daughter would appreciate.
Furthermore, the pre-modern approach to partner selection was heavily reliant on
word-of-mouth rather than an individual’s own systematic attempts to understand the
character of the potential partner. In the diary of the German Jewish business
woman, Gluckel of Hameln, composed between the seventeenth and eighteenth

4
As the existing literature on modernization shows, it is difficult to define the parameters of socio-cultural
periods such as “pre-modern” and “modern”—unlike periods of political history, they are not clearly
marked by discrete events. For the purposes of this article, we use “pre-modern” to refer to the period that
extended roughly from the fifteenth century through the late seventeenth/early eighteenth century. In
contrast to Lantz (1982), we do not use the term “pre-modern” to mean “early modernity,”but, to indicate
the period immediately preceding modernity. As we see it, modernity began with the onset of the
Industrial Revolution, but our discussion of the modern situation focuses specifically on developments
within the past few decades. Further study of the intervening period, examining nineteenth-century
English novels and early dating practices in the twentieth century might help to understand the gradual
development of modal configurations.
412 Theor Soc (2009) 38:401–422

century,5 we see an example of the significant role rumor played in partner selection.
While abroad, Gluckel’s husband receives a proposal for the marriage of their
daughter to the son of a wealthy Jewish man. Pressured to decide quickly, he accepts
the proposal. Gluckel writes: “Before my husband wrote me that my daughter Esther
was betrothed, I had received letters from several hands, warning me not to conclude
the match, for the lad had many, many failings. And then came my husband’s letter
telling me that the betrothal was signed. “You may well imagine my distress and the
sort of joy I took in the match…The next week my husband came home, thinking I
should welcome him with open arms and that we would rejoice together over the
match. Instead, I greeted him with a heavy heart and could scarcely open my mouth”
(Gluckel 1997 [1896], p. 132-133). It is only when they are alarmed by rumors that
the parents begin to investigate seriously the young man they have signed off to their
daughter.
This anecdote is interesting precisely because it contains a few elements
generalizable to other (pre-modern) cases. It is the parents, not the prospective
partners, who are actually in charge of gathering information and making the
decision (Stone 1979). In other words, pre-modern mate selection often entailed a
separation between the agents making the rational decision about the adequacy of a
match and those actually involved in it. Hence, prospective partners had little
opportunity to engage in the intensive reflexive and careful examination of one
another’s character and fortune that is so characteristic of modern partner selection.
From a modern standpoint, what is striking here is how little information these pre-
modern subjects gathered and had at their disposal before deciding on a prospective
partner.6
Furthermore, the basic information that was gathered relied a great deal on
hearsay and on the general impression formed by others. In the early fifteenth
century, an Italian widow writes home to her son regarding the match she is trying to
arrange for him: “Everybody says the same thing: whoever marries her will be glad,
because she will make a good wife. As far as her looks go, they tell me what I have
in fact seen. She has a good, well-proportioned figure….When I was asked whether
she was a bit rough, I was told that she is not” (Macinghi Strozzi 2005 [1465]).
While many Renaissance parents were heavily swayed by social, financial, and
political factors in the selection of mates for their sons and daughters (Beck and
Beck-Gernsheim 1995, p. 79; Stone 1979), when it came to issues of character, pre-
modern actors were just looking for “quality” in-laws, a vague term that referred to
basic requirements of character and status. After considering prospective partners’
financial standing and social status, English aristocrats in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries looked for a generally “good” person to marry their son or daughter, not a

5
While this anecdote occurred on the border of what we define as the pre-modern and modern periods and
romantic love spread rapidly throughout Europe in the eighteenth century, even affecting partner selection,
(Lantz 1982; Stone 1979) we point out that the religious Jewish community, of which Gluckel was most
certainly a part, tended to follow more traditional patterns of partner selection, which still maintained a
powerful hold in many circles during this period (Stone 1979).
6
Certainly in the pre-modern period, there were many cases of local matches in which actors relied on
long-term, in-depth information about prospective partners, yet as the examples here illustrate, in the cases
that paralleled the modern acquaintance with previously unknown prospective partners, the information
gathering was significantly less detailed and elaborate than in online dating.
Theor Soc (2009) 38:401–422 413

“perfect” match. Historian Barbara J. Harris presents two such examples in her study
of women in Renaissance aristocracy: “[Sir William] Holles stated specifically that
he wanted his granddaughter to wed ‘an honest man, of good name and fame,’ as
well one ‘of substance.’ [Sir Anthony] Denny expressed the hope that his daughters
would marry his wards, ‘who being the heirs of my friends, for the good qualities
and virtues of their parents….I.…obtained to be coupled in matrimony with mine.’ He
added that his ‘greatest care was that my posterity and those that should be coupled
in matrimony with them might rightly be taught the love and fear of God, their
obedience to their sovereign lord, and duty to their country’” (Harris 2002, p. 55).
According to Gies and Gies, the peasant class in England similarly counseled
their children to find a decent person, although in some cases the objective was
simply to find someone. A fifteenth-century instructional poem, “‘How the Good
Wife Taught Her Daughter,’ recommends that if only one man courts a girl she
should “scorn him not, whatever he be” (Gies and Joseph 1989, p. 242-3). In
particular, the physical requirement was often very minimal. “[A]s long as if he does
not look like Baronci del Certaldese7 he should be considered handsome by his
wife,” advises Lodovico Dolce in another Italian advice manual, addressing the task
of the bride’s father (Dolce 2005 [1547], p. 118; for similar examples, see Stone
1979, pp. 194-5). In other words, the goal for singles was to be satisfied with their
selection rather than finding a perfect partner. The emotional expectations of
marriage were to avoid excessive suffering and, in the best of cases, to form an
enduring but relatively low-key form of affection.

The case of online dating

Two main differences in the modern situation strike even the casual observer: the pre-
modern actor looking for a mate seems a simpleton in comparison with today’s actors,
who from adolescence to adulthood develop an elaborate set of criteria for the
selection of a mate. Such criteria are not only social and educational, but also physical,
sexual, and perhaps most of all emotional. Moreover, this hyper-cognized, rational
method of gathering information to select a mate goes hand in hand with the search for
authentic emotional experiences and expectations of emotional compatibility.
These characteristics of modern partner selection are most patently illustrated in
the realm of online dating (for examples of other rational methods of modern partner
selection, see Bulcroft et al. 2000; Woll and Young 1989; and Ahuvia and Adelman
1992). Internet dating sites have become highly popular and profitable enterprises.
According to researchers of digital technology at comScore Networks, in December
2006 the leading US online dating site was Yahoo! Personals with over 4.5 M hits,
and US online dating sites received a total of 20 M hits from US online visitors per
month www.comScore.com (2007). With monthly packages costing between $10-50
(www.onlinedatingtips.org), online dating is also a lucrative business. Indeed in
2006, online dating was the second largest online paid content category, with
revenues of over $1 billion for the year (Wharton 2006). While market growth seems
to be slowing down, Jupiter Research has predicted that revenues for US online
dating sites will reach $932 M by 2011 (http://findarticles.com Jupiter Research

7
In Boccaccio’s Decameron, VI, 6, the Baronci family members are described as extremely ugly.
414 Theor Soc (2009) 38:401–422

Forecasts US Online Dating Market to Reach $932 Million in 2011 Despite User
Saturation, Business Wire. February 12, 2007.) Clearly, online dating represents a
significant trend in modern courtship.
In her work on online dating, Illouz interviewed 35 men and women between the
ages of 20 and 45 who were intense users of online dating sites, documenting the
ways in which these sites have instilled highly rational methods of searching and
gathering information in the domain of courtship (Illouz 2007). The rational
techniques deployed by Internet dating sites have one goal: to facilitate the search for
romance or even true love based on a twin ideal of physical attractiveness and
emotional compatibility. Searching for a life partner is no longer about finding
someone “who pleases you,” rather it is about finding someone who will satisfy
highly elaborate and intense emotional aspirations. For example, one popular dating
site guarantees to, “….Make Love Happen with Match.com” (www.match.com,
March, April 2005 and October 2007.). The site advertises success stories with titles
like “He flipped my world upside down and inside out,” “We finally are together and
plan to be forever,” and “We are so ridiculously happy it’s not possible to describe.”
Yahoo! Personals tauts, “[d]ating, butterflies, romance….it all happens here”
(<http://personals.yahoo.com/us/static/dating-advice_romance-predictions-07>, Oc-
tober 10, 2007). And eHarmony calls on singles to “experience the joy of true
compatibility. Let eHarmony help you begin the journey to your soul mate today”
(www.eHarmony.org, March, April 2005 and October 2007.). Yet these daunting
emotional expectations have actually increased the extent of rational methods
involved in partner selection (Illouz 1997).
The Internet institutionalizes rational methods of partner selection, and to that
extent the Weberian concept of rationalization of life-conduct is relevant here. Weber
suggested that the rationalization of life-conduct pertains to a way of thinking, to a
specific form of mental processes. More exactly, this rationalization involves
conscious, rule-bound comparison and choice among alternative means to a given
end. That is, rational action is consciously regulated, not random, habitual, or
impulsive. What makes a conduct rational, is that it is “methodical,” has a general
character, is systematic, and in Weber's words, “controlled by the intellect.” To be
rational involves the capacity to expand mentally, consider the different courses of
action we want to take, and to apply ourselves methodically towards reaching our
goals (Weber 1946b, Weber 2002 [1930]; also on Weberian rationality see:
Schluchter 1981, Albrow 1990, Whimster and Lash 1987).

Intellectualization

“Intellectualization” is a central feature of rationalization, and refers to the ways in

which implicit features of our experience are brought to our consciousness, named,
and subjected to reflexive reasoning (Weber 1946b). The process of creating a
“profile”—a virtual online identity—is predicated on the psychological persuasion,
and thus particularly characteristic of what Weber termed “intellectualization.” New
site members are asked to fill out elaborate questionnaires with hundreds of
questions that involve breaking the self down into discrete categories of taste,
opinion, personality, and temperament (Illouz 2007). This psychological profile is
then compared and matched with those of potentially compatible others. The site
Theor Soc (2009) 38:401–422 415

eHarmony discussed above, was actually founded by clinical psychologist Dr. Neil
Clark Warren, who claims to have gathered scientific evidence on issues such as
personality, lifestyle, emotional health, anger management, and sexual passion that
enable him to predict successful marriages (Illouz 2007). The site alleges that “Our
Personality Profile .…help[s].... you learn more about yourself and your ideal partner
and allow[s] us to match you with highly compatible singles” (www.eHarmony.org,
March, April 2005 and October 2007). To meet a virtual other, the self is thus required to
undergo a concentrated process of reflexive self-observation, introspection, self-
labeling, and articulation of tastes and opinions pertaining to oneself and others.

Managing the flow of encounters

The large volume of interactions involved in Internet dating compels actors to

develop standard techniques to manage the large flow of people more easily and
efficiently (Illouz 2007). One of Illouz’s subjects, a 33-year-old woman, uses the
computer for her work and works at home, so she can in fact be constantly involved
in the task of managing the large pool of men who are interested in her profile—after
six years on dating sites her profile has been visited by 26,347 people (2007). To
manage the large flow of virtual encounters, she has organized potential partners in
files on her computer, creating different folders for each man, thus illustrating
Smelser’s claim that the computer serves as a “rationalizing device par excellence.”
(1998, p. 2) A guidebook to Internet dating provides the example of “Alex,” who
organized his prospective and past dates on “a crib sheet with hometown,
occupation, and college listings, so he could brush up on details before returning
any calls” (Katz 2004, p. 108). Because of the volume and frequency of encounters,
many users send the same standardized message to all the people they are interested
in, thus making the initial process of getting to know someone akin to telemarketing
or business networking.
But the most important element contributing to the rationalization of the romantic
bond has to do with the fact that users can now visualize prospective partners.
Whereas in the real world, the market of partners remains virtual—only
presupposed, latent, and always invisible—on the Net, the market is real and literal,
not virtual, precisely because Internet users can actually visualize the pool of potential
partners. The Internet arrays possible choices as if on “a buffet table” and solicits a
mode of choice that is derived from the economic sphere. In the pre-Internet era, the
search for a partner was based largely on what Klein refers to as “intuition”: “how
you turn experience into action. It is the set of hunches, impulses, insights, gut
feelings, anticipations, and judgments stemming from previous events in your life”
(Klein 2004, p. 293). In other words, intuition is a non-conscious form of judgment
and evaluation based on the emotional meaning objects hold for us. In contrast,
online dating institutionalizes a formal, conscious and systematic form of rationality.

Competitiveness

The most obvious effect of visualization of the market is the introduction of practices
of competitiveness in which actors try to improve their position in the market. In
presenting themselves through a photograph, individuals are literally put in the
416 Theor Soc (2009) 38:401–422

position of people who work in the beauty industry as models or actors; that is, a)
they are made far more conscious of their physical appearance; b) the body becomes
the main source of (social and economic) value; c) they compete with others’
physical appearance; and d) their body and appearance are on public display. (Illouz
2007) For example, a number of Illouz’s respondents reported making serious efforts
to change their physical appearance, either through diet, hairstyle, or cosmetic
surgery. These respondents were aware of the competition and were always able to
assign to themselves and to others a “value” based on their position in the market (“I
think I am a pretty good catch, considering what’s out there.”) (lllouz 2007). The
Internet technology has created a dating market in which users compete with each
other based on the verbal and visual content of their profiles.

Maximizing utilities

Consistent with the logic of consumer culture, the technology enables and even
encourages an increasing specification and refinement of tastes (Illouz 2007). As one
guidebook to Internet dating put it, “the more experience you have, the more refined
your tastes and the fewer people you may be willing to consider” (Katz 2004, p.
103). The pragmatic rationalism of pre-modern mate selection has given way to a
pervasive calculating, market-based rationality that is motivated by the search for the
“best bargain.” As Bourdieu once again put it: “The spirit of calculation (.…)
gradually wins out in all fields of practice over the logic of the domestic economy,
which was based on the repression, or more precisely, the denial of calculation”
(Bourdieu 2005, p. 6). Internet dating sites rely on the therapeutic discourse in order
to integrate romantic encounters into the consumerist logic of increasingly
narrowing, defining, refining tastes, and comparing alternative possibilities.
By enabling users to investigate a vast number of options, the Internet encourages
tendencies to maximization in partner selection in unprecedented ways, in stark
contrast to the methods of pre-modernity. Maximization of outcome has become a
goal in and of itself (Schwartz 2004; Iyengar and Lepper 2000). For example, many
of Illouz’s respondents declared the choices available were so large that they would
get in touch only with people who corresponded very precisely to their diverse
aspirations. Moreover, the majority of respondents reported that their tastes changed
in the course of their search and that they aspired to “more accomplished” people
than they did at the beginning of the search.
Clearly the case of online dating shows that actors use elaborate rational strategies
to achieve their romantic desires, thus confirming Smelser's and Alexander's claims
that the computer technology has a strong rationalizing effect: “The gradual
permeation of the computer into the pores of modern life deepened what Max Weber
called the rationalization of the world” (Smelser 1998, Alexander 2003).

Partner selection and emotion-rationality modal configurations

Our portrayal of the interaction between emotion and rationality as modal helps us
understand the differences between pre-modern and modern practices of partner
selection in a new way. We observe an important transformation in the rationality
Theor Soc (2009) 38:401–422 417

involved in mate selection. Pre-modern rationality tends to be pragmatic, contextual,

and more open to what Herbert Simon called “satisficing,” that is, settling for the
“good enough option” (Simon 1982; Swidler 1973). Modern rationality, on the other
hand, involves a pervasive, calculating, systematic, and reflexive consciousness
associated with the maximization of personal utility. And what makes modern actors
into maximizers is precisely the intensity of their emotional aspirations.
With this transformation of rationality in mind, we can organize our comparative
analysis around the five features of the concept of modal configuration introduced
above.

Reflexivity As we demonstrated in our discussion of “intellectualization,” in contrast

to pre-modern partner selection, online dating is characterized by a multiplication of
the explicit features of reflexivity. Actors engage in interactions with others only
after they have reflexively established their tastes and preferences.

Techniques While pre-modern actors relied largely on rumor, hearsay, and reputation
to guide them in the selection of a marriage partner, online dating services offer to
match members through elaborate psychological techniques. Actors are now
expected to select partners on the basis of not only social and economic
compatibility but also, and maybe more crucially, on the basis of suitability in life-
style, sexuality, and emotional make-up. These techniques demand the cultural
exercise of introspection, based on psychological categories of self-understanding.

Modal emphasis The emotions that accompany the process of matching have
changed, moving from the rather subdued “find a girl who pleases you,” to the
intense, passionate cries of romantic love. This is not to say that pre-modern actors
did not experience intense emotions, but emotions were institutionalized differently
from the way they subsequently were in the modern era. In the pre-modern period,
romantic love was generally perceived as external to the realm of marriage and often
repressed due to moral conflict, yet with the rise of modern individualism,
industrialization, and urbanization, it has been highly idealized and established as
the premise behind a good marriage (Lantz 1982, Bulcroft et al. 2000; Stone 1979;
Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 1995; Swidler 2001). In contrast to the pre-modern
period, late modernity is characterized by normalized hyperrationality and
hyperemotionality, intense emotional rationality, and rational emotionality.

Modal overlap As we discussed above, the logics and language of modern

psychology organize and generate rational techniques to create emotion. As Swidler
has found in various studies (Swidler 2001), actors draw heavily on the cultural
repertoire of psychology to make sense of their sentiments in romantic relationships
and to shape a general strategy of action within that realm. The Internet acts as a
cultural interface between the rationality of psychology and that of the market.

Modal sequences In face-to-face encounters, emotion and rationality come one on

the heels of the other, both developing in tandem. These interactions rely heavily on
intuition, which, as discussed above, involves both pragmatic rational evaluation and
emotional meaning. In the pre-Internet era, the search for a partner was based largely
418 Theor Soc (2009) 38:401–422

on intuition, in the sense defined above. In contrast, online dating institutionalizes a

formal, conscious, and systematic form of rationality. Internet dating entails a stage
of intensive, almost exclusively rational calculation prior to the intuitive encounter,
transforming the non-conscious and concomitant interdependence between emotion
and rationality into a reflexive and sequential one.
In the pre-modern case of partner selection, pragmatic rationality guided actors to
select a partner on the basis of financial and political calculations; in this cultural
script, emotional attachment followed rather than preceded partner selection.
The modern case of Internet dating, however, promotes two opposing sequences.
On one hand, romantic love posits that “love at first sight” should precede and even
guide any rational considerations involved in partner selection. Yet users must
develop a rational relationship with the profile data before they can experience any
emotional encounter with a prospective partner. It is the very romantic goal of
finding the “perfect match” that encourages the use of rational techniques.

Conclusion

In this article, we argued that the existing sociological literature has insufficiently
addressed the interaction between emotion and rationality and that the literatue often
lapses into the classic dichotomy between the two. In an attempt to remedy this
situation, we introduced a new concept we term “modal configuration,” which refers
to the influence of historico-cultural context on the interdependent relationship
between emotion and rationality. We outlined the various features of the modal
configuration concept—techniques, modal emphasis, modal overlap, reflexivity, and
modal sequences—and provided examples from primary and secondary data on pre-
modern and modern partner selection. We offer this modal configuration as a
framework for further analysis of the relationship between emotion and rationality.
Further research is needed to explore whether the modal configuration model applies
equally well to various emotions, across cases, cultures, and within cultures over time.

Acknowledgments Our research for “An Odd and Inseparable Couple” was supported by a grant from
the Israel Science Foundation (ISF). We would also like to thank Mabel Berezin and two other anonymous
readers for their invaluable comments on earlier versions of this article.

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Eva Illouz Is Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem. She is the author of five books: Consuming the Romantic Utopia: Love and the Cultural
Contradictions of Capitalism (University of California Press, 1997), The Culture of Capitalism (2002, in
Hebrew); Oprah Winfrey and the Glamour of Misery: An Essay on Popular Culture (2003), Cold
Intimacies (Polity Press, 2007); and Saving the Modern Soul: Therapy, Emotions, and the Culture of Self-
Help (University of California Press, 2008).

Shoshannah Finkelman completed an MA in Sociology and Anthropology at the Hebrew University of

Jerusalem in December 2008. She received a BA in English literature from Kenyon College, and studied
for a year at Oxford University