Romantic Relationships in a Time of ‘Cold Intimacies’
Romantic Relationships in a Time of ‘Cold Intimacies’

Author: Julia Carter

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2019-10-31

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 3030292568

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This book addresses the nature of intimacy and relationships in a time of what Eva Illouz characterizes as ‘cold intimacies’. The contributors to this collection highlight the ambivalence and tensions contained in ‘intimacy’ by uncovering a nuanced and complex dynamic, in which interpersonal relations and the public sphere are mutually constituted. A range of topics areexplored, including the new conditions of ‘choice’, the abundance of partners, class and emotional competence, rational decision-making and the specific forms of ‘love pain’ which can emerge from cooled intimacy. The chapters also shed light on the limits of this theoretical contribution, highlighting the importance of parenting, violence, poverty, and other material constraints that continue to limit and frame individuals’ romantic choices. Overall this volume presents an interpretation of intimacy that is not just ‘cold’ but includes practices, desires and feelings that are safe and dangerous, that bring solace or erupt in violence, that lead to salvation or condemnation, and where virtual encounters and increased internal and crossborder mobility have altered the relationship between intimacy and (physical/emotional) distance. Romantic Relationships in a Time of ‘Cold Intimacies’ will be of interest to scholars and students across a range of disciplines, including sociology, social work, social policy and demography, as well as practitioners and policy-makers with an interest in couple relationships.

Romantic Relationships in a Time of 'Cold Intimacies'
Romantic Relationships in a Time of 'Cold Intimacies'

Author: Julia Carter

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 9783030292577

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"An important contribution to the existing literature on love. By putting contemporary love into context, the authors successfully dig deeper into the meaning of some of the most successful concepts of contemporary love and show how diverse the universes behind contemporary cold intimacies are. This is exciting as it allows the reader to re-discover love as enduring and changing, egoistic and collective, postmodern and modern, shaped by relationships of power, culture and technology."--Swen Seebach, Autonomous University of Barcelona and Abat Oliba CEU University, Spain This book addresses the nature of intimacy and relationships in a time of what Eva Illouz characterizes as 'cold intimacies'. The contributors to this collection highlight the ambivalence and tensions contained in 'intimacy' by uncovering a nuanced and complex dynamic, in which interpersonal relations and the public sphere are mutually constituted. A range of topics areexplored, including the new conditions of 'choice', the abundance of partners, class and emotional competence, rational decision-making and the specific forms of 'love pain' which can emerge from cooled intimacy. The chapters also shed light on the limits of this theoretical contribution, highlighting the importance of parenting, violence, poverty, and other material constraints that continue to limit and frame individuals' romantic choices. Overall this volume presents an interpretation of intimacy that is not just 'cold' but includes practices, desires and feelings that are safe and dangerous, that bring solace or erupt in violence, that lead to salvation or condemnation, and where virtual encounters and increased internal and crossborder mobility have altered the relationship between intimacy and (physical/emotional) distance. Romantic Relationships in a Time of 'Cold Intimacies' will be of interest to scholars and students across a range of disciplines, including sociology, social work, social policy and demography, as well as practitioners and policy-makers with an interest in couple relationships. Julia Carter is Senior Lecturer in Sociology, University of the West of England, UK. Lorena Arocha is Lecturer in Contemporary Slavery (Criminology), University of Hull, UK.

Why Love Hurts
Why Love Hurts

Author: Eva Illouz

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2013-05-20

Total Pages: 191

ISBN-13: 0745672116

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Few of us have been spared the agonies of intimate relationships. They come in many shapes: loving a man or a woman who will not commit to us, being heartbroken when we're abandoned by a lover, engaging in Sisyphean internet searches, coming back lonely from bars, parties, or blind dates, feeling bored in a relationship that is so much less than we had envisaged - these are only some of the ways in which the search for love is a difficult and often painful experience. Despite the widespread and almost collective character of these experiences, our culture insists they are the result of faulty or insufficiently mature psyches. For many, the Freudian idea that the family designs the pattern of an individual's erotic career has been the main explanation for why and how we fail to find or sustain love. Psychoanalysis and popular psychology have succeeded spectacularly in convincing us that individuals bear responsibility for the misery of their romantic and erotic lives. The purpose of this book is to change our way of thinking about what is wrong in modern relationships. The problem is not dysfunctional childhoods or insufficiently self-aware psyches, but rather the institutional forces shaping how we love. The argument of this book is that the modern romantic experience is shaped by a fundamental transformation in the ecology and architecture of romantic choice. The samples from which men and women choose a partner, the modes of evaluating prospective partners, the very importance of choice and autonomy and what people imagine to be the spectrum of their choices: all these aspects of choice have transformed the very core of the will, how we want a partner, the sense of worth bestowed by relationships, and the organization of desire. This book does to love what Marx did to commodities: it shows that it is shaped by social relations and institutions and that it circulates in a marketplace of unequal actors.

Love and Sexuality in Social Theory
Love and Sexuality in Social Theory

Author: Emiliano Bevilacqua

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-11-27

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 1040252311

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Love and Sexuality in Social Theory considers the role that love and sexuality play in private and public life. Drawing on both classical and contemporary social theory, this book presents both theoretical and empirical studies of love and sexuality as social factors, from the earliest reconstructions of modern emotional life to the most recent analyses of liquid love. With attention to the consequences that passions and desires have both on morals and behaviour, it departs from the analysis of society in terms of the division of labour and utilitarian mechanisms to consider how a society based on performances values human energy and emotional behaviour in a contradictory way. This book, therefore, presents and discusses classic authors, from Georg Simmel and Pitirim Sorokin to Marianne Weber and Simone De Beauvoir, through the work of Erving Goffman and ending with contemporary authors such as Michel Foucault, Anthony Giddens, Zygmunt Bauman, Ulrich Beck, and Eva Illouz. By presenting love as the social foundation of altruism, an essential element in modern conceptions of subjectivity, and a force shaping intimacy and contemporary social life, this book will appeal to scholars of sociology, particularly those interested in social theory and the sociology of emotions.

Emotions in Culture and Everyday Life
Emotions in Culture and Everyday Life

Author: Michael Hviid Jacobsen

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-08-15

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 1000628469

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This volume describes and analyses a series of emotions prevalent in everyday life and culture, with each chapter exploring the main facets of a particular emotion and considering the ways in which it manifests itself in and informs our culture and lives. Considering our expression, conception, management and sanctioning of emotions, and the ways in which these have changed over time, as well as the ways in which we can theorise particular emotional states, authors ask how certain emotions are linked to culture and society and what roles they play in politics and contemporary life. With examples and case studies taken from research into media, culture and social life, Emotions in Culture and Everyday Life will appeal to scholars of sociology, anthropology, psychology, media and cultural studies and philosophy with interests in the emotions.

The End of Love
The End of Love

Author: Eva Illouz

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2021-09-15

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1509550267

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Western culture has endlessly represented the ways in which love miraculously erupts in people’s lives, the mythical moment in which one knows someone is destined for us, the feverish waiting for a phone call or an email, the thrill that runs down our spine at the mere thought of him or her. Yet, a culture that has so much to say about love is virtually silent on the no less mysterious moments when we avoid falling in love, where we fall out of love, when the one who kept us awake at night now leaves us indifferent, or when we hurry away from those who excited us a few months or even a few hours before. In The End of Love, Eva Illouz documents the multifarious ways in which relationships end. She argues that if modern love was once marked by the freedom to enter sexual and emotional bonds according to one’s will and choice, contemporary love has now become characterized by practices of non-choice, the freedom to withdraw from relationships. Illouz dubs this process by which relationships fade, evaporate, dissolve, and break down “unloving.” While sociology has classically focused on the formation of social bonds, The End of Love makes a powerful case for studying why and how social bonds collapse and dissolve. Particularly striking is the role that capitalism plays in practices of non-choice and “unloving.” The unmaking of social bonds, she argues, is connected to contemporary capitalism which is characterized by practices of non-commitment and non-choice, practices that enable the quick withdrawal from a transaction and the quick realignment of prices and the breaking of loyalties. Unloving and non-choice have in turn a profound impact on society and economics as they explain why people may be having fewer children, increasingly living alone, and having less sex. The End of Love presents a profound and original analysis of the effects of capitalism and consumer culture on personal relationships and of what the dissolution of personal relationships means for capitalism.

Speculative Communities
Speculative Communities

Author: Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2022-01-17

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 0226816028

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"In Speculative Communities, Komporozos-Athanasiou examines the ways that financial speculation has moved beyond markets to shape fundamental aspects of our social and political lives. As ordinary people make exceptional decisions--such as the American election of a populist demagogue or the British vote to leave the European Union--they are moving from time-honored and -tested practices of governance, toward the speculative promise of a different kind of future. Even our methods of building community have shifted to the speculative realm as social media platforms enable and amplify alternative visions of the present and future-these are the "speculative communities" that now shape our personal and political realities. For Komporozos-Athanasiou, "to speculate" means increasingly "to connect," to endorse uncertainty preemptively, and often daringly, as a means of social survival. Finance has thus become the model for society writ large. These financial systems have taken a notable turn in our current era, however. Contemporary capitalism sees the risk-taking, entrepreneurial person being refashioned as a politically disoriented, speculative subject, who embraces the future's radical uncertainty rather than averting it. As Komporozos-Athanasiou shows, virtual marketplaces, new social media, and dating apps function as finance's speculative infrastructures, leading to a new type of imagination across economy and society"--

The Perpetrator-Victim Relationship: An Important Clue to Understanding Intimate Partner Homicide in China
The Perpetrator-Victim Relationship: An Important Clue to Understanding Intimate Partner Homicide in China

Author: Shuhong Zhao

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-01-15

Total Pages: 145

ISBN-13: 9811689423

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This book is devoted to illustrating the significance of perpetrator-victim relationship, including its status and state, in understanding intimate partner homicide (IPH) in the context of China today after comparing with the findings in the previous studies. By analyzing the correlation between intimate relationships as a focal variable and other variables such as IPH characteristics and risk factors, a deeper understanding of IPH in China today has emerged. Finally, this book shows that many perpetrators and victims had intimate relationships with people outside their marriages as the main reason for the rapid increase in the number of instances of IPH, which seems to be in tandem with China’s rapid modernization and urbanization. Presenting the sole academic research that closely investigates the characteristics of intimate partner homicide in modern China, the book is a valuable resource for not only for the Chinese government but also for Chinese and international researchers.

Women Doing Intimacy
Women Doing Intimacy

Author: Stevi Jackson

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-06-11

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 1137289910

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This book offers a comparative study of the lives of young adult women and their mothers in Hong Kong and Britain. Set against the backdrop of debates regarding the consequences of late modern social change for family and intimate life, the authors consider the challenges of exploring these issues across differing cultures. The book focuses on a range of topics including: mother-daughter relationships; romantic, sexual and marital relationship trajectories; and the imagined futures of daughters. Throughout, it is argued that differences between Hong Kong and Britain are not attributable merely to local culture and tradition, but are the consequence of wider social, economic and political conditions through which cultural continuity and change are mediated. Women Doing Intimacy will be of interest to students and scholars of family life and gender studies.

An Introduction to Sociology
An Introduction to Sociology

Author: Karim Murji

Publisher: SAGE

Published: 2021-11-03

Total Pages: 623

ISBN-13: 1529765196

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An Introduction to Sociology is your essential guide to understanding the social forces that shape our lives and the world around us. This innovative textbook introduces you to the key theories, themes, and concepts in the discipline of sociology and helps you to develop as a sociologist by providing comprehensive coverage of all the main areas of study. Presenting you with the history, current debates and recent research developments for each topic, this book covers everything from classical sociologies and traditional subjects such as class, families, and religion, through to more progressive areas like digital society, social media, migration, and the interconnectedness of modern global society. The book′s extensive coverage means it can be used throughout your studies, from first year to final year. Key features: Each chapter is written by an internationally renowned expert who uses specialist insight and the latest research to provide a reliable and up-to-date overview. Includes a selection of unique learning features such as “Hear from the Expert” boxes and “Key Cases” from around the world, as well as reflective activities and revision questions that will enhance your knowledge. Features a section titled “What is sociology useful for?” which includes chapters on the public value of sociology and the role of sociology in contemporary society. The book is supported by a wide-ranging collection of online teaching and learning resources including exclusive video content from SAGE Video, links to SAGE Journal Articles, sample essay questions, and a selection of multiple-choice questions. This definitive text is perfect for first-year sociology undergraduates and anyone studying sociology at university or college level.