This edited collection emerged from a workshop held in July 2017 which was funded by the British Sociological Association (BSA) regional early career workshop fund. Participants at the event included some of the contributors in this volume and others joined this writing project at later stages. Authors include postgraduate and early career academics, more established scholars, not all in academia, and almost all women. The contributions to this volume get to the heart of discussions and debates central to problematisations of âintimacyâ and the sociology of family life.
This centrality of intimacy to sociological debate does not mean that âintimacyâ, as a concept, is well defined and equally articulated. âIntimacyâ can often be taken for granted, a buzzword at risk of becoming meaningless (Geschiere 2013: 24) and yet fundamental to explanations of social and personal dynamics observed across societies from the last decades of the twentieth century. It has commonly been reduced to mean sexual relations in heterosexual couples, but its etymology indicates a wider meaning, âintimacy is to make known to a close friend what is innermostâ (Kasulis 2002: 28). Hence, âintimacyâ better relates to the interaction between interpersonal relations and the public sphere and sees these as mutually constituted (Berlant 1998: 282â3). âIntimacyâ is frequently cast in positive and celebratory terms when linked to âmodernâ Euro-American societies (Jamieson 2011), as in the democratisation of intimacy seen by Giddens (1992), which can serve to exaggerate and reify geopolitical differences, characterised as cultural differences along a binary logic (Khandelwal 2009). Both Khandelwal (2009) and Jamieson (1998, 2011) see, however, the potential for âintimacyâ to provide a locus from which to conduct in-depth studies, exploring differences and particularities to arrive at nuanced and intricate understandings of how we relate to others and how these everyday practices of intimacies are co-constituted and shape the state (Puri 2016).
This volume is a conversation with this body of work and with that of Eva Illouz (2007, 2012) more particularly. Illouz focuses on exploring the impact of the intensification of commercialisation and the forms and conditions of intimate relationships. She offers an explanation for how specific individuals make sense of themselves in late modernity, and how love, romance and intimacy can offer a route to salvation, even if only temporarily and ultimately leading to suffering. Hers is a theory that aims to make sense of transformations seen across societies, which have been associated with the growth and proliferation of mass and digital media, the arrival of new and improved technologies of transportation and reproduction, the expansion of consumerism and its logic and the acceleration of the individualistic âtherapeutic cultureâ, which fosters the telling of self-narratives and self-help literature (Plummer 1996; Giddens 1992; Illouz 2007). Shifts in âpractices of intimacyâ (Jamieson 1998, 2011) include the rise in non-married cohabitation, increases in childbirth outside of marriage and the use of commercial surrogacy, the legalisation of same-sex marriage, increased attention on living alone or living apart from partners and changes to âarrangedâ marriage practices. Equally, these shifts lead to the creation of moral panics and subsequent moral crusades around the normalisation and expansion of commercialised sexual exchanges, trafficking for sexual exploitation, cross-border marriages and mail-order brides, forced and child marriages, sex tourism and the impact of the feminisation of migration and the emergence of transnational care systems on children left behind. Theories and explanations for these shifts tend to overstate change and underemphasise continuity along the familiar trope of geopolitical modernity (or progress narratives).
Many have contested these grand theories as they can âprovide little real aid in understanding the direct empirical worldâ (Plummer 1996: 37). Family sociology consequently moved towards documenting the intricacies and practices of relationships and family life (e.g. Morgan 1996; Finch 2007; Nordqvist 2010; Phoenix and Brannen 2014; van Hooff 2016; Carter 2017; Thwaites 2013; Morris 2015). Yet this narrow empirical focus, while vital in providing robust evidence for theory-testing, has also obscured the ways in which the âfamilyâ operates in tandem with wider society. Others have, therefore, adopted a more processual concept of intimacy that allows us to explore more than one institutional framework, one idiom of representation and one orientation (Herzfeld 2016: 51) and recognise the ambivalence and tensions contained in intimacy (Berlant 1998). The notion of intimacy can therefore include attitudes, 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 cross-border mobility have altered the relation between intimacy and distance. Scholars studying people on the move have contributed to a reworking of âintimacyâ: âa productive space where intimacy is shaped as much through emotion and the imagination as by structural constraintsâ (Bloch 2017: 118 and also Brennan 2004; Constable 2003, 2005, 2009; Cheng 2010; Faier 2009; Hirsch and Wardlow 2006; Padilla et al. 2007). Illouz, though focused primarily on Western societies and drawing on experiences of middle-class and majority groups, attempts to draw out some of these tensions and provides an explanation for the modern condition of love, focusing on why, if love hurts, many still feel it is a hurt worth suffering for.
On the face of it, her account, which incorporates the therapeutic turn and infusion of economics into romance, offers an appealing alternative lens to existing grand theory (e.g. Giddens 1992; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002, 2014; Bauman 2003). Illouz draws on theories of individualisationâparticularly Giddens (1992)âto coolly endorse a late modernity where the very process of choice-making has changed significantly. For Illouz, âmodernâ conditions of love inevitably produce suffering due to the expansion of the logic of consumerism where âfreeâ and abundant choice has extended to personal relations, but the conditions of choice are imbued with uncertainty and risk. The way we make decisions about relationships speaks of an instrumental and strategic approach which isâshe claimsâfundamentally different to the past, where these decisions were embedded in wider moral and social communities. Now, she argues, individuals are left out in the cold to make romantic decisions based purely on their self-rational calculations. Due to these changes in the architecture (reflexivity) and ecology (social conditions) of choice, âmodernâ marriage markets have irrevocably changed. And yet, the reversibility of choice in who is selected as a potential partner has increased the uncertainty and risk of every decision made. Moreover, as men and women differ in their strategies and aspirations, this ecology of choice reproduces and maintains the pervasive inequality that characterise gender relations.
Marriage markets have opened up so that class positions no longer determine suitable partners but the consequent increase in choice (enabled and encouraged by dating apps, for example) leads to greater suffering as there is less certainty and security in any choice made. This is explored by Ansari and Klinenberg (2015) in Modern Romance, which documents fundamental changes in our expectations about courtship because of significant changes in how people âsearchâ for a romantic partner (what Illouz calls the romantic ecology) and who individuals consider to be the ârightâ person (what Illouz calls the romantic architecture). The seemingly endless possibilitiesâespecially in big cities and with the use of dating technologiesâmean that the stakes for making the wrong decision are necessarily incredibly high; as Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2014: 46) say, âthe greater the choice, the stronger the temptationâ to look elsewhere. MoreoverâIllouz statesâthe considerations involved in such decision-making are different, since couple relationships ought to achieve individual fulfilment, realise individualâs âdestinyâ and accomplish emotional inner balance. Or as Ansari and Klinenberg suggests: coupling involves âvery deep connections between the two people that made them feel like theyâd found someone unique, not just someone who was pleasant to start a family withâ (2015: 20).
Illouz finds a difference in how decisions are made today about intimate coupling, decisions which are dis-embedded from groups and communities and are now located solely within an individualâs cognitive calculation. This cognitive effort relies upon rational, economic balances rather than romantic visions of all-encompassing love and it is in this way that emotions have âcooledâ and intimacy became cold. It should be noted, however, that many theorists of grand social changes in intimacy, including authors mentioned above, have focused their attention on large cosmopolitan, multicultural and largely Western cities. Seebach (2016), following a long history of sociologists and anthropologists who have focused on the forms and conditions of personal relations in urban settings, notes that the dis-embedding of people from identity-providing social contexts is easily intuited in large cities.
Nevertheless, Illouz offers a nuanced account of the process of, and changes within, intimate decision-making, partly as the result of the arrival of digital dating technology, and details how this has impacted on choice, commitment and marriage markets. Illouz also does not overlook continuities in unequal gendered relations and provides a convincing explanation for the continuation of male dominance in sexual fields and marriage markets. This explanation is also unique in offering an insight into modern romantic suffering and the specific conditions which bring about this routine emotional experience. However, she does this from within particular registers, localities and anchored in majority norms.
The chapters in this volume engage with and critique Illouzâs theory of the grand transformation in love and here are organised under the following sections. It is important to note that many of the chapters discuss themes that cut across these sections, and this we highlight later. The section headings below follow Illouzâs (2012) in Why Love Hurts.
âThe great transformation of loveâ deals with some of the underlying assumptions of Illouzâs argument, in particular her conceptualisation of choice, commitment and rationality. In Chap. 2, Rachel Thwaites, focusing on heterosexual relationships in Western societies specifically, argues that Illouzâs theorisation of choice does not go far enough to explain the tensions and ambiguities within this notion of choice, leaving its underlying political and gendered dynamics largely unexplored and under-theorised. Choice is also a key component in Chap. 3 by Lara McKenzie. She finds that in conversations with age-dissimilar couples undertaken in Perth, Western Australia, choice is emphasised in relation to family obligation and commitment, complicating âfree choiceâ decisions on whom to partner with. As a resolution, McKenzie suggests that âfree choiceâ on intimate relationships is co-constituted alongside commitment and obligation of family relations, and these need not necessarily be in tension. In the final chapter of this section, Julia Carter and Daniel Smith explore the limits to âchoiceâ...