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PALGRAVE MACMILLAN STUDIES IN
FAMILY AND INTIMATE LIFE
Romantic
Relationships
in a Time of
‘Cold Intimacies’
Edited by
Julia Carter · Lorena Arocha
Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family
and Intimate Life
Series Editors
Graham Allan
Keele University
Keele, UK
Lynn Jamieson
University of Edinburgh
Edinburgh, UK
Romantic
Relationships in a
Time of ‘Cold
Intimacies’
Editors
Julia Carter Lorena Arocha
University of the West of England University of Hull
Bristol, UK Hull, UK
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Acknowledgements
v
Contents
1 Introduction 1
Julia Carter and Lorena Arocha
vii
viii Contents
Index 309
Notes on Contributors
xi
xii Notes on Contributors
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 con-
tributions to this volume get to the heart of discussions and debates cen-
tral to problematisations of ‘intimacy’ and the sociology of family life.
This centrality of intimacy to sociological debate does not mean that
‘intimacy’, as a concept, is well defined and equally articulated. ‘Intimacy’
can often be taken for granted, a buzzword at risk of becoming meaningless
J. Carter (*)
University of the West of England, Bristol, UK
e-mail: julia.carter@uwe.ac.uk
L. Arocha
University of Hull, Hull, UK
e-mail: Lorena.Arocha@hull.ac.uk
these shifts lead to the creation of moral panics and subsequent moral
crusades around the normalisation and expansion of commercialised sex-
ual 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 transna-
tional 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 ‘provide little
real aid in understanding the direct empirical world’ (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 ‘family’ operates in tan-
dem 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 inti-
macy (Berlant 1998). The notion of intimacy can therefore include atti-
tudes, 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 ‘inti-
macy’: ‘a productive space where intimacy is shaped as much through
emotion and the imagination as by structural constraints’ (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 suf-
fering for.
4 J. Carter and L. Arocha
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 indi-
vidualisation—particularly Giddens (1992)—to coolly endorse a late
modernity where the very process of choice-making has changed signifi-
cantly. For Illouz, ‘modern’ conditions of love inevitably produce suffer-
ing due to the expansion of the logic of consumerism where ‘free’ 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 is—she claims—fundamentally 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,
‘modern’ marriage markets have irrevocably changed. And yet, the revers-
ibility 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 gen-
der 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 ‘search’ for a romantic part-
ner (what Illouz calls the romantic ecology) and who individuals consider
to be the ‘right’ person (what Illouz calls the romantic architecture). The
seemingly endless possibilities—especially in big cities and with the use
of dating technologies—mean that the stakes for making the wrong deci-
sion are necessarily incredibly high; as Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2014:
46) say, ‘the greater the choice, the stronger the temptation’ to look else-
where. Moreover—Illouz states—the considerations involved in such
1 Introduction 5
FOOTNOTES:
[556] ii 8 report. 1596
[557] 9 in] on 1596
[558] viii 4 course-about 1609
[559] 5 might, 1596
[560] xx 1 happy 1596
[561] xxi 4 within] with in 1596
[562] xxii 5 AEcidee 1596: Aecidee, 1609
[563] 6 selfe] felfe 1596
[564] xxiv 7 froward] forward 1596, 1609: corr. 1612-13
[565] xxv 8 counrtey 1596
[566] xxxi 5 Whch 1596
[567] xxxii 5 donne, 1596
[568] 6 impare 1596
[569] xxxiv 9 her] ere Drayton (teste Collier)
[570] xxxvi 6 <he> om. 1596, 1609
[571] xxxix 9 flocke 1609
Cant. XI.