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Love as a social fact - Coggle Diagram
Love as a social fact
A LOVING SOCIOLOGY
Intimate love has come to legitimate a range of institutions, ideologies and policies
- Carter
As a society, we tend to view love as an intimate experience between two people, consequently, we usually adopt a narrow vision
It is a word that is used prolifically to mean so much
Sociologists interpret love through CULUTRAL DISCOURSES
Standards of research
Highlighting the increasingly commercialised aspects of love
and its use as a cultural norm to privilege certain types of relationships -> example: Saint Valentines day
Theorists note the importance of remaining critical of these discourses -
love doesn’t allow our own liberation in the way we love
Love encompasses various meanings and understandings, making it challenging to define and study - sexual love, intimate love, companionate love, romantic love, parental love, friendship love, inter-species love
TALK OF LOVE
by ANNE SWIDLER
Swidler POV on culture:
culture is a toolkit, culture doesn’t tell us what to do. If we adopt specific culture, we are equipped with tools to behave in that certain way
Experiment where Swilder asked participants to share their understandings of love -> Swidler argues that
interviewees adopted two main understandings of love: mythic/romantic and realistic
Love as a concept has different theoretical sources.
We can use a pragmatic view to explain or justify an emotive reason
In the past, society used to rely on formal institutions (laws) to keep families together. However, society has been changing towards a more flexible way of doing things. Due to this shift, formal rules are becoming less important -> outcome: love is becoming the main discourse
or practice seemingly holding families and relationships together
Love empowerment or a persisting duty?
Duty in the sense it needs to be performed to be privileged
Some theorists argue that intimacy has changed
, and now personal relationships are more individualised,
empowering, and democratic
Shift could lead to two possible outcomes:
love becomes more temporary and short-lived or love becomes a more highly values and esteemed relationship
LOVE AS AN UTOPIAN COMMODITY
ILLOUZ suggests that
in our culture of late capitalism, there's a powerful idea of love as a utopia
This
concept promises transgression through the consumption of leisure and nature
- love's
"transgressive rituals" are always linked to consumerism
and the market - love
serves as a distraction in life through the consumption of romance
Contrary
to the belief that
capitalism creates an emotionless society,
ILLOUZ
argues that economic relations have become more emotional, while close relationships are increasingly influenced by economic and political models
such as bargaining, exchange, and equity
Emotional capitalism evidence: talk shows, support groups, internet dating sites
Why love hurts?
ILLOUZ
failures in love result in collective misery and disappointment which is internalised by individuals
(primarily women)
as personal failing
While the rules of emotional engagement may still be highly structured, the context in which choices are made has shifted significantly
Rather than blind faith, love has become “the object of endless investigation, self-knowledge and self-scrutiny”
Illouz read FOUCAULT -
Love is a mean by which we continuously and endlessly evaluate our behaviour. It is the lens through which we understand ourselves and the others
FOUCAULT AND THE REPRESSIVE SYSTEM
Foucault's discussion primarily targets what he terms the REPRESSIVE HYPOTHESIS ->
modern society
, particularly
from the 18th century onwards
with a
peak in the Victorian Age, held a predominantly negative view towards sex
Except within the confines of monogamous marriage,
sexuality was believed to be opposed, silenced, and ideally eliminated as much as possible
Foucault argues that
modern power generates new forms of sexuality by constructing discourses about it
Example: while same-sex relations have existed throughout history, the idea of the homosexual as a distinct category, with specific psychological, physiological, and possibly genetic traits, was created by the power/knowledge system of modern sciences of sexuality
The art of confession
Going to the priest creates a system of values on which he judges you: moral or immoral
Following the confession and through its lenses, we start to reflect on ourself as an object of moral value and as a subject, conscious of what occurred and comparing yourself to the system of values
(subjecting ourself to the examination of the priest) → looks at myself through the lens of another aka HERMENEUTICS OF THE SELF
Confessions and modern science
Explosion of discourse on sex begun with the counter-reformation's regulations on confession
Penitents were obliged to thoroughly examine their consciences, going beyond merely confessing actions to specifying details like frequency
, specific acts, and even the marital status of those involved -> process led to pentinets
achieving deeper and more precise self-knowledge, revealing their innver sexual natures through a heremeneutics of the self
Foucault suggests that rather than discovering one's sexual nature,
sexual identity is constituted by the required self-examination
(what one considers as their sexual identity depends on the categories imposed by the confession process)
The CONFESSIONAL, is a
technique of the self, they way to which modern power is exercised
- PANOPTICON EFFECT
LOVE AS A SALVATION
BECK GERNSHEIM suggest that in
modern society, which they describe as "detraditionalised, non-religious and individualised," love becomes a blank space that couples must fill in themselves
Love becomes the central aspect that gives life meaning
Love is influenced by various cultural sources like "the lyrics of pop songs
, advertisements, pornographic scripts, [and] light fiction”
Falling in love is seen as a personal and social revolution
Falling in love can offer personal salvation