Love and Structure

Theory, Culture and Society 15 (3-4):243-263 (1998)
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Abstract

Is romantic love a particularly Western and modern phenomenon, as many social theorists argue, or a universal experience, as sociobiologists claim? This article argues that both these approaches err in taking sexual attraction as the essential characteristic of romance, whereas historical and personal accounts stress idealization of a particular other. Romantic love is properly defined as an experience of transcendence and is elaborated in cultural configurations of three basic types. The first is in hierarchical and internally competitive societies where marriage is a political matter and romantic relations are always adulterous and often non-sexual; the second is in individualistic, fragmented and fluid societies where love and marriage go together; the third is in highly structured disharmonic societies where romantic ties between youth are severed by arranged marriages.

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Citations of this work

Friendship’s freedom and gendered limits.Harry Blatterer - 2013 - European Journal of Social Theory 16 (4):435-456.

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References found in this work

The World as Will and Representation.Lewis White Beck - 1959 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 20 (2):279-280.
The Social Structure of Emotional Constraint: The Court of Louis XIV and the Pukhtun of Northern Pakistan.Charles Lindholm - 1988 - Ethos: Journal of the Society for Psychological Anthropology 16 (3):227-246.
The Nature of Love: Plato to Luther.Irving Singer - 1968 - Philosophical Review 77 (4):519-521.
Being and Nothingness. [REVIEW]Frederick A. Olafson - 1958 - Philosophical Review 67 (2):276-280.

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