INTIMACY AND MODERNITY. MODERNIZATION OF LOVE IN THE WESTERN CULTURE

• Authors: Maciej Musiał
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The aim of this paper is to confront two highly differentiated accounts of transformations of contemporary intimacy. The first account, represented mainly by Anthony Giddens and Brian McNair, concentrates on the processes of democratization and emancipation; simply speaking, this approach suggests that modern intimacy contains higher amount of freedom than the pre-modern one. The second account underlines significance of processes of commercialization and rationalization of intimacy; according to this approach intimacy becomes more and more dependent to the capitalistic market. This point of view is represented by social scientists such as Ulrich Beck, Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim, Eva Illouz and Arlie Russell Hochschild. The aim of the article is to analyze the abovementioned accounts not as opposite, but as complementary perspectives, which enable one to perceive the highly ambivalent character of modernization of intimacy and modernization in general.  

Keywords

EN

INTIMACY; PURE RELATIONSHIP; COMMERCIALIZATION; COLONIZATION; RATIONALIZATION; MODERNIZATION

• Publisher: Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu
• Journal: Studia Europaea Gnesnensia
• Year: 2013
• Issue: 7
• Pages: 157-168

Dates

published

2013-01-01

Contributors

author

Maciej Musiał

References

• Beck U., Beck-Gernsheim E., The Normal Chaos of Love, Cambridge 1995, p. 6.
• Giddens A., Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age, Cambridge, 1991, p. 9.
• Giddens A., The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love, and Eroticism in Modern Societies, Cambridge 1992, p. 58.
• Habermas J., The Theory of Communicative Action, Cambridge 1984, p. 196.
• Hochschild A.R., The Commodity Frontier, [in:] eadem, The Commercialization of Intimate Life: Notes From Home and Work, San Francisco–Los Angeles 2003, p. 30–44.
• Hochschild A.R., The Commodity Frontier, p. 8; http://sociology.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/faculty/hochschild/2.%20commodity%20frontier.pdf/.
• Jamieson L., Intimacy. Personal Relationships in Modern Societies, Cambridge–Oxford, 1998
• McNair B., Mediated Sex: Pornography and Postmodern Culture, New York 1996, p. 170.
• McNair B., Porno? Chic! How Pornography Changed the World and Made It a Better Place, Oxford 2012.