Love and Relationships Flashcards
Who theorised ‘pure relationships’?
Giddens
What is a ‘pure relationship’?
where a relationship is entered into for its own sake, to deliver enough satisfactions for each individual to stay within it’
What are the three main types of ‘love’?
- Economic love - economic circumstances
- Romantic love – life time partner, ‘soul mate’
- Confluent love – active, contingent and democratic
What does Giddens suggest is the cause for these changesin love?
changing position of women, more dominant in relationships
Why are gay and lesbian relationships more likely to be ‘pure relationships’?
Less ‘gendered baggage’ which means that there is less bargaining.
The risk is too large to waste
Who critiques ‘pure relationships’?
Smart and Neal.
What are the critiques of ‘pure relationships’?
- Pessimistic
- Relations are too complex to chop and change based on satisfaction
What is Beck and Beck-Gernshiem’s main concern when addressing love?
Individualism
How does individualism effect love?
Risk Society: Trying to find security and certainty in a world of uncertainty.
The more we become individuals, the more we seek and construct closeness and companionship.
Who says there has been a ‘detraditionalisation of intimacy’?
Gross
What are the two types of traditions that Gross identifies?
Regulative Traditions and Meaning-Constitutive Traditions
What are regulative traditions?
In decline but but built from moral communities
What are meaning-constitutive traditions?
Passed down through generations and embedded in culture and history
What does Gidden’s say about children and pure relationships?
They get in the way
How do Smart and Shipman criticise theories of individualism?
Prioritises choice and implies agency is stronger than structure
What does Giddens say is the main cause from prompting a change in intimacy?
the process of modernisation where industrialisation, rationalism and individualism play a vital role.
How does having greater choice in relationships have a detrimental effect?
personal relationships inevitable become less stable
What evidence is there for Giddens’ Pure Relationship?
Gross and Simmons’ study of pure relationships
What did Gross and Simmons’ study find?
Couples had:
- Heightened feeling of independence
- They were happier with relations
- Relationships were more equal.
How does Sue Sharpe support arguments of individualisation?
Change in attitudes: Girls in the 70’s prioritised ‘husband, children marriage’. Girls in the 90’s prioritised ‘job, career and happiness’.
What do Beck and Beck-Gernsheim argue has happened to love?
the search for love as a source of fulfilment has become heightened because the world has become overwhelming, impersonal, abstract and rapidly changing.
How has a change in love and intimacy impacted family formations?
- Falling Fertility Rates
- Less Marriage
- Solo Living
How does Smart Criticise Indivdualisation?
individualistic theories underplay the extent of connectedness in people’s personal lives.
