1st Edition
Love and Sexuality in Social Theory
Love and Sexuality in Social Theory considers the role that love and sexuality play in private and public life.
Drawing on both classical and contemporary social theory, it presents both theoretical and empirical studies of love and sexuality as social factors, from the earliest reconstructions of modern emotional life to the most recent analyses of liquid love. With attention to the consequences that passions and desires have both on morals and behaviour, it departs from the analysis of society in terms of the division of labour and utilitarian mechanisms to consider how a society based on performances values human energy and emotional behaviour in a contradictory way. This book therefore presents and discusses classic authors, from Georg Simmel and Pitirim Sorkin to Marianne Weber and Simone De Beauvoir, through the work of Erving Goffman and ending with contemporary authors such as Michel Foucault, Anthony Giddens, Zygmunt Bauman, Ulrich Beck and Eva Illouz.
Presenting an understanding of love as the social basis of altruism, as an important factor in modern conceptions of subjectivity and that which shapes intimacy and contemporary social life, this book will appeal to scholars of sociology with interests in social theory and the sociology of emotions.
Introduction. Introduction: Sexuality and Social Theory - Studying sexuality, love and intimate life
Emiliano Bevilacqua, Michael Hviid Jacobsen, Mariano Longo
Part I. Forerunners and Modern Classics
1. Authority, Love, and Sexuality in the Works of John Millar
Nicholas B. Miller
2. Georg Simmel: the Flirtation, the Love, and the Dualism of Individuality
Massimo Cerulo
3. Discovering Altruism: Sorokin’s Love Analysis
Angela Maria Zocchi
4. The Chicago School’s Reflection on Love, Sexuality, and Deviance: A Reading of William Isaac Thomas’s “The Unadjusted Girl: With Cases and Standpoint for Behavior Analysis”
Michela Trinchese and Marta Vignola
5. Marianne Weber and the (wo)men’s Condition: Love as a Device for Social Change
Barbara Grüning
6. Love and Sexuality in the Frankfurt School
Assumpta Sabuco
7. Reich’s Legacy: Power and Sexuality in Social Life
Emiliano Bevilacqua
8. The Crossed Ambivalence: Social Equality and Sexual Difference in Simone De Beauvoir
Irene Strazzeri
9. Intimacy in the Interaction Order: The Legacy of Erving Goffman in Studies of Gender, Love and Sexuality
Michael Hviid Jacobsen and Greg Smith
Part II. Classics of the Contemporary Age
10. Michel Foucault: Sex and Sexuality in the Genealogy of the Modern Western Subject
Valentina Cremonesini
11. The Code of Intimacy. Love and Sexuality in Niklas Luhmann
Mariano Longo
12. The New Diotima: Agnes Heller's Thoughts on Love
Davide Borrelli
13. Sexual Scripts: Sexuality and Desire in the Work of John H. Gagnon and William Simon
Cirus Rinaldi, Marco Bacio and Riccardo Caldarera
14. The Trials and Tribulations of Late-modern Intimate Life: Revisiting the Ideas of Anthony Giddens, Ulrich Beck and Zygmunt Bauman on Contemporary Love, Sexuality, and Eroticism
Michael Hviid Jacobsen
15. Romantic Suffering and Morality: Love for Illouz
Julia Carter and Daniel Smith
Biography
Emiliano Bevilacqua is Professor of Sociology at the University of Salento. His research interests lie in social theory and the relationship between subjectivity and economics. He is the author of several publications, including ‘Emotional Foundations of the Market: Sympathy and self-interest’ (Frontiers in Sociology, Vol. 7, 2022) and ‘The Government of Sentiments in Adam Smith’s Sociology. A Sociological Reading’ (Rassegna Italiana di Sociologia, n. 3, 2020).
Mariano Longo is Professor of Sociology at the University of Salento. His research interests lie in emotions in social theory and the relationship between fiction and the social sciences. He is the author of several publications, including ‘Emotions through Literature. Fictional Narratives, Society and the Emotional Self’ (Routledge, 2020) and ‘Fiction and Social Realty. Literature and Narrative as Sociological Resources’ (Routledge, 2015). He is the author of Charles Horton Cooley, pp. 113-133, in M. Cerulo, A. Scribano (eds.), ‘The Emotions in the Classics of Sociology. A Study in Social Theory’ (Routledge, 2021).
Michael Hviid Jacobsen is Professor of Sociology at Aalborg University, Denmark. His research interests lie in social theory and the relationship between emotions and everyday life. He is the Editor of several recent publications, including ‘The Routledge International Handbook of Goffman Studies’ (Routledge, 2022, edited with Greg Smith), ‘Intimations of Nostalgia. Multidisciplinary Explorations of an Enduring Emotion’ (2021), and ‘Death in Contemporary Popular Culture’ (Routledge, 2019, edited with Adriana Teodorescu).
