Western culture has endlessly represented the ways in which love miraculously erupts in people’s lives, the mythical moment in which one knows someone is destined for us, the feverish waiting for a phone call or an email, the thrill that runs down our spine at the mere thought of him or her. Yet, a culture that has so much to say about love is virtually silent on the no less mysterious moments when we avoid falling in love, where we fall out of love, when the one who kept us awake at night now leaves us indifferent, or when we hurry away from those who excited us a few months or even a few hours before.
In The End of Love, Eva Illouz documents the multifarious ways in which relationships end. She argues that if modern love was once marked by the freedom to enter sexual and emotional bonds according to one’s will and choice, contemporary love has now become characterized by practices of non-choice, the freedom to withdraw from relationships. Illouz dubs this process by which relationships fade, evaporate, dissolve, and break down “unloving.” While sociology has classically focused on the formation of social bonds, The End of Love makes a powerful case for studying why and how social bonds collapse and dissolve.
Particularly striking is the role that capitalism plays in practices of non-choice and “unloving.” The unmaking of social bonds, she argues, is connected to contemporary capitalism which is characterized by practices of non-commitment and non-choice, practices that enable the quick withdrawal from a transaction and the quick realignment of prices and the breaking of loyalties. Unloving and non-choice have in turn a profound impact on society and economics as they explain why people may be having fewer children, increasingly living alone, and having less sex.
The End of Love presents a profound and original analysis of the effects of capitalism and consumer culture on personal relationships and of what the dissolution of personal relationships means for capitalism.
By:
Eva Illouz (The Hebrew University of Jersalem)
Imprint: Polity Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Spine: 25mm
Weight: 499g
ISBN: 9781509550258
ISBN 10: 1509550259
Pages: 320
Publication Date: 03 September 2021
Audience:
General/trade
,
ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Acknowledgments 1. Unloving: Introduction to a Sociology of Negative Choice Love as Freedom The Malaise with a Critique of Freedom Choice Negative Choice Notes 2. Pre-Modern Courtship, Social Certainty, and the Rise of Negative Relationships Courtship as a Sociological Structure Certainty as a Sociological Structure Sexual Freedom as Consumer Freedom A New Social and Sexual Grammar Notes 3. Confusing Sex Casual Sexuality and Its Elusive Effects Casualness and Uncertainty Uncertainty and Negative Sociality Notes 4. Scopic Capitalism and the Rise of Ontological Uncertainty The Value of the Body Producing Symbolic and Economic Value Evaluation Sexual Devaluation Shifting the Reference Point of Evaluation The Confused Status of the Subject Notes 5. A Freedom with Many Limits Consent to What? Muddled Wills Volatility as an Emotional Condition Exiting without a Voice Trust and Uncertainty Notes 6. Divorce as a Negative Relationship The End of Love Divorce and Women’s Position in the Emotional Field The Narrative Structure of Departing Sexuality: The Great Separation Consumer Objects: From Transitional to Exiting Objects Autonomy and Attachment: The Difficult Couple Emotional Ontologies and Non-Binding Emotional Contracts Emotional Competence and Women’s Position in the Relational Process Notes Conclusion: Negative Relations and the Butterfly Politics of Sex Notes Bibliography Index
Eva Illouz is Directrice d’Etudes at the EHESS in Paris and Rose Isaac Chair of Sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Reviews for The End of Love: A Sociology of Negative Relations
'A brilliant analysis of the connection between capitalism and relationships' Hagai Levi, director of Scenes from a Marriage
