Download or read book Romantic Love in America written by Victor C. de Munck and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2019-04-15 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Romantic Love in America: Cultural Models of Gay, Straight, and Polyamorous Relationships introduces the reader to the love and sex lives of two polyamorous, five gay, and eight straight individuals. Coupled with rich interview material, Victor C. de Munck provides a guided tour through the variable geography of love relationships as studied in the social sciences. de Munck describes evolutionary, cognitive, social, prototypical, triadic, and neural theories of romantic love and sex, concluding with an American cultural model of romantic love that delves into its relational properties as a dyad.
Download or read book Extravagant Expectations written by Paul Hollander and published by Ivan R. Dee. This book was released on 2011-05-16 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The proliferation of dating websites, printed personals and self-help relationship books reflect the new ways Americans seek close, personal relationships. Exposed to changing and often conflicting values, trends, and fashions—disseminated by popular culture, advertising and assorted "experts"—Americans face uncertainties about the best ways to meet important emotional and social needs. How do we establish lasting and intimate personal relationships including marriage? In Extravagant Expectations Paul Hollander investigates how Americans today pursue romantic relationships, with special reference to the advantages and drawbacks of Internet dating compared to connections made in school, college, and the workplace. By analyzing printed personals, dating websites, and advice offered by pop psychology books, he examines the qualities that people seek in a partner and also assesses the influence of the remaining conventional ideas of romantic love. Hollander suggests that notions of romantic love have changed due to conflicting values and expectations and the impact of pragmatic considerations. Individualism, high expectations, social and geographic mobility, changing sex roles, and the American national character all play a part in this fascinating and finally sobering exploration of men and women to find love and meaning in life.
Download or read book Romantic Longings written by Steven Seidman and published by Other. This book was released on 1991 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intimate behaviour is today a principal cause of social conflict in the USA. Drawing on a range of evidence, this study charts the change from a Victorian spiritual ideal of love to efforts by modern reformers to sexualize love.
Download or read book Cultural Models written by Giovanni Bennardo and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about cultural models. Cultural models are defined as molar organizations of knowledge. Their internal structure consists of a 'core' component and 'peripheral' nodes that are filled by default values. These values are instantiated, i.e., changed to specific values or left at their default values, when the individual experiences 'events' of any type. Thus, the possibility arises for recognizing and categorizing events as representative of the same cultural model even if they slightly differ in each of their specific occurrences. Cultural models play an important role in the generation of one's behavior. They correlate well with those of others and the behaviors they help shape are usually interpreted by others as intended. A proposal is then advanced to consider cultural models as fundamental units of analysis for an approach to culture that goes beyond the dichotomy between the individual (culture only in mind) and the collective (culture only in the social realm). The genesis of the concept of cultural model is traced from Kant to contemporary scholars. The concept underwent a number of transformations (including label) while it crossed and received further and unique elaborations within disciplines like philosophy, psychology, anthropology, sociology, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science. A methodological trajectory is outlined that blends qualitative and quantitative techniques that cross-feed each other in the gargantuan effort to discover cultural models. A survey follows of the extensive research about cultural models carried out with populations of North Americans, Europeans, Latino- and Native-Americans, Asians (including South Asians and South-East Asians), Pacific Islanders, and Africans. The results of the survey generated the opportunity to propose an empirically motivated typology of cultural models rooted in the primary difference between foundational and molar types. The book closes with a suggestion of a number of avenues that the authors recognize the research on cultural models could be traversing in the near future.
Download or read book False Love and Other Romantic Illusions written by Stan J. Katz and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 1988-09-06 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The quest for true love appeals to us all — and yet the real thing is painfully elusive. According to Dr. Stan Katz, men and women today don't really know what to look for in a mate, or even how to love once we find one. No one teaches us. What's more, the images of love we absorb from society, the media, and popular culture are superficial and misleading. The result is false love — relationships based on illusions of what we think love should be rather than an appreciation of what it is. False Love and Other Romantic Illusions is about the mistakes we all make in love, why we make them, and how we can correct them. Using in-depth case histories, Dr. Katz traces the course of false love from early childhood conditioning to adolescent crushes to adult relationships. He shows how our first misconceptions about love lead to mistakes, and how mistakes become patterns. But the patterns of false love can be broken, and Dr. Katz points the way, with a practical, far-reaching program for achieving and sustaining true love. This timely, intelligent book will alter not only the way we seek intimate relationships, but the way we live them.
Download or read book Consuming the Romantic Utopia written by Eva Illouz and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-04-28 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To what extent are our most romantic moments determined by the portrayal of love in film and on TV? Is a walk on a moonlit beach a moment of perfect romance or simply a simulation of the familiar ideal seen again and again on billboards and movie screens? In her unique study of American love in the twentieth century, Eva Illouz unravels the mass of images that define our ideas of love and romance, revealing that the experience of "true" love is deeply embedded in the experience of consumer capitalism. Illouz studies how individual conceptions of love overlap with the world of clichés and images she calls the "Romantic Utopia." This utopia lives in the collective imagination of the nation and is built on images that unite amorous and economic activities in the rituals of dating, lovemaking, and marriage. Since the early 1900s, advertisers have tied the purchase of beauty products, sports cars, diet drinks, and snack foods to success in love and happiness. Illouz reveals that, ultimately, every cliché of romance—from an intimate dinner to a dozen red roses—is constructed by advertising and media images that preach a democratic ethos of consumption: material goods and happiness are available to all. Engaging and witty, Illouz's study begins with readings of ads, songs, films, and other public representations of romance and concludes with individual interviews in order to analyze the ways in which mass messages are internalized. Combining extensive historical research, interviews, and postmodern social theory, Illouz brings an impressive scholarship to her fascinating portrait of love in America.
Download or read book Racing Romance written by Kumiko Nemoto and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-10 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite being far from the norm, interracial relationships are more popular than ever. Racing Romance sheds special light on the bonds between whites and Asian Americans, an important topic that has not garnered well-deserved attention until now. Incorporating life-history narratives and interviews with those currently or previously involved with an interracial partner, Kumiko Nemoto addresses the contradictions and tensionsùa result of race, class, and genderùthat Asian Americans and whites experience. Similar to black/white relationships, stereotypes have long played crucial roles in Asian American/white encounters. Partners grapple with media representations of Asian women as submissive or hypersexual and Asian men are often portrayed as weak laborers or powerful martial artists. Racing Romance reveals how allegedly progressive interracial relationships remain firmly shaped by the logic of patriarchy and gender inherent to the ideal of marriage, family, and nation in America, even as this ideal is juxtaposed with discourses of multiculturalism and color blindness.
Download or read book The Book that Made Me written by Judith Ridge and published by Candlewick Press. This book was released on 2017-03-14 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays by popular children's authors reveal the books that shaped their personal and literary lives, explaining how the stories they loved influenced them creatively, politically, and intellectually.
Download or read book Love Sense written by Dr. Sue Johnson and published by Little, Brown Spark. This book was released on 2013-12-31 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The bestselling author of Hold Me Tight presents a revolutionary new understanding of why and how we love, based on cutting-edge research. Every day, we hear of relationships failing and questions of whether humans are meant to be monogamous. Love Sense presents new scientific evidence that tells us that humans are meant to mate for life. Dr. Johnson explains that romantic love is an attachment bond, just like that between mother and child, and shows us how to develop our "love sense" -- our ability to develop long-lasting relationships. Love is not the least bit illogical or random, but actually an ordered and wise recipe for survival. Love Sense covers the three stages of a relationship and how to best weather them; the intelligence of emotions and the logic of love; the physical and psychological benefits of secure love; and much more. Based on groundbreaking research, Love Sense will change the way we think about love.
Download or read book Modern Romance written by Aziz Ansari and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-06-14 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The #1 New York Times Bestseller “An engaging look at the often head-scratching, frequently infuriating mating behaviors that shape our love lives.” —Refinery 29 A hilarious, thoughtful, and in-depth exploration of the pleasures and perils of modern romance from Aziz Ansari, the star of Master of None and one of this generation’s sharpest comedic voices At some point, every one of us embarks on a journey to find love. We meet people, date, get into and out of relationships, all with the hope of finding someone with whom we share a deep connection. This seems standard now, but it’s wildly different from what people did even just decades ago. Single people today have more romantic options than at any point in human history. With technology, our abilities to connect with and sort through these options are staggering. So why are so many people frustrated? Some of our problems are unique to our time. “Why did this guy just text me an emoji of a pizza?” “Should I go out with this girl even though she listed Combos as one of her favorite snack foods? Combos?!” “My girlfriend just got a message from some dude named Nathan. Who’s Nathan? Did he just send her a photo of his penis? Should I check just to be sure?” But the transformation of our romantic lives can’t be explained by technology alone. In a short period of time, the whole culture of finding love has changed dramatically. A few decades ago, people would find a decent person who lived in their neighborhood. Their families would meet and, after deciding neither party seemed like a murderer, they would get married and soon have a kid, all by the time they were twenty-four. Today, people marry later than ever and spend years of their lives on a quest to find the perfect person, a soul mate. For years, Aziz Ansari has been aiming his comic insight at modern romance, but for Modern Romance, the book, he decided he needed to take things to another level. He teamed up with NYU sociologist Eric Klinenberg and designed a massive research project, including hundreds of interviews and focus groups conducted everywhere from Tokyo to Buenos Aires to Wichita. They analyzed behavioral data and surveys and created their own online research forum on Reddit, which drew thousands of messages. They enlisted the world’s leading social scientists, including Andrew Cherlin, Eli Finkel, Helen Fisher, Sheena Iyengar, Barry Schwartz, Sherry Turkle, and Robb Willer. The result is unlike any social science or humor book we’ve seen before. In Modern Romance, Ansari combines his irreverent humor with cutting-edge social science to give us an unforgettable tour of our new romantic world.
Download or read book Love in America written by Lawrence R. Samuel and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2019-11-29 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Widely considered the most complex of human emotions, romantic love both shapes and reflects core societal values, its expression offering a window into the cultural zeitgeist. In popular culture, romantic love has long been a mainstay of film, television and music. The gap between fictitious narratives of love and real-life ones is, however, usually wide--American's expectations of romance and affection often transcend reality. Tracing the history of love in American culture, this book offers insight into both the national character and emotional nature.
Download or read book The Romance of American Psychology written by Ellen Herman and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2024-03-29 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Psychological insight is the creed of our time. A quiet academic discipline two generations ago, psychology has become a voice of great cultural authority, informing everything from family structure to government policy. How has this fledgling science become the source of contemporary America's most potent ideology? In this groundbreaking book—the first to fully explore the political and cultural significance of psychology in post-World War II America—Ellen Herman tells the story of Americans' love affair with the behavioral sciences. It began during wartime. The atmosphere of crisis sustained from the 1940s through the Cold War gave psychological "experts" an opportunity to prove their social theories and behavioral techniques. Psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists carved a niche within government and began shaping military, foreign, and domestic policy. Herman examines this marriage of politics and psychology, which continued through the tumultuous 1960s. Psychological professionals' influence also spread among the general public. Drawn by promises of mental health and happiness, people turned to these experts for enlightenment. Their opinions validated postwar social movements from civil rights to feminism and became the basis of a new world view. Fascinating and long overdue, this book illuminates one of the dominant forces in American society. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1995.
Download or read book Romantic Love in Cultural Contexts written by Victor Karandashev and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-12-24 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents a conceptual, historical, anthropological, and sociological review of how culture affects our experience and expression of romantic love. What is romantic love and how is it different from and similar to other kinds of love? How is romantic love related to sex and marriage in human history and across contemporary cultures? What cultural factors mediate attraction in love? These are some of the questions the volume explores through its interdisciplinary yet focused lens. Much of the current research evidence suggests that love is a universal emotion experienced by a majority of people, in various historical eras, and in all the world’s cultures. Yet, love displays in different ways because culture has an impact on people’s conceptions of love and the ways they feel, think, and behave in romantic relationships. This volume summarizes classical knowledge on love and culture while at the same time focusing sharply on recent studies and cutting-edge research that has advanced the field. Divided into three parts, the volume begins by defining and analyzing the concept of romantic love and interdisciplinary approach to its study in cultural context. Part II traces the origin and evolution of romantic love both in various places throughout the world and various time periods throughout history. Part III presents the revolutionary expansion of romantic love ideas and practices in the late 20th and early 21st centuries in various parts of the world, focusing particularly on the development of romantic love as a cultural ideal of the modern cultures. Finally, the book concludes by summarizing the major achievements in this field of study and predicts future development. A timely and thoughtful addition to the literature, Romantic Love in Cultural Contexts delivers thought-provoking insights to researchers in relationship scholarship, sociology, anthropology, and cultural studies, and all those interested in the universal human concept of love. Overall I find Dr. Victor Karandashev is an excellent and fine scholar who has a firm grasp of both the fundamental principles of cross-cultural research and of anthropology. In our increasingly connected world Romantic Love in Cultural Contexts updates and adds to the descriptions and explanations of similarities and differences in romantic love across generations and cultures. Romantic love encompasses the life span, rather than being a phenomenon largely confined to youthful years. The topic of this project concerns the deepest of our sentiments and pervades life from birth to death. This book contributes to better knowledge of this phenomenon across generations. Félix Neto (Professor of Psychology) Faculdade de Psicologia e de Ciências da Educação Universidade do Porto, Portugal
Download or read book How to Fall in Love with Anyone written by Mandy Len Catron and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-06-27 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A beautifully written and well-researched cultural criticism as well as an honest memoir” (Los Angeles Review of Books) from the author of the popular New York Times essay, “To Fall in Love with Anyone, Do This,” explores the romantic myths we create and explains how they limit our ability to achieve and sustain intimacy. What really makes love last? Does love ever work the way we say it does in movies and books and Facebook posts? Or does obsessing over those love stories hurt our real-life relationships? When her parents divorced after a twenty-eight year marriage and her own ten-year relationship ended, those were the questions that Mandy Len Catron wanted to answer. In a series of candid, vulnerable, and wise essays that takes a closer look at what it means to love someone, be loved, and how we present our love to the world, “Catron melds science and emotion beautifully into a thoughtful and thought-provoking meditation” (Bookpage). She delves back to 1944, when her grandparents met in a coal mining town in Appalachia, to her own dating life as a professor in Vancouver. She uses biologists’ research into dopamine triggers to ask whether the need to love is an innate human drive. She uses literary theory to show why we prefer certain kinds of love stories. She urges us to question the unwritten scripts we follow in relationships and looks into where those scripts come from. And she tells the story of how she decided to test an experiment that she’d read about—where the goal was to create intimacy between strangers using a list of thirty-six questions—and ended up in the surreal situation of having millions of people following her brand-new relationship. “Perfect fodder for the romantic and the cynic in all of us” (Booklist), How to Fall in Love with Anyone flips the script on love. “Clear-eyed and full of heart, it is mandatory reading for anyone coping with—or curious about—the challenges of contemporary courtship” (The Toronto Star).
Download or read book Searching the Heart written by Karen Lystra and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1992-06-25 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In January 1862, Charles Godwin courted Harriet Russell, ultimately unsuccessfully, with the following lines: "Like cadences of inexpressibly sweet music, your kind words came to me: causing every nerve to vibrate as though electrified by some far off strain of heavenly harmony." Almost ten years later, Albert Janin, upon receiving a letter from his beloved Violet Blair, responded with, "I kissed your letter over and over again, regardless of the small-pox epidemic at New York, and gave myself up to a carnival of bliss before breaking the envelope." And in October 1883, Dorothea Lummis wrote candidly to her husband Charles, "I like you to want me, dear, and if I were only with you, I would embrace more than the back of your neck, be sure." In Karen Lystra's richly provocative book, Searching the Heart, we hear the voices of Charles, Albert, Dorothea, and nearly one hundred other nineteenth-century Americans emerge from their surprisingly open, intimate, and emotional love letters. While historians of nineteenth-century America have explored a host of private topics, including courtship, marriage, birth control, sexuality, and sex roles, they have consistently neglected the study of romantic love. Lystra fills this gap by describing in vivid detail what it meant to fall in love in Victorian America. Based on a vast array of love letters, the book reveals the existence of a real openness--even playfulness--between male and female lovers which challenges and expands more traditional views of middle-class private life in Victorian America. Lystra refutes the common belief that Victorian men and women held passionlessness as an ideal in their romantic relationships. Enabling us to enter the hidden world of Victorian lovers, the letters they left behind offer genuine proof of the intensity of their most private interactions, feelings, behaviors, and judgments. Lystra discusses how Victorians anthropomorphized love letters, treating them as actual visits from their lovers, insisting on reading them in seclusion, sometimes kissing them (as Albert does with Violet's), and even taking them to bed. She also explores how courtship rituals--which included the setting and passing of tests of love--succeeded in building unique, emotional bonds between lovers, and how middle-class views of romantic love, which encouraged sharing knowledge and intimacy, gave women more power in the home. Through the medium of love letters, Searching the Heart allows us to enter, unnoticed, the Victorian bedroom and parlor. We will leave with a different view of middle-class Victorian America.
Download or read book A New Look at Love written by Elaine Hatfield and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 1985 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fascinating review of what social psychologists know about love, sex and intimacy puts to rest some tired clichés on the subject. Begins by asking "What is this thing called love?" and finds that people distinguish between two kinds of love, passionate love and companionate love. This study answers a variety of questions about love such as: Where is the best place to find someone to love? Do men and women want different things from love? How can couples make love last? Originally published by Addison-Wesley in 1978, it won the American Psychological Foundation National Media Award in 1979.
Download or read book The Romantic Friendship Reader written by Axel Nissen and published by UPNE. This book was released on 2003 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Novel excerpts, stories, and travel writing exemplifying a resistance to the "domestic ideology" of the later 19th century. Cf. Introduction. With critical commentary.
