ABSTRACT
Chapter 6, ‘Love and intimacy in marriage’, explores historical and cultural perspectives on marriage and provides an interdisciplinary approach to marriage, drawing on sociological, anthropological and feminist perspectives and reviewing how these perspectives examine different cultural contexts. The underlying dimensions of gender, ethnicity and race determine many elements of diverse cultures. The chapter explores marriage and social change in the United States and Europe, as well as a range of other countries including China, Britain, Vietnam, Brazil, the Philippines and Japan. Marriage is reviewed in the context of migration and a range of work situations where women define marriage within a wider context, including migrant domestic workers, sex workers, ‘mail-order brides’ or adoptees. The chapter looks at heterosexual and same-sex marriage and considers why marriage is still an important factor in heterosexual and same-sex relationships.
The chapter covers the work of a number of sociologists, including Stephanie Coontz’s analysis of marriage in the US in her book The Way We Never Were. Sociologists such as Ulrich Beck and Elizabeth Beck-Gernsheim have described how marriage and the family have changed radically with ‘serial partnerships’ and ‘patchwork’ families as the norm. They also describe ‘love at a distance’, describing mixed-nationality couples who migrate for work and marriage. The chapter also focuses on the way in which traditional narratives of love and romance, drawing on an American context within romance novels, have an impact in a post-colonial context like Australia.
