School of Social and Political Sciences - Theses
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 1 of 1
-
ItemLove in the Luhmannian world: differentiation and dissonance in the semantics of modern intimacy( 2014)One of the most profitable insights to emerge from the numerous debates which surrounded the decline of modernization theory was the understanding that the various social trends associated with the notion of “modernity” need not converge. In response to a concern that the generalized process concepts which had hitherto governed our understanding of modern society (such as “rationalization,” “individualization,” or “secularization”) painted a unilinear, monological picture of social change insensitive not only to regional differences, but to points of tension and dissonance within specific societies themselves, more pluralistic accounts of modernity attempted to highlight that the institutional characteristics, functional imperatives, and symbolic structures of modern societies may prove incompatible with each other, or may at the very least exist in states of disharmony. Despite this insistence, the sociological study of romantic love has largely continued to operate with a conception of society that minimizes the importance of divergent or conflictual trends. Intimate relations, considered by many to be dependent factors within accounts of social change, are often analyzed in light of broader social patterns without due consideration of the ways in which their own internal logic may contradict this attribution. Acknowledging this deficiency, this thesis seeks to build on the insights of differentiation theory by focusing on the ways in which romantic love may both consolidate and contradict the dominant semantic forms and organizational structures of modern society. In line with the theoretical apparatus of Niklas Luhmann, it seeks to present modern love as a self-referential set of social semantics, to analyze the status of intimate systems within contemporary society, and to explore the ways in which an empirical account of romantic relations may be enhanced by the insights of sociological systems theory. In so doing, it argues that love is a phenomenon which demands a multifaceted, pluralistic, and in many ways paradoxical understanding of modernity itself.