Modern Love: Romance, Intimacy, and the Marriage Crisis

Journal of Social History, Fall, 2005 by John C. Spurlock

Modern Love makes an important contribution to our understanding of relationship in twentieth-century America. It touches on many of the same themes as Eva Illouz' Consuming the Romantic Utopia (1997). Both books explore the use of love within the context of alienation in a capitalistic society. Modern Love should also be read by anyone who reads Helen Fisher's Why We Love (2004). Fisher treats love as a universal experience, a product of heredity and evolution. Shumway knows Fisher's work, and relies on her anthropological analysis to identify transcultural elements in love and romance. But Fisher's work tends to naturalize romance, to make it a product of our brain chemistry. Shumway shows how we construct love in our ongoing collective discussion of passion.

John C. Spurlock

Seton Hill University

COPYRIGHT 2005 Journal of Social History
COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group

 

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