Social Production of Love in Switzerland and Quebec
Inspired by analyses of gender from social constructionist and phenomenological perspectives, romantic love is conceptualized as a gendered production on institutional, interactional and individual levels. In contemporary Western society where romantic love is the basic criterion of couple legitimation, producing love everyday is a performative and an emotional accomplishment, inevitable and necessary that draws its meaning and validation from its institutional dimensions. By their cultural significations seen as the antinomy of romantic values, economic interaction in Swiss and Quebec couples are particularly illustrative of the dynamic processes of the social construction of love. This multidimensional perspective, which aims to bring together diverse sociological theories of love, also proposes a unified perspective of love and power by showing how the former provides the conditions of possibility for the latter.