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THE TRANSFORMATION OF INTIMACY: SEXUALITY, LOVE, & EROTICISM IN MODERN SOCIETIES. By Anthony Giddens, Stanford, CA: Stanford University, 1992; pp. vii + 212.
British sociologist Anthony Giddens provides a breezy, engaging read in proposing this theory of the current state of contemporary intimate relationships and the implications that this development holds for the transformation of culture and society as a whole. If one can overlook the light, self-help book style Giddens self-consciously chooses as a model, a provocative sociology of intimacy cast as emancipation awaits. Indeed, if nothing else, we have here a sure catalyst for spirited discussion in the interpersonal communication classroom as well as an heuristic tackle-box of potential research questions for the scholar.
The centerpiece of Gidden's theory is this; due to the technologically driven divorce of sex from reproduction (e.g. birth control, artificial insemination), and thus the propagation of the species, intimate (read sexual) relationships have become democratically negotiated affairs. They are frequently renegotiated and always emergent. Rather, we are left to believe that all relationships are always transitory in spirit, even if they last for fifty years. There is no such thing as a permanent relationship.
As an entry to his theory, Giddens recounts the notion that we have undergone a "sexual revolution" in the latter half of the 20th-century supplanting what he calls the female-created 19th-century notion of romantic love. This revolution has been assisted by technological developments such as washing machines and vacuum cleaners that have gradually freed women from domestic bondage culminating in the appearance of "plastic sexuality," the separation of sex and reproduction.
The result of this...