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Romantic Love in America

Cultural Models of Gay, Straight, and Polyamorous Relationships

Victor C de Munck author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Lexington Books

Published:8th Apr '19

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

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Romantic Love in America cover

American Lovers: A Study of Romantic Love, Gender, and Sexuality introduces the reader to the love and sex lives of fifteen people: two are polyamorous, five are gay, and eight are straight. Coupled with rich interview material, this book provides a guided tour through the variable geography of love relationships as studied in the social sciences. Victor de Muck describes evolutionary, cognitive, social, prototypical, triadic, and neural and “style” theories of romantic love and sex, concluding with a generic American cultural model of romantic love that importantly delves into its relational properties as a dyad.

“Victor De Munck’s Romantic Love in America promises to introduce the reader to ‘the love and sex lives of fifteen people’ two of whom are polyamorous, eight of whom are straight, and five gay. This fascinating volume delivers on this promise and does so in a theoretical context which incorporates both cognitive and evolutionary frameworks. An absorbing read for those interested in the experiences and conceptualizations of individuals who experience romantic love or who indulge in a variety of sexual encounters with or without the justification of love.” -- Robert L. Moore, Professor Emeritus, Rollins College
“De Munck has given us an exciting and timely application of the idea of culture as consisting of shared, collectively held ‘cultural models’ which provide the frame within which individual goals, knowledge, and agency play out.   The issues which he explores through a rich mixture of extended interviews and analytic theory involve sexual identity, romantic love, and sex—an area of culture in which individual participants’ stake is large and in which there exists substantial individual variation and nuance.” -- David Kronenfeld, University of California - Riverside

  • Winner of SAS Book Prize 2019

ISBN: 9781498538695

Dimensions: 229mm x 162mm x 24mm

Weight: 562g

244 pages