Description
Book SynopsisRomantic Love in America: Cultural Models of Gay, Straight, and Polyamorous Relationships introduces the reader to the love and sex lives of two polyamorous, five gay, and eight straight individuals. Coupled with rich interview material, Victor C. de Munck provides a guided tour through the variable geography of love relationships as studied in the social sciences. de Munck describes evolutionary, cognitive, social, prototypical, triadic, and neural theories of romantic love and sex, concluding with an American cultural model of romantic love that also includes its relational properties as a dyad.
Trade Review“Victor C. 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
Table of ContentsChapter 1: Defining Romantic Love vis-a-vis Sex and Love
Chapter 2: How Social and Evolutionary Factors Affect the Cultural Importance of RL
Chapter 3: A Tripod Theory of RL and Other Theories
Chapter 4: Interviews with Straight Women
Chapter 5: Interviews with Straight Men
Chapter 6: Interviews with Nonbinary Lesbian/Gay Women
Chapter 7: Interviews with Nonbinary Gay Men
Chapter 8: Interviews with Polyamorous Informants
