Romantic Love in America: Cultural Models of Gay, Straight, and Polyamorous Relationships

by Victor C. de Munck Vilnius University and State University of New York at New Paltz

Overview

Romantic 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 interviewmaterial, Victor C. de Munck provides a guided tour through the variablegeography of love relationships as studied in the social sciences. de Munckdescribes evolutionary, cognitive, social, prototypical, triadic, and neural theoriesof romantic love and sex, concluding with an American cultural model ofromantic love that also includes its relational properties as a dyad.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781498538718
Publisher:	Lexington Books
Publication date:	07/02/2021
Series:	Anthropology of Well-Being: Individual, Community, Society
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	6.03(w) x 8.63(h) x 0.69(d)

About the Author

Victor de Munck is professor in the Institute of Asian and Transcultural Studies at Vilnius University and State University of New York at New Paltz.

Table of Contents

Chapter 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

Editorial Reviews

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

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