Intersectional Perspectives on Love

Emotions are a constitutive part of social relations. One of the most powerful emotions is love, which entails not only a strong emotional experience, but a narrative dimension too. People like to tell stories about love and many cultural narratives about love carry strong and normative implications of what to feel, expect and what (not) to do in love. Love is often conceived as a state of solidarity and equality; however, it can also be a state that gives rise to oppression, resistance, and transformation. In this session, we want to take an intersectional critical perspective on love and its normative implications. Contributions can address, but are not limited to, the following questions:

• How can love be approached from an intersectional perspective?
• How does the research topic of love and attachment shape our ethnographic encounters and our relationship to interview partners and other respondents?
• What can we learn about power relations when we research love? How are these racialized, gendered and classed and how do they find expression in love practices and love narratives?
• In what ways do spatial and temporal contexts shape love practices? How do social policies and political practices influence experiences and practices of love? How can love be conceptualized and investigated in a transnational context?

We invite papers that critically approach love from an interdisciplinary perspective. We particularly welcome contributions that combine different qualitative approaches with the sociology of emotions, affect theory, feminist love studies, critical race theory, intersectionality, and transnational studies.