Changing Relations: Achieving Intimacy in a Time of Social Transition

Description

In a fast-changing world, what impact does social change have on our everyday relationships? How do modernisation processes influence our broader values, and how might these then affect our desires to marry, have a family and develop our social networks? And how do sudden events in a society - invasions, civil conflict, terrorist attacks, collapse of a political system - influence our relationship decisions and processes. In this book Goodwin critically reviews the literature on modernisation and contemporary relationships, challenging simplistic conclusions about the 'end of intimacy' and the inevitable decline of personal commitment. Reviewing work from across the globe, he also contends that adaptation to rapid change is moderated by individual, social class and cultural variations, with consequently differing impacts on everyday relations. In doing so he brings together contemporary debates in psychology, sociology and the political sciences on coping with social change and its impact on personal relations.

Robin Goodwin is professor of social psychology at Brunel University, West London. A winner of the New Faculty (Steve Duck) Prize by the International Society for the Study of Personal Relationships, he is associate fellow of the British Psychological Society, associate editor at the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, and past chair of the publications committee for the International Network on Personal Relationships.

"Robin Goodwin's scholarship is truly interdisciplinary and international. It represents a tremendous contribution to the field of personal relationships, which is still largely multidisciplinary and dominated by scholars in English-speaking countries. As he explains how relationships adapt to a rapidly changing and confusing world, Goodwin does a masterful job of connecting macro-level theories of social change to micro-level theories of social interaction. In so doing, he provides a thorough review of the literature including oft-cited references as well as more obscure ones." -Rebecca G. Adams, University of North Carolina at Greensboro "Doomsday commentators have worried that the stresses and strains of modern life - changes in education, employment, gender roles, marriage, child-rearing, and divorce - and the challenges of economic downturns, ethnic conflicts, epidemics, natural disasters, and cross-national migrations will render close human relationships extinct. In this fascinating book, Robin Goodwin ranges masterfully across societies, historical periods, and levels of analysis to show that human cultures and social systems - macro and micro - are more adaptable and resilient than pessimists assume. People find ways to know, support, and commit to each other; create families and make friends; and construct meaningful identities and lives, even if this requires both rapid and gradual changes in beliefs, expectations, mores, and patterns of cooperative behavior. Dazzling in its depth and breadth, beautifully written, Changing Relations provides a model of sophisticated relationship science." -Phillip R. Shaver, University of California, Davis