Beyond romance to radical love: What does it mean to pursue a sociology of love?

• In Event: Theory Section Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 7

Abstract

What is a sociology of love? In this essay, I argue that love is more than just a topic to analyze. Love is too expansive and transformative to remain bounded as a research area of interest. Earnest, thorough, rigorous study of love requires that we spend extended time with it. Doing so heightens the possibility that love will do what it inevitably does – infuse and transform that with which it comes into contact. Then, if it is not simply a research area of interest, a social fact for analysis, what is it? Pursuing a sociology of love shapes an entire paradigm - ontology, epistemology, and methodology all.

Author

• Jocelyn Bell, Bryant University