Hide
Раскрыть
РУС /  ENG

Irina Trotsuk 1, 2
  • 1 National Research University Higher School of Economics, 20 Myasnitskaya Str., Moscow, 101000, Russian Federation
  • 2 Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia, 6 Miklukho-Maklaya Street, Moscow, 117198, Russia

(No)Love and Other Consequences of (No)Freedom and (No)Choice in the Era of “Emotional (Post) Modernity” (Whatever It Means)

2025, vol. 24, No. 3, pp. 284–308 [issue contents]
The article is a review-reflection on the book by Eva Illouz The End of Love: A Sociology of Negative Relations, which continues and develops in a rather pessimistic perspective the ideas presented in the book Why Love Hurts: A Sociological Explanation. In the first book, Illouz explains the possibilities and necessity of sociological study of love under its consumer-market rationalization in terms of contractual relations as dominant in the social-emotional organization of contemporary (Western) society. In the second book, Illouz rather declares love as an object of study than makes it such, focusing on negative sociality: the era of no-choices, no-agreements, no-relationships leads to the “end of love” as a new form of no-sociality generated by the interweaving capitalist logic, emotional modernity, sexual freedom, gender inequality and new technologies. The first, main part of the article briefly reconstructs the general logic of the book and thematic emphases of its six chapters: key terms, theoretical-methodological foundations and conceptual provisions of “sociology of negative choice”; relationship between the concepts of freedom and choice in modernism and postmodernism; market model of sexual-emotional supply and demand; types of (un)certainty (emotional, normative, ontological); features of scopic capitalism; classical and new types of hegemonic masculinity; feminism and women’s dual position in the sexual-emotional relations of consumer capitalism; negative and positive social relations; social trust and the project nature of interactions; consequences of negative relations for the institution of marriage. Despite the exceptional usefulness of the book for the (prepared) reader, the second, smaller part of the article summarizes its significant limitations: excessive explicit and implicit evaluativeness, including the exaggeration of the role of negative choice; too broad generalizations on an insufficient empirical and illustrative basis; author’s complicated “relationships” with sociological methodology and terminology.
Citation: Trotsuk I. (2025) (Ne)lyubov' i drugie posledstviya (ne)svobod i (ne)vybora v epokhu«emotsional'nogo (post)moderna (chto by takovoy ni znachil)* [(No)Love and Other Consequences of (No)Freedom and (No)Choice in the Era of “Emotional (Post) Modernity” (Whatever It Means)]. The Russian Sociological Review, vol. 24, no 3, pp. 284-308 (in Russian)
BiBTeX
RIS
The Russian Sociological Review
Office A-205
21/4 Staraya Basmannaya Ulitsa, Building 1
Deputy Editor: Marina Pugacheva
 
Rambler's Top100 rss