Love & Eroticism

What is the significance of love and eroticism in contemporary social and cultural life? Do the irrationalities of love and sexual attraction increase the aggression and violence between the sexes? Or can the development of romantic love be linked to feminine freedom and the rise in the status of women? Has the quest for life-long romantic love given way to the affair? Or has there been a resurgence of conservative ideas of love and sex in the wake of the AIDS crisis?

This major collection explores the contested nature of love and eroticism. It examines the ways in which erotic bodily pleasures have become central to contemporary consumer culture. It investigates the spatial dimension of erotic life through considerations of Bohemian love, the gay city and the ways in which the urban landscape and everyday life have become sexualized - issues which have become central to the emergence of 'queer’ as a new form of gender politics and more general questions of sexual citizenship.

Drawing on the work of feminists, sociologists and cultural theorists, this book contains a wide-ranging and accessible set of contributions to contemporary debates on sexuality, love and eroticism.

Love & Eroticism is simultaneously published as volume 15, issue 3-4 of Theory, Culture & Society.