Distant Love (eBook)

Ulrich Beck is one of the world's leading sociologists and social thinkers, well-known for his bestselling book Risk Society. He is Emeritus Professor at the University of Munich and Professor of Sociology at the LSE. Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim is Visiting Professor at the University of Trondheim. Her previous books include The Normal Chaos of Love (co-authored with Ulrich Beck).

Translator's Note vii

Introduction 1

1 Globalization of Love and Intimacy: The Rise of World Families 4

2 Two Countries, One Couple: Tales of Mutual Understanding and Misunderstanding 20

3 Love Has Two Enemies: Distance and Closeness 44

4 Cosmopolitan Communities of Fate 67

5 Intimate Migrations: Women Marrying for a Better Life 77

6 Love Displaced: Migrant Mothers 103

7 Male Hegemony in Decline? Why Women Gain Power in World Families 123

8 Transnational Family Networks: Winners of Globalization? 138

9 My Mother Was a Spanish Ovum: Baby Tourism and Global Patchwork Families 144

10 The Intimate is Global: The Model of Distant Love 166

11 Are World Families Pioneers of Cosmopolitanism? 183

References and Bibliography 194

Index 208

"Rich and wide-ranging... will rightly provoke further theorizing and extend the nature of research conducted in the future."
Sociology

''Distant Love is a rich and provocative book, and continues the unique contributions made by its authors to the analysis of globalisation and the culture of late modernity. There are some very big ideas here, and the huge themes and issues are brought on from the wings to take a bow - this is from beginning to end an invitation to open up research into the plethora of issues and areas it brings into the light.''
Les Gofton, Times Higher Education Supplement

''The intimate and personal dimensions of globalization have not received as much attention as finance, environment, and conflict. They are also important, however, and exert a shaping influence on both individual lives and sociocultural change. It is a pleasure to see full-length attention from Beck and Beck-Gernsheim who bring both sociological insight and personal sensitivity to this timely account of Love at a Distance.''
Craig Calhoun, Director, London School of Economics and Political Science

''Just as there are global firms, so there are global families, the authors observe. A German man marries a Chinese woman. An American couple adopts a Guatemalan baby. A Korean farmer takes a Filipina mail order bride. A child is born of a Spanish ovum, a Danish sperm and an Indian womb. Do such families bring home conflicts between East and West, rich and poor nations, or are they pioneers in cosmopolitanism? In this wide-ranging book and original book, the authors explore a key truth D increasingly unfolding in our own living rooms.''
Arlie Russell Hochschild, University of California at Berkely and author of The Outsourced Self and So How's the Family? and other essays

''This path-breaking overview of 'distant love' traces the ways globalization is embodied and interiorized within the domains of personal affect and desire. Beck and Beck- Gernsheim demonstrate that contemporary marriage, family, kinship and reproduction are not contained by national systems of law, state borders, or inequalities of wealth, power, gender, and racialization.''
Nina Glick Schiller, University of Manchester