June 24, 2022 • 41 mins
Think of intimacy and, pretty soon, you’ll probably think about sex. But, as sociologist Katherine Twamley explains, intimacy means much more than that: it’s woven through so many of our relationships – including with people whose names we might not even know. She tells Rosie and Alexis how an accidental trip to India got her thinking about the varied meanings of “love” across cultures and contexts, and reflects on whether, to quote the famous song, love and marriage really do “go together like a horse and carriage”.
Plus: what could it mean to decolonise love? Why should we be wary of acts performed in the name of love? Will we ever live in a truly “contactless” world, and who wants that? And we get intimate with the artist Sophie Calle.
Guest: Katherine Twamley
Hosts: Rosie Hancock, Alexis Hieu Truong
Executive Producer: Alice Bloch
Sound Engineer: David Crackles
Music: Joe Gardner
Artwork: Erin Aniker
Find more about Uncommon Sense at The Sociological Review.
Episode Resources
Katherine, Rosie, Alexis and our producer Alice recommended
- Ian McEwan’s novel “Machines Like Me”
- Haruhiko Kawaguchi’s photography
- Sophie Calle’s conceptual art
- Alex Thompson’s film “Saint Frances”
From The Sociological Review
- “The Sociology of Love” – Julia Carter
- On asexual people and intimacy – Matt Dawson, Liz McDonnell and Susie Scott
- On the phenomenon of self-marriage – Kinneret Lahad and Michal Karvel-Tovi
Further readings
- “Love, Marriage and Intimacy Among Gujarati Indians” – Katherine Twamley
- “Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays, Kinship” – Kath Weston
- “Intimate Labors: Cultures, Technologies, and the Politics of Care” – Eileen Boris and Rhacel Salazar Parreñas (editors)
- On Emotional Labour – Arlie Hochschild
- “Decolonising Families and Relationships” – British Sociological Association webinars
- “Liquid Love: On the Frailty of Human Bonds” – Zygmunt Bauman
- “Individualization: Institutionalized Individualism and Its Social and Political Consequences” – Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim and Ulrich Beck
- Nandita Dutta’s research on South Asian beauty salons in London as diasporic sites of intimacy
- Nick Crossley’s sociological work
- Jessica Ringrose’s sociological work
- Greta Thunberg’s Twitter page (mentioned by Katherine as an intimacy example)
- James Baldwin’s novel “Giovanni’s Room”
- Sally Rooney’s novel “Normal People”
Support our work. Make a one-off or regular donation to help fund future episodes of Uncommon Sense: donorbox.org/uncommon-sense
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Alexis Hieu Truong (00:04):
Hi there, and welcome to your monthly dose
of Uncommon Sense. I'm AlexisHieu Truong in Ottawa, Canada.
Rosie Hancock (00:10):
And I'm Rosie Hancock in Sydney, Australia.
And along with everyone makingthis podcast at The Sociological
Review, we want to spread thesociological word.
Alexis Hieu Truong (00:21):
And that's not because we're on some kind
of ego trip, but because itmatters. It's about questioning
the assumptions about the worldwe share, and making space to
think about what better futuresmight look like.
Rosie Hancock (00:33):
So far in the series, we've taken a really
close, kind of sideways, look atthings like home, care, the
concept of education. Today,we're going to talk about love
and intimacy.
Alexis Hieu Truong (00:45):
Now, unlike say, education, love and
intimacy can seem like thingsthat belong to the private realm
or to pop culture (00:55):
Taylor Swift or Frank Ocean, or novelists
like James Baldwin and SallyRooney. But a sociologist!? I
mean, who wants a sociology bookas a Valentine's gift, right?
Rosie Hancock (01:09):
Yeah, no, thanks.
I mean, I love sociology, butnot that much.
Alexis Hieu Truong (01:15):
So, to reject love and intimacy means
missing out on some criticalconversations, because our ideas
around love and intimacy areboth shaped by and shape our
wider world. And associologists, we're interested
in how all of that works, howour values or norms, how say,
like, colonialism or capitalismplay out in what seems like our
(01:37):
most private relationships.
Rosie Hancock (01:39):
Yeah. How, for example, has a lyric like
Whitney Houston's "I Will AlwaysLove You" come to sound as much
like a threat as a romanticpromise, and this time of short
term dating, of shopping aroundfor love. And shouldn't Stevie
Wonder change that famous songtitle to "I Just WhatsApped To
Say I Love You"?
Alexis Hieu Truong (01:58):
Yeah. In fact, it's not just that our
ideas of love and intimacy haveevolved over time. It's also
true that love, for example,isn't always actually that
positive. It gets invoked tojustify and frame all sorts of
things (02:14):
inequality, hypocrisy, consumerism, nationalism too.
And slapping Chris Rock at theOscars, if you're the "aspiring
vessel of love", Will Smith.
Think about it like that. Andit's clear that so called
"matters of the heart" areactually deeply sociological.
Rosie Hancock (02:32):
Yep, they're all things that we'll dig into with
our guests today. Joining us totalk about love and intimacy,
which is just one of herinterests – alongside things
like feminism and family, genderand parenthood – is Katherine
Twamley, based at UniversityCollege in London. Hi, there,
Katherine.
Katherine Twamley (02:49):
Hi, great to be here.
Rosie Hancock (02:50):
I have to say that when I heard we were
talking about intimacy, my mindimmediately went to the sealed
section of the Dolly magazine,which is this popular teen
magazine that you could get whenI was growing up in New Zealand
and it was very exciting. And Ihate to disappoint the listeners
out there, but I don't thinkthat's where we're heading
(03:11):
today. Right?
Katherine Twamley (03:12):
Yeah, absolutely. I think often when
we think about intimacy, wethink oh, we mean, you know,
physical intimacy, sexuality.
But actually, a sociology ofintimacy is much wider than
that.
Alexis Hieu Truong (03:22):
As we mentioned there, love seems like
something that's almost toosacred to talk about, even in a
remotely academic way. Somethingthat's timeless, private,
precious; something youshouldn't theorise or get high
minded about. We offered a bitof a defence already, but what
would you add to it?
Katherine Twamley (03:38):
I think, for me, the beauty of sociology is
exactly that (03:41):
to be able to unpack the most personal of
experiences that we have and tosituate them into wider
processes in society. When Ithink back on my undergraduate
in sociology, something thatreally struck me and has, I
guess, influenced, in a way, myfocus on the sociology of love,
(04:04):
was learning about Durkheim'swork around suicide. So,
Durkheim showed that although wewould think of suicide as
something to do with a deeplypersonal circumstance that
happens to somebody, we also see– when we kind of look at a
wider macro lens the wayDurkheim did – that there are
peaks and troughs, and there aretrends. So, different kinds of
(04:25):
people at different time pointsare more likely to commit
suicide. And we see in differentperiods of history greater or
smaller trends, amounts ofpeople who take their own life.
And that really struck me thatwow. So, something so personal,
like suicide can be influencedby wider structures. And it's
the same, for me, with love. So,love is maybe more positively
(04:47):
associated, but that is alsoinfluenced by greater processes
and what's happening in theworld.
Rosie Hancock (04:53):
Yeah, and so, I guess not only is love socially
constructed, its significancefor making relations and ships
is also what I would callculturally constructed, right?
So we've come to think, at leastin the culture I was raised in,
that, to quote another song,"love and marriage go together
like a horse and carriage". Butit doesn't actually have to be
(05:14):
that way. And that's anassumption that you dig into in
your first book, back in 2014,based on research where you
compare experiences of love andintimacy amongst Gujarati
Indians born and brought up inIndia, and people of Gujarati
Indian heritage born and broughtup in the UK. We'll talk more
about your findings in just amoment. But can you first tell
(05:36):
us how you ended up in India inthe first place, and what
assumptions you took with youabout love?
Katherine Twamley (05:41):
Well, how I ended up in India was basically
an administrative error, I hateto say, but that is the truth.
So, I was doing my undergraduateand at the end of my
undergraduate I applied to do akind of an internship for ... to
take part in an internshipprogramme, and I requested to be
sent to French-speaking Africa –I'd never been to Africa, I was
(06:01):
interested in African culture,and I also wanted to work on my
French – and they accidentallysent me to India. But when I
arrived in India, I really fellin love with the culture and
just found it to be sofascinating. And at that time, I
thought it was sort ofdiametrically different to what
I had been ... how I had beenbrought up in Ireland, and most
(06:22):
specifically aroundrelationships, which was really
a topic that often came up withmy friends there, who I miss.
And I was in Gujarat, at thestate of Gujarat, as well. So
that was kind of, again,circumstance. And as I learned
about their ideas of love andintimate relationships, and
"Okay, this is something I wantto unpack". Because up until
(06:43):
that point, I had myself thoughtlove is biological, and it's the
same the world over. And then,
when I was there, I said (06:51):
"Okay, they have very different ideas
of what love means." And as yousay, how that is associated with
marriage. And so I worked my waythrough a master's, and then to
come back from my PhD, which isthe work that you're talking
about.
Alexis Hieu Truong (07:04):
One of the stories you tell in your book is
of a Gujarati Indian friend ofyours in India named Antuk. Tell
us about his approach to love,this idea of wanting love to be
arranged as you described it.
Katherine Twamley (07:16):
Yeah, so, Antuk was really interesting.
So, he spoke to me a lot abouthis desire for romance, and kind
of this grand narrative that heseemed to desire. That's what he
spoke to me about, about wantingto fall in love. And I set him
up on a date with a friend ofmine, who was ... I think she
(07:37):
was Norwegian. And then she toldme about the date afterwards,
and he arrived in a limo tobring her out. Gujarat is an
alcohol-free state, but he hadchampagne glasses with a large
bottle of Coca Cola. And hebrought her to the cinema. And
then he was opening the door.
And it was all kind of verychivalrous stereotypically
romantic, what we might expectfrom a kind of Jane Austen novel
type thing updated. And he toldme he really enjoyed the date,
(08:00):
but he wasn't going to go out ona date with her again. And in
fact, his parents had alreadynow arranged marriage for him.
And he was getting married to aUS-born Indian woman, and they
had met once. And he would meether again the day before the
wedding, and then on thewedding; which is probably not
very common practice withinIndia, but it's quite common in
(08:22):
transnational marriages, becauseof the expense of travelling and
meeting up with one anotherbefore the wedding day. And this
just seemed completely odd to
me. I was like (08:33):
"How can you equate these two desires for
love and romance and then, atthe same time, set yourself up
for an arranged marriage thatyour parents have effectively
arranged for you?" And after hewas married, then he sent me
messages about how it waseverything he ever desired, and
that she bought him breakfast inbed every morning, and it was
(08:53):
sort of this perfect marriage.
I'm still in touch with them,and they're, they're married
with two kids now. And they livein the US. Yes, that was a kind
of another spark for me of "oh,there's something odd going on
here". But upon reflection, andafter sitting, I didn't think it
was so odd. But that was myinitial entry into the world of
love and marriage in India.
Rosie Hancock (09:12):
Katherine, I think what's super interesting,
you encountered this idea ofwanting love to be arranged and
it's seeming kind ofcontradictory with what Antuk
kind of thought about romance.
And I'm curious whether youthink that actually that's not
so far from where, you know,so-called Western culture is
now, and I'm thinking inparticular of dating sites that
use algorithms to hook us up orreality TV shows – there's a
(09:35):
super popular one here inAustralia, "Married at First
Sight", where people, you know,have these kind of shotgun
weddings, don't even meet eachother beforehand. You know, it
seems we can't get married tostrangers fast enough, and we're
asking for help to do it right,potentially on national
television as well.
Katherine Twamley (09:56):
I think that's a really interesting
trend. And so, when I was doingmy fieldwork that wasn't ...
Alexis Hieu Truong (10:01):
That's super interesting. And I think that
that kind of wasn't reallyaround. So, I mean, I talked
about arranging love, that was aterm that Alexis mentioned, and
maybe I should explain it a bit,in a bit more detail. So, what
Antuk wanted and what otherparticipants of mine wanted was
those ideas about, like, what weshould do, like the "ticking of
certain factors in their futurespouse. So, they wanted them to
be at the correct caste, thecorrect class, the correct
(10:22):
height, the correct skin coloursometimes; various different
factors, which they said wouldensure that their family would
be happy, and that would ensurea lasting relationship. Because,
boxes", those norms is whatmakes it so sociologically
from their point of view, alasting relationship should have
these various factors. Theyshould have a common
understanding of the world. So,they wanted to make sure these
(10:42):
factors were, if you'd like,"ticked off their box" and then,
important, right? And in yourbook, you ... it considers the
they would talk about makingsure – through the various
practices of intimacy, such asgoing on dates, and so on, so
forth – they would create thislove. So, they would arrange the
love within the appropriatecircumstances. And for me,
looking at, you know, UK orIreland, or, you know, global
values of people like Antuk,alongside people of Gujarati
(11:02):
North Euro-American society, wesee similar processes, as you
exactly say, in that peopledon't talk about it quite as
explicitly, but they also tickthese boxes. And they also, when
we look at kind of research,they are seeking and they have
these ideas about "what would bea correct partner for me". And
heritage in the UK, who alsotalked to you about love and
some of it can be quite like"similar interests", for
(11:23):
example, but often, these arearound class differences and
racial preferences. And so yousee, if we look at marriage
statistics, we see that peopletend to marry somebody of a
similar class background and ofa particular ethnic background.
marriage. I'm wondering whattheir perspectives were, and
Some of that is around exposure,but some of it is around ideas
around "who would be anappropriate and correct match
(11:43):
for myself".
whether that was perhaps shapedby the fact that they were
(12:05):
talking to you? So, someone notfrom the same background.
Katherine Twamley (12:21):
Yeah. As was kind of mentioned, it was kind
of a comparative study. So, Iwas looking at cousins who had
been – at least that was how itwas initially designed – born
and brought up in India andtheir cousins born and brought
up in the UK. And for those whohad been born and brought up in
the UK, I sort of argued thatthere was three kind of main
factors. So, there was culturaland thinking about the local UK
culture and the Indian culture,and ideas around appropriate
(12:44):
relationships from theirfamilies perspective, from their
own perspective, from the kindof media that they were
consuming. And then there wasmaterial factors. So, for
example, they could liveseparately from their parents in
a different city, they weren'tunder, kind of, the observation
of elders to make sure that theyhad ... that they behaved in a
particular way. And then theother one is positionality. So,
(13:07):
being a part of a minoritizedgroup, and being interviewed by
somebody from a White Irishbackground, if you'd like. So, I
think for sure that influencedhow they spoke with me, it
influenced the recruitment. So,for example, I found it quite
difficult to recruitparticipants who were intending
and wanted to have an arrangedmarriage. And I think at that
(13:29):
time point – I think it'sshifted a little bit now – but
at that time point, there was alot of talk in the media about
forced marriage, and they wereoften arranged marriage and
forced marriage wereinterchangeably used sometimes.
And so there was a concernexplicitly expressed to me as
well by my participants, aboutmy research and about how there
(13:49):
was misunderstandings about whatarranged marriage meant; which
also encouraged them as well toposition themselves as not
having an arranged marriage. So,explicitly rejecting that term,
even when they were. So, theycalled it an introduced
marriage, although there weresome certain ways in which they
were different. So, for sure,who I was influenced the way
(14:10):
they presented themselves.
Rosie Hancock (14:12):
So, to clarify, your interviewees for that
particular project identified asheterosexual, and they were in
or designed to be in monogamousmixed-sex relationships, right?
I'm asking this question becauseI'm, I'm thinking about the way
in which family formation andgay and lesbian communities can
be a bit different. So, if youthink about Kath Weston's
(14:34):
classic "Families We Choose" andhow she illustrates how gay men
and women construct their ownideas of kinship, drawing on the
symbolism of love and friendshipand biology. So, I'm wondering,
you know, how this might haveshaped your data – the fact that
your participants wereheterosexual – and how things
(14:56):
might maybe have lookeddifferent with participants who
identified as queer?
Katherine Twamley (15:00):
Yeah, I think that's a really important
question. So, in sociology, wedraw a lot on what is known as
Script Theory, particularly instudies around intimacy and
sexuality. So, this idea that wehave a recognisable narrative,
for example, around love andintimacy. So, this is
ubiquitous, right, in novels andin films. And there's an
(15:22):
"appropriate" way about howrelationships should pan out,
and how we recognise intimatepractices. So, if someone buys
me flowers, but you know,they're expressing, well ... if
a man buys a woman flowers,typically, they're expressing a
certain feeling towards me, andso on and so forth. And the same
with families, there are certainthings we recognisably
understand as an "appropriate"family practice. And, I guess,
(15:42):
many of the arguments in theliterature around same-sex or
queer families is that they'refreer from these scripts, that
they don't have to draw on them.
Sometimes they may draw on themin order to justify and
demonstrate themselves as"appropriately" a family and a
couple. But they can also veeraway from these scripts.
Potentially have more freedom todo so and will – kind of from a
political perspective – try todo so. And that can be positive
(16:06):
for both people who are inmixed-sex relationships or
heterosexual relationships ormore normative families, because
it can push forward our dynamicsand understanding of what a
family and a relationship canbe.
Rosie Hancock (16:20):
Katherine. So, your research showed us how love
is really socially constructed.
So, you know, as much as wewould like to think it's a
matter of being struck byCupid's bow, it's really shaped
by our time and place andculture and context. So, having
discussed that, we thought we'dnow turn to dig into what love
(16:41):
means sociologically, andintimacy too. Because those are
two things that often go hand inhand, or at least we assume they
do. So, Katherine, is love seenas something that's positive
generally, but intimacy is maybea bit broader? Like, how would
you define it?
Katherine Twamley (17:02):
So, I would say that love is more associated
with the emotion; so, the kindsof feelings that we experience.
Whereas intimacy can be tied tothe emotion or can not be tied
to the emotion, and often insociology, when we talk about
intimacy, we're focusing onpractices. So, the ways in which
(17:24):
people demonstrate to oneanother that feeling of
closeness, or how those feelingsof closeness can be generated,
and then whether and how that islinked with love.
Rosie Hancock (17:35):
And intimacy can be between people who don't even
know each other's names, orwhere there's a clear power
imbalance. I am thinking here ofthat collection, edited by
Eileen Boris and Rhacel SalazarParreñas, "Intimate Labors".
That collection highlights thosepoints where money and intimacy
meet. So, looking at things likedomestic work, care work, sex
(17:57):
work, even sperm donation. Couldyou talk to us about that a wee
bit?
Katherine Twamley (18:01):
Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a
really interesting body of work.
And as you say, it demonstrateshow we can be intimate with
people without having thatloving or close connection. So,
you've brought up some classicexamples there around sex work;
we could also think abouthairdressers, who give us
massage or are very intimatelyclose with us, but it's more of
a transactional relationship.
(18:22):
Although, I have a PhD studentwho's doing work on a hair salon
and the intimacy that's createdbetween them, and the inequality
and how people can feel. So, theperson who's receiving the
massage can feel like "oh, thishairdresser is my friend". And
then we can think about theemotional labour that's involved
– thinking of Arlie Hochschild'swork – on the part of the
hairdresser, who knows that partof her work, or his work, is
(18:47):
creating this intimate momentfor the client, but they
wouldn't necessarily have thoseloving or emotional connections
beneath it. So, as you say,there can be disparities. And
then in the same point, youknow, you can have monetary
transactions between people whoare extremely close, and who
would identify themselves asbeing in a two-way, intimate
(19:07):
relationship. So, more kind ofclassically, we often had
housewives receiving a kind of asalary from their partners. But
we also have nannies who canhave a deep connection with
their children, who are beingpaid to be in that position. And
I think Parreñas's work reallytaps into that actually, about
how domestic migrant workers canfeel that love for the people
(19:27):
that they're taking care of, andthe kind of deficit that ends up
resulting in that. Because theirown children are missing that
kind of love and affection,which they are giving, possibly,
to their clients and thechildren that they're looking
after.
Alexis Hieu Truong (19:41):
And actually, love isn't always
benign, either, is it? I wasreading this great piece on Love
by Julia Carter on TheSociological Review site, and
she mentions how love can be a"legitimating ideology". I'm
wondering what you make of that?
I guess, love can be used tojustify war and nationalism,
like "love of your country", andconsumerism too. Both of those
(20:04):
things can cause harm. So, it'snot always all that good. Right?
I was wondering what yourthoughts on that were?
Katherine Twamley (20:13):
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you brought
up a really great recent exampleof Will Smith who hits the
comedian in the Oscars, and itwas justified through the
feelings that he had for hiswife. So, that's a kind of a
very personalised example. Butif we look at kind of rhetoric
around colonialism, we see thatpart of the justification for
(20:34):
colonialism was that theintimate relationships of the
kind of, inverted commas,"natives" in the colonised lands
were not sufficiently "modern"and "appropriate". And that was
a way of justifyingcolonisation, saying: "Look at
them, they have so many partnersand they don't have a
marriage-based relationship,which is blessed by Christ" and
so on and so forth. So,absolutely, it can be used in
(20:56):
the legitimation of differentkinds of both positive and
negative behaviours on apersonal level, but also on a
kind of governing intimacieswider level.
Rosie Hancock (21:05):
That's so fascinating, because today,
there's all of these kind ofcalls out there for "more love",
a "more loving society", allthat sort of jazz. But, I guess,
what we're getting at here isthe need to ask who is talking
about love? How are theyinvoking it? To what ends? You
know, etc, etc, etc. And ofcourse, who's excluded from the
(21:27):
idea of love that's been put outthere as well?
Katherine Twamley (21:29):
Yeah, absolutely. So, reflecting, for
example, on the work of BevSkeggs, who obviously also did a
podcast with you around care.
So, when you think about whoreceives care and how that can
be legitimised through a loveand a personal connection. So,
if we think about, for example... I often think about the
justification around sending ourchildren to private schools. So,
(21:50):
we know on a kind of a societallevel – in the UK it's very
dominant in sort of policy andpolitics, political discourse or
how politicians talk abouteducation – we know that private
school is not good for socialmobility across the population.
And often politicians talk
about (22:08):
"Okay, so, we should get rid of" – particularly left wing
politicians – "we should get ridof private education", but at
the same time, they send theirchildren to private schools with
a justification of, well, I loveand I care for my child. And
having that kind of familialconnection can justify a
behaviour that is not good forsociety at large or is not
consistent with one, you know,one's political ideals. And so
(22:32):
that, I think, is an example ofhow love can be used to
legitimate a kind of abehaviour, which is not in
consonance with the professedideals of the person
Alexis Hieu Truong (22:42):
Katherine, I just wanted to go back on
something you said aboutcolonialism. And I was wondering
if you can elaborate on it maybeabout how we can imagine
decolonizing love, like, whatwould that look like?
Katherine Twamley (22:55):
I think that's a really interesting
question and one that hasn'tbeen sufficiently addressed in
sociology, and one which I'mtrying to work on with my
colleagues. So, we held a kindof a seminar series inviting
different people to consider thedecolonization of love and
relationships, and that reallykind of show the darth of
research in this area. Thinkingabout my own research in India,
(23:20):
I think what's reallyinteresting is that the kind of
suppositions that I made aboutwhat was happening in India,
were often based on a kind of amisunderstanding of what, in the
(23:40):
Global South, love andrelationships is like, and that
that it was not as "advanced" orwas on its pathway to what love
and relationships look like inmore, quote unquote, "modern"
societies. But actually, becauseof the colonial relationship,
the UK was hugely influential inhow intimate relationships now
are set up. In fact, they weremuch more fluid pre colonisation
from the UK into India, therewas more fluidity around gender,
as well, and genderrelationships and sexual
(24:02):
relationships. And there stillremained to be the case in
certain caste groups and incertain groups that weren't kind
of, not colonised, but weren'tbrought into the colonisation
process to the same extent. So,for me, decolonization of love
and intimacy is recognising howcolonisation has actually shaped
and is implicated incontemporary marriage and
(24:24):
relationships, and how we viewand how we see them.
Alexis Hieu Truong (24:27):
Yeah, that's definitely something we need to
think more about. One othernotion that's been discussed
more is maybe Zygmunt Bauman'sidea of liquid love. Can you
tell us a bit about that?
Katherine Twamley (24:38):
Yeah, absolutely. So, this is related
to the idea of theindividualization of society.
So, in modern or contemporarysociety, we are less beholden to
particular ideas about how weshould "appropriately" behave.
So, in pre-contemporary times,according to Bauman and Beck and
(25:01):
Beck-Gernsheim, and Giddens to acertain extent, the idea is that
people expected to have asimilar family a similar career
and a similar role in life totheir parents before them, and
that there was kind of strictideas about who we should be and
who we will be. And incontemporary society, things are
more liquid or fluid, in that wehave more choice in how we can
(25:24):
act in the world, there are moreoptions open to us, we can
migrate, there's much more kindof fluid boundaries between
different countries – inparentheses for some people, and
not for everybody – andtherefore, our relationships are
also more fluid; we can imaginedivorce now, we can get into a
relationship and not feel likewe have to stay within that
(25:47):
relationship, which we mighthave felt beforehand because of
traditional ideals of family andmarriage. So, this greater
liquidness is about fluidity inand out of different kinds of
relationships and family, andBauman's kind of very critical
and negative about that. Sosaying: "Well, this has brought
more fragility to intimateconnections between people and
ultimately is not very positivefor the wellbeing of individuals
(26:09):
and society".
Rosie Hancock (26:11):
But you, you kind of want to challenge all of that
a little bit. Right, Katherine?
Like, that isn't universally thecase?
Katherine Twamley (26:18):
I think it's not universally the case on a
kind of a global scale, and Ithink it's not universally the
case even in the UK, where hewas writing about, or Western
Europe. So, this idea that Isort of hinted at, that borders
are now fluid, of course, weknow that migration is, you
know, very contested. We hadBrexit recently here in the UK,
(26:41):
so certainly not everyone canmove about as freely in the
global world. But also, I thinkthe work around
individualization has beencritiqued for overlooking a lot
of empirical work, which showsthe lasting desire for
commitment, even if it alwaysdoesn't ... doesn't always pan
out. And so, the kind of ratesof marriage dropped a little bit
(27:03):
and certainly divorce went up.
But still, you know, rates ofmarriage on the whole, most
people do expect to and doultimately get married. And
people certainly put a lot ofemphasis on familial
relationships. And I think, youknow, another thing that was
overlooked is kind of genderdifferences. So, men are also
more free and have had moremoney historically, and even
contemporaneously, to be in andout of relationships, and we can
(27:27):
see that in the way we talkedabout young women's sexuality.
Of course, reflecting back onBev Skeggs' work again, how she
wrote about working-class womenand about how they're kind of
surveillanced more, and abouthow they are more restricted in
the kinds of relationships thatthey can have.
Rosie Hancock (27:45):
Thanks so much, Katherine. We'll be back soon to
talk about connection andintimacy in our supposedly
increasingly contactless world,but first, a word from Alice,
our producer.
Alice Bloch (28:00):
You're listening to Uncommon Sense from the
Sociological Review, where everymonth we sit down to talk with
an expert guest to grab hold ofa concept we all think we know,
everyday notions like home orschool or today's topic,
intimacy and love. And together,we work to see it a little bit
differently. It's not anacademic exercise, it's about
seeing the social world anew,all underpinned by the view that
(28:21):
change really is possible, andthat you don't have to be a
sociologist to think like one.
If you head to the podcast pageat thesociologicalreview.org
you'll find details on ourguests, plus recommended
reading. And if you've not doneso already, please do just take
a few seconds to tap "Follow" or"Subscribe" in the app you're
using to enjoy this. It helps usto keep making this podcast for
everyone. Thanks for listening.
Rosie Hancock (28:51):
This is episode four of Uncommon Sense, which
means by now you know what'scoming. This is where we often
pause to grab a buzzword, atrope, maybe a quote, and put it
under scrutiny. Ask what itreally means, what it says about
us and whether we can thinkabout it a bit differently. That
sounds good Alexis?
Alexis Hieu Truong (29:11):
Yes. And Katherine, today we thought we'd
talk to you about a word whoserise has, like so many things,
b (29:18):
contactless. It's a term that becomes commonplace thanks to
contactless payment cards. Butwhat kind of conversation does
that word – contactless –prompt, if we start to think
about it through a sociologicallens?
Katherine Twamley (29:35):
I think, for me, that conjures up stories of
the increasingly digitised worldthat we live in – of course,
accelerated, as you say, byCOVID – about how we are in
touch with other people viamediation. So, mediated through
technology – that we stay in ourhomes more, that we order online
more – and, I think, there'soften an assumption that this
(29:58):
leads to a kind of a coldersociety, that were less in
connection with one another.
And, I think, that's quitechallenged by the different
literatures. So, you can haveintimacy and closeness through
digital means. And although,recently we've been talking
about that in terms of COVID, wehave also seen that migrants
have been in touch with oneanother and building intimacy,
(30:18):
across transnational bordersthrough the digital realm. So, I
wouldn't be so negative. I thinka lot of the discourse is very
negative about it. And I thinkthere are pros and cons around
the increasingly contactlessworld.
Rosie Hancock (30:34):
I'm really interested to hear you talk
about sort of pros, because Idefinitely went straight to the
cons. When I heard this was ourbuzzword, right? Like, I think
about how something that'scontactless is somehow less
real, or intangible and sort ofhides the ways in which ... I
mean, I'm thinking about this inan economic sense, right? You
(30:55):
know, you buy something in acontactless way, and it obscures
any kind of moral aspect to thesystem. There's this guy, Nick
Crossley – guy ... he's asociologist [laughs], he's also
a guy – who works in socialmovement theory. He he writes
about anti-globalisationactivists and talks about them
(31:16):
trying to re-moralise thetransactions that we make or our
economic system in a way,because, the way capitalism sets
it all up is that we arealienated from people. And
actually, when you buy somethingyou are in relationship with the
people who make the things andare involved at various steps
along the journey of thatproduct ending up on your
(31:38):
doorstep. But that's hidden fromus. So, we like to think that
because we don't have thiscontact with them. And the more
frictionless these transactionsare, the more we feel like we're
escaping that moralrelationship. I'm totally
rambling, but, you know, like,at the beginning of the
pandemic, there was thisgrassroots group that I was
doing research with that weretalking about the need not to
(31:59):
conflate social distancing withphysical distancing; that
actually what we need isphysical distancing. And I'm
curious, Katherine, whether youthink maybe that when we, when
we do have an excessive amountof physical distancing that
sometimes maybe, you know, thiskind of contactless thing
obscures the relationships thatwe're in with people?
Katherine Twamley (32:21):
So, I think that's definitely a danger and a
possibility. I would justcaution against a kind of a
blanket (32:29):
"that's what's going to happen" and that's what
"necessarily" happens. So, workby Jessica Ringrose, which is
also in social activism aroundkind of the #MeToo movement and
young women's feminism showsthat the digital can help
connect people. And we can seethat with Greta Thunberg as
well, across a global level, andI think there's a real ... I
(32:50):
feel almost an intimateconnection with Greta Thunberg,
I follow her on Twitter and Ithink she's really connected
young people around the world toaddress a global problem. And, I
think, she manages to create anintimacy between her and her
followers and the people thatshe works with in the various
different contexts andcountries, which is so important
to push an activate people toreact and do something about the
(33:14):
climate crisis.
Alexis Hieu Truong (33:16):
Going back to COVID for a moment, and maybe
bouncing back on something thatRosie alluded to, COVID-19 has
been a time where touch andphysical contact was put on
hold, and it's had a deepimpact, maybe, on our lives,
right? You've done research onpeople's experiences through the
(33:36):
pandemic, do your findingsincline you to think that we, at
our core, are beings who needcontact, or is the future like
... if we imagine the futureagain, right is the future
contactless?
Katherine Twamley (33:49):
I mean, by contact, I think you're
referring to physical contact.
Would that be right? Certainly,that did come out in my
research. It was a longitudinalstudy. We followed families with
children from April 2020 – so,less than a month after the UK
lockdown; it was a 10-countrystudy, but I'll talk
specifically about the UK – andwe followed them for 13 months
up until the following summer inJune 2021. And initially, there
(34:12):
was a certain novelty and sortof a gratefulness to have online
forms of communication and beingin touch with one another. But
definitely, throughout the wholeyear, it was considered second
rate. And as time went on, inparticularly ... in particular
for young people, which wasreally interesting finding for
us, because young people areoften presented as at the
forefront of the digital eraand, you know, they know so much
(34:35):
and they're brought up withWhatsApp and Skype and those
kinds of things. But actually,the young people were saying to
us that they did really missperson to person connection. And
in particular, the spontaneityof person to person connection,
which I think we can allunderstand through Zoom meetings
and whatnot. Spontaneity is notsomething that is as easy and,
you know, spontaneous meetinginto one another, what often
(34:59):
people call the "watercoolermoment", is not promoted through
the digital.
Alexis Hieu Truong (35:04):
So, what I'm hearing is that we're not all
set for the metaverse just yet.
Then, we're not going todisappear into purely virtual
reality, right away.
Katherine Twamley (35:14):
Yeah, absolutely.
Rosie Hancock (35:15):
Yeah. Thank god.
Okay, so before we wrap up, thisis where we each throw in our
tip for something that's notacademic, but there has to be
something surprising to sayabout love and intimacy,
potentially something from popculture.
Alexis Hieu Truong (35:32):
Katherine, there's no shortage of stuff to
choose from, whether it's SallyRooney's "Normal People" or
James Baldwin's "Giovanni'sRoom" ... perhaps the entire
Motown catalogue or the madlyinfluential films of Richard
Curtis "Love Actually", "BridgetJones", etc. What will you pick?
Katherine Twamley (35:49):
Well, a book I read recently was Ian McEwan's
"Machines Like Me". The maincharacter in the book, he buys a
robot that looks like a humanbeing – it's kind of set in this
kind of parallel, slight time inthe future – and that brings up
so many questions, I think,around "love with things",
inverted commas. So, we oftentalk about our love
(36:11):
relationships with other people,but actually, we can also love
things. So, for example, there'sa whole sociology around the
love of teddy bears, and howlove can be perhaps unrequited
as well. But it also brings uphuge issues around consent and
intimacy and subjectivity.
Alexis Hieu Truong (36:29):
I feel like these kinds of reflections
around intimacy with objects orrobots can be, can be works that
are quite unnerving sometimes.
So, I'd like to share somethingalong the same lines. And that's
the work of Haruhiko Kawaguchi,who goes by the name
Photographer Hal, whose work Igot to know during the fieldwork
... my fieldwork in Tokyo. Whathe does is take pictures of
(36:49):
strangers, families all shrinkwrapped, it's like literally
wrapped up in clear plasticsometimes, like their whole
houses are wrapped up inplastic. And looking at his work
for the first time can be,again, quite unnerving. But I
think it opens a lot ofinteresting questions about
intimacy, physical contact, butalso love, proximity, and even
(37:11):
maybe, like, our own mortalitywith a particular relevance in
the context of Japanese socialnorms and values. Rosie, I feel
I've gotten pretty sidewayshere, depending on our
definitions of popular culture.
But I think you wanted tomention an artist who also
speaks to the theme of intimacy.
Rosie Hancock (37:32):
Yeah, also, maybe not, you know, a straight up pop
culture reference. But SophieCalle is a conceptual artist
whose work I really love. Andshe does these great projects
where, for example, she spends ayear working in a hotel and goes
through the personal itemsbelonging to guests and
(37:54):
photographs them, or picks astranger and follows him around
a city for weeks on andphotographing him. In a previous
life, I went to art school – Iam in fact an art school drop
out – and Sophie Cal reallyinspired some of my art. I, in
fact, made a major work, where Ibrought my own bed into an art
(38:17):
gallery, as in the student artgallery, and the only way you
could view the video work whichI had made – and this video work
was of me, sleeping in otherpeople's beds – was for people
to get into my bed and lie in mybed underneath a screen that was
really uncomfortably close tothe pillow. So, I was like
forcing this intimacy on people.
And, I think, what's interestingabout Sophie Calle's work and
(38:40):
which, you know, in my veryham-fisted way I tried to do as,
like, a second yearundergraduate student in art
school, is thinking about thethe norms that we have around
intimacy and what we allowpeople, who we consider to be
ourselves intimate with, accessto in our life. And how, when
you allow that with strangers –allow that level of intimacy
(39:05):
with strangers – it can be veryuncomfortable.
Katherine Twamley (39:08):
The Sophie Calle example brings up whole
issues around methods for me,like, how do we get it,
intimacy? How do we get peopleto talk? Or how do we view it,
something so personal? How do weget them to talk about it
without just staying on thelevel of the scripts that I
talked about earlier? How do weobserve and get into their
homes? And what intimacy do wecreate between ourselves and our
(39:32):
participants? And whatintimacies do we disrupt by
placing ourselves in thosepositions with them? And what
are we trying to achieve?
Rosie Hancock (39:40):
I mean, like, Sophie Calle was taken to court
by someone that she followedaround. I mean, you know,
conceptual artists can get awaywith things that a professional
sociologist maybe can't. Butthen, also, she didn't get away
with some of it as well.
Alexis Hieu Truong (39:54):
Well, it sounds like I'll definitely have
to look up the work of SophieCalle. We'll make sure to put
the details about her work andthose other recommendations,
too, in the episode notes forthis show. And Katherine, this
is also where we say goodbye.
So, thank you for joining ustoday. It's been a great
conversation, and reallyexpanded my thinking on what
(40:14):
intimacy means today.
Katherine Twamley (40:17):
Likewise, thank you very much for having
me.
Rosie Hancock (40:19):
Thanks, Katherine. Bye.
Alexis Hieu Truong (40:26):
And that's it from us, for now. You can
catch the reading list fromtoday's show, including our pick
of pieces from The SociologicalReview by heading to our
podcasts page atthesociologicalreview.org. Or
just take a look at our episodenotes in the app you're using to
hear this.
(40:48):
Rosie, I really enjoyed talkingto Katherine. And actually, it
made me really want to revisitsome of the data that I had from
my fieldwork in Japan. What areyou going to take away from this
discussion?
Rosie Hancock (41:02):
I mean, I really enjoyed when Katherine was
talking about how love can beused to justify sort of selfish
actions. I don't know, like, Ijust found that really
interesting.
Alexis Hieu Truong (41:15):
Yeah, I agree. And one really important
thing we also touched on was theidea of our "contactless world"
being a bit of a myth. Thatactually speaks a bit to the
theme that we'll be exploringnext month, security.
Rosie Hancock (41:31):
If you've enjoyed listening to Uncommon Sense, do
tap "Subscribe" and "Follow" andreview us in whatever app you're
using. And share us with yourfriends and family, which is
surely an act of love.
Alexis Hieu Truong (41:43):
Our executive producer was Alice
Bloch and our sound engineer wasDave Crackles. Thanks for
listening. Bye.
Rosie Hancock (41:49):
Bye!
Hi there, and welcome to your monthly dose
of Uncommon Sense. I'm AlexisHieu Truong in Ottawa, Canada.
Rosie Hancock (00:10):
And I'm Rosie Hancock in Sydney, Australia.
And along with everyone makingthis podcast at The Sociological
Review, we want to spread thesociological word.
Alexis Hieu Truong (00:21):
And that's not because we're on some kind
of ego trip, but because itmatters. It's about questioning
the assumptions about the worldwe share, and making space to
think about what better futuresmight look like.
Rosie Hancock (00:33):
So far in the series, we've taken a really
close, kind of sideways, look atthings like home, care, the
concept of education. Today,we're going to talk about love
and intimacy.
Alexis Hieu Truong (00:45):
Now, unlike say, education, love and
intimacy can seem like thingsthat belong to the private realm
or to pop culture (00:55):
Taylor Swift or Frank Ocean, or novelists
like James Baldwin and SallyRooney. But a sociologist!? I
mean, who wants a sociology bookas a Valentine's gift, right?
Rosie Hancock (01:09):
Yeah, no, thanks.
I mean, I love sociology, butnot that much.
Alexis Hieu Truong (01:15):
So, to reject love and intimacy means
missing out on some criticalconversations, because our ideas
around love and intimacy areboth shaped by and shape our
wider world. And associologists, we're interested
in how all of that works, howour values or norms, how say,
like, colonialism or capitalismplay out in what seems like our
(01:37):
most private relationships.
Rosie Hancock (01:39):
Yeah. How, for example, has a lyric like
Whitney Houston's "I Will AlwaysLove You" come to sound as much
like a threat as a romanticpromise, and this time of short
term dating, of shopping aroundfor love. And shouldn't Stevie
Wonder change that famous songtitle to "I Just WhatsApped To
Say I Love You"?
Alexis Hieu Truong (01:58):
Yeah. In fact, it's not just that our
ideas of love and intimacy haveevolved over time. It's also
true that love, for example,isn't always actually that
positive. It gets invoked tojustify and frame all sorts of
things (02:14):
inequality, hypocrisy, consumerism, nationalism too.
And slapping Chris Rock at theOscars, if you're the "aspiring
vessel of love", Will Smith.
Think about it like that. Andit's clear that so called
"matters of the heart" areactually deeply sociological.
Rosie Hancock (02:32):
Yep, they're all things that we'll dig into with
our guests today. Joining us totalk about love and intimacy,
which is just one of herinterests – alongside things
like feminism and family, genderand parenthood – is Katherine
Twamley, based at UniversityCollege in London. Hi, there,
Katherine.
Katherine Twamley (02:49):
Hi, great to be here.
Rosie Hancock (02:50):
I have to say that when I heard we were
talking about intimacy, my mindimmediately went to the sealed
section of the Dolly magazine,which is this popular teen
magazine that you could get whenI was growing up in New Zealand
and it was very exciting. And Ihate to disappoint the listeners
out there, but I don't thinkthat's where we're heading
(03:11):
today. Right?
Katherine Twamley (03:12):
Yeah, absolutely. I think often when
we think about intimacy, wethink oh, we mean, you know,
physical intimacy, sexuality.
But actually, a sociology ofintimacy is much wider than
that.
Alexis Hieu Truong (03:22):
As we mentioned there, love seems like
something that's almost toosacred to talk about, even in a
remotely academic way. Somethingthat's timeless, private,
precious; something youshouldn't theorise or get high
minded about. We offered a bitof a defence already, but what
would you add to it?
Katherine Twamley (03:38):
I think, for me, the beauty of sociology is
exactly that (03:41):
to be able to unpack the most personal of
experiences that we have and tosituate them into wider
processes in society. When Ithink back on my undergraduate
in sociology, something thatreally struck me and has, I
guess, influenced, in a way, myfocus on the sociology of love,
(04:04):
was learning about Durkheim'swork around suicide. So,
Durkheim showed that although wewould think of suicide as
something to do with a deeplypersonal circumstance that
happens to somebody, we also see– when we kind of look at a
wider macro lens the wayDurkheim did – that there are
peaks and troughs, and there aretrends. So, different kinds of
(04:25):
people at different time pointsare more likely to commit
suicide. And we see in differentperiods of history greater or
smaller trends, amounts ofpeople who take their own life.
And that really struck me thatwow. So, something so personal,
like suicide can be influencedby wider structures. And it's
the same, for me, with love. So,love is maybe more positively
(04:47):
associated, but that is alsoinfluenced by greater processes
and what's happening in theworld.
Rosie Hancock (04:53):
Yeah, and so, I guess not only is love socially
constructed, its significancefor making relations and ships
is also what I would callculturally constructed, right?
So we've come to think, at leastin the culture I was raised in,
that, to quote another song,"love and marriage go together
like a horse and carriage". Butit doesn't actually have to be
(05:14):
that way. And that's anassumption that you dig into in
your first book, back in 2014,based on research where you
compare experiences of love andintimacy amongst Gujarati
Indians born and brought up inIndia, and people of Gujarati
Indian heritage born and broughtup in the UK. We'll talk more
about your findings in just amoment. But can you first tell
(05:36):
us how you ended up in India inthe first place, and what
assumptions you took with youabout love?
Katherine Twamley (05:41):
Well, how I ended up in India was basically
an administrative error, I hateto say, but that is the truth.
So, I was doing my undergraduateand at the end of my
undergraduate I applied to do akind of an internship for ... to
take part in an internshipprogramme, and I requested to be
sent to French-speaking Africa –I'd never been to Africa, I was
(06:01):
interested in African culture,and I also wanted to work on my
French – and they accidentallysent me to India. But when I
arrived in India, I really fellin love with the culture and
just found it to be sofascinating. And at that time, I
thought it was sort ofdiametrically different to what
I had been ... how I had beenbrought up in Ireland, and most
(06:22):
specifically aroundrelationships, which was really
a topic that often came up withmy friends there, who I miss.
And I was in Gujarat, at thestate of Gujarat, as well. So
that was kind of, again,circumstance. And as I learned
about their ideas of love andintimate relationships, and
"Okay, this is something I wantto unpack". Because up until
(06:43):
that point, I had myself thoughtlove is biological, and it's the
same the world over. And then,
when I was there, I said (06:51):
"Okay, they have very different ideas
of what love means." And as yousay, how that is associated with
marriage. And so I worked my waythrough a master's, and then to
come back from my PhD, which isthe work that you're talking
about.
Alexis Hieu Truong (07:04):
One of the stories you tell in your book is
of a Gujarati Indian friend ofyours in India named Antuk. Tell
us about his approach to love,this idea of wanting love to be
arranged as you described it.
Katherine Twamley (07:16):
Yeah, so, Antuk was really interesting.
So, he spoke to me a lot abouthis desire for romance, and kind
of this grand narrative that heseemed to desire. That's what he
spoke to me about, about wantingto fall in love. And I set him
up on a date with a friend ofmine, who was ... I think she
(07:37):
was Norwegian. And then she toldme about the date afterwards,
and he arrived in a limo tobring her out. Gujarat is an
alcohol-free state, but he hadchampagne glasses with a large
bottle of Coca Cola. And hebrought her to the cinema. And
then he was opening the door.
And it was all kind of verychivalrous stereotypically
romantic, what we might expectfrom a kind of Jane Austen novel
type thing updated. And he toldme he really enjoyed the date,
(08:00):
but he wasn't going to go out ona date with her again. And in
fact, his parents had alreadynow arranged marriage for him.
And he was getting married to aUS-born Indian woman, and they
had met once. And he would meether again the day before the
wedding, and then on thewedding; which is probably not
very common practice withinIndia, but it's quite common in
(08:22):
transnational marriages, becauseof the expense of travelling and
meeting up with one anotherbefore the wedding day. And this
just seemed completely odd to
me. I was like (08:33):
"How can you equate these two desires for
love and romance and then, atthe same time, set yourself up
for an arranged marriage thatyour parents have effectively
arranged for you?" And after hewas married, then he sent me
messages about how it waseverything he ever desired, and
that she bought him breakfast inbed every morning, and it was
(08:53):
sort of this perfect marriage.
I'm still in touch with them,and they're, they're married
with two kids now. And they livein the US. Yes, that was a kind
of another spark for me of "oh,there's something odd going on
here". But upon reflection, andafter sitting, I didn't think it
was so odd. But that was myinitial entry into the world of
love and marriage in India.
Rosie Hancock (09:12):
Katherine, I think what's super interesting,
you encountered this idea ofwanting love to be arranged and
it's seeming kind ofcontradictory with what Antuk
kind of thought about romance.
And I'm curious whether youthink that actually that's not
so far from where, you know,so-called Western culture is
now, and I'm thinking inparticular of dating sites that
use algorithms to hook us up orreality TV shows – there's a
(09:35):
super popular one here inAustralia, "Married at First
Sight", where people, you know,have these kind of shotgun
weddings, don't even meet eachother beforehand. You know, it
seems we can't get married tostrangers fast enough, and we're
asking for help to do it right,potentially on national
television as well.
Katherine Twamley (09:56):
I think that's a really interesting
trend. And so, when I was doingmy fieldwork that wasn't ...
Alexis Hieu Truong (10:01):
That's super interesting. And I think that
that kind of wasn't reallyaround. So, I mean, I talked
about arranging love, that was aterm that Alexis mentioned, and
maybe I should explain it a bit,in a bit more detail. So, what
Antuk wanted and what otherparticipants of mine wanted was
those ideas about, like, what weshould do, like the "ticking of
certain factors in their futurespouse. So, they wanted them to
be at the correct caste, thecorrect class, the correct
(10:22):
height, the correct skin coloursometimes; various different
factors, which they said wouldensure that their family would
be happy, and that would ensurea lasting relationship. Because,
boxes", those norms is whatmakes it so sociologically
from their point of view, alasting relationship should have
these various factors. Theyshould have a common
understanding of the world. So,they wanted to make sure these
(10:42):
factors were, if you'd like,"ticked off their box" and then,
important, right? And in yourbook, you ... it considers the
they would talk about makingsure – through the various
practices of intimacy, such asgoing on dates, and so on, so
forth – they would create thislove. So, they would arrange the
love within the appropriatecircumstances. And for me,
looking at, you know, UK orIreland, or, you know, global
values of people like Antuk,alongside people of Gujarati
(11:02):
North Euro-American society, wesee similar processes, as you
exactly say, in that peopledon't talk about it quite as
explicitly, but they also tickthese boxes. And they also, when
we look at kind of research,they are seeking and they have
these ideas about "what would bea correct partner for me". And
heritage in the UK, who alsotalked to you about love and
some of it can be quite like"similar interests", for
(11:23):
example, but often, these arearound class differences and
racial preferences. And so yousee, if we look at marriage
statistics, we see that peopletend to marry somebody of a
similar class background and ofa particular ethnic background.
marriage. I'm wondering whattheir perspectives were, and
Some of that is around exposure,but some of it is around ideas
around "who would be anappropriate and correct match
(11:43):
for myself".
whether that was perhaps shapedby the fact that they were
(12:05):
talking to you? So, someone notfrom the same background.
Katherine Twamley (12:21):
Yeah. As was kind of mentioned, it was kind
of a comparative study. So, Iwas looking at cousins who had
been – at least that was how itwas initially designed – born
and brought up in India andtheir cousins born and brought
up in the UK. And for those whohad been born and brought up in
the UK, I sort of argued thatthere was three kind of main
factors. So, there was culturaland thinking about the local UK
culture and the Indian culture,and ideas around appropriate
(12:44):
relationships from theirfamilies perspective, from their
own perspective, from the kindof media that they were
consuming. And then there wasmaterial factors. So, for
example, they could liveseparately from their parents in
a different city, they weren'tunder, kind of, the observation
of elders to make sure that theyhad ... that they behaved in a
particular way. And then theother one is positionality. So,
(13:07):
being a part of a minoritizedgroup, and being interviewed by
somebody from a White Irishbackground, if you'd like. So, I
think for sure that influencedhow they spoke with me, it
influenced the recruitment. So,for example, I found it quite
difficult to recruitparticipants who were intending
and wanted to have an arrangedmarriage. And I think at that
(13:29):
time point – I think it'sshifted a little bit now – but
at that time point, there was alot of talk in the media about
forced marriage, and they wereoften arranged marriage and
forced marriage wereinterchangeably used sometimes.
And so there was a concernexplicitly expressed to me as
well by my participants, aboutmy research and about how there
(13:49):
was misunderstandings about whatarranged marriage meant; which
also encouraged them as well toposition themselves as not
having an arranged marriage. So,explicitly rejecting that term,
even when they were. So, theycalled it an introduced
marriage, although there weresome certain ways in which they
were different. So, for sure,who I was influenced the way
(14:10):
they presented themselves.
Rosie Hancock (14:12):
So, to clarify, your interviewees for that
particular project identified asheterosexual, and they were in
or designed to be in monogamousmixed-sex relationships, right?
I'm asking this question becauseI'm, I'm thinking about the way
in which family formation andgay and lesbian communities can
be a bit different. So, if youthink about Kath Weston's
(14:34):
classic "Families We Choose" andhow she illustrates how gay men
and women construct their ownideas of kinship, drawing on the
symbolism of love and friendshipand biology. So, I'm wondering,
you know, how this might haveshaped your data – the fact that
your participants wereheterosexual – and how things
(14:56):
might maybe have lookeddifferent with participants who
identified as queer?
Katherine Twamley (15:00):
Yeah, I think that's a really important
question. So, in sociology, wedraw a lot on what is known as
Script Theory, particularly instudies around intimacy and
sexuality. So, this idea that wehave a recognisable narrative,
for example, around love andintimacy. So, this is
ubiquitous, right, in novels andin films. And there's an
(15:22):
"appropriate" way about howrelationships should pan out,
and how we recognise intimatepractices. So, if someone buys
me flowers, but you know,they're expressing, well ... if
a man buys a woman flowers,typically, they're expressing a
certain feeling towards me, andso on and so forth. And the same
with families, there are certainthings we recognisably
understand as an "appropriate"family practice. And, I guess,
(15:42):
many of the arguments in theliterature around same-sex or
queer families is that they'refreer from these scripts, that
they don't have to draw on them.
Sometimes they may draw on themin order to justify and
demonstrate themselves as"appropriately" a family and a
couple. But they can also veeraway from these scripts.
Potentially have more freedom todo so and will – kind of from a
political perspective – try todo so. And that can be positive
(16:06):
for both people who are inmixed-sex relationships or
heterosexual relationships ormore normative families, because
it can push forward our dynamicsand understanding of what a
family and a relationship canbe.
Rosie Hancock (16:20):
Katherine. So, your research showed us how love
is really socially constructed.
So, you know, as much as wewould like to think it's a
matter of being struck byCupid's bow, it's really shaped
by our time and place andculture and context. So, having
discussed that, we thought we'dnow turn to dig into what love
(16:41):
means sociologically, andintimacy too. Because those are
two things that often go hand inhand, or at least we assume they
do. So, Katherine, is love seenas something that's positive
generally, but intimacy is maybea bit broader? Like, how would
you define it?
Katherine Twamley (17:02):
So, I would say that love is more associated
with the emotion; so, the kindsof feelings that we experience.
Whereas intimacy can be tied tothe emotion or can not be tied
to the emotion, and often insociology, when we talk about
intimacy, we're focusing onpractices. So, the ways in which
(17:24):
people demonstrate to oneanother that feeling of
closeness, or how those feelingsof closeness can be generated,
and then whether and how that islinked with love.
Rosie Hancock (17:35):
And intimacy can be between people who don't even
know each other's names, orwhere there's a clear power
imbalance. I am thinking here ofthat collection, edited by
Eileen Boris and Rhacel SalazarParreñas, "Intimate Labors".
That collection highlights thosepoints where money and intimacy
meet. So, looking at things likedomestic work, care work, sex
(17:57):
work, even sperm donation. Couldyou talk to us about that a wee
bit?
Katherine Twamley (18:01):
Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a
really interesting body of work.
And as you say, it demonstrateshow we can be intimate with
people without having thatloving or close connection. So,
you've brought up some classicexamples there around sex work;
we could also think abouthairdressers, who give us
massage or are very intimatelyclose with us, but it's more of
a transactional relationship.
(18:22):
Although, I have a PhD studentwho's doing work on a hair salon
and the intimacy that's createdbetween them, and the inequality
and how people can feel. So, theperson who's receiving the
massage can feel like "oh, thishairdresser is my friend". And
then we can think about theemotional labour that's involved
– thinking of Arlie Hochschild'swork – on the part of the
hairdresser, who knows that partof her work, or his work, is
(18:47):
creating this intimate momentfor the client, but they
wouldn't necessarily have thoseloving or emotional connections
beneath it. So, as you say,there can be disparities. And
then in the same point, youknow, you can have monetary
transactions between people whoare extremely close, and who
would identify themselves asbeing in a two-way, intimate
(19:07):
relationship. So, more kind ofclassically, we often had
housewives receiving a kind of asalary from their partners. But
we also have nannies who canhave a deep connection with
their children, who are beingpaid to be in that position. And
I think Parreñas's work reallytaps into that actually, about
how domestic migrant workers canfeel that love for the people
(19:27):
that they're taking care of, andthe kind of deficit that ends up
resulting in that. Because theirown children are missing that
kind of love and affection,which they are giving, possibly,
to their clients and thechildren that they're looking
after.
Alexis Hieu Truong (19:41):
And actually, love isn't always
benign, either, is it? I wasreading this great piece on Love
by Julia Carter on TheSociological Review site, and
she mentions how love can be a"legitimating ideology". I'm
wondering what you make of that?
I guess, love can be used tojustify war and nationalism,
like "love of your country", andconsumerism too. Both of those
(20:04):
things can cause harm. So, it'snot always all that good. Right?
I was wondering what yourthoughts on that were?
Katherine Twamley (20:13):
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you brought
up a really great recent exampleof Will Smith who hits the
comedian in the Oscars, and itwas justified through the
feelings that he had for hiswife. So, that's a kind of a
very personalised example. Butif we look at kind of rhetoric
around colonialism, we see thatpart of the justification for
(20:34):
colonialism was that theintimate relationships of the
kind of, inverted commas,"natives" in the colonised lands
were not sufficiently "modern"and "appropriate". And that was
a way of justifyingcolonisation, saying: "Look at
them, they have so many partnersand they don't have a
marriage-based relationship,which is blessed by Christ" and
so on and so forth. So,absolutely, it can be used in
(20:56):
the legitimation of differentkinds of both positive and
negative behaviours on apersonal level, but also on a
kind of governing intimacieswider level.
Rosie Hancock (21:05):
That's so fascinating, because today,
there's all of these kind ofcalls out there for "more love",
a "more loving society", allthat sort of jazz. But, I guess,
what we're getting at here isthe need to ask who is talking
about love? How are theyinvoking it? To what ends? You
know, etc, etc, etc. And ofcourse, who's excluded from the
(21:27):
idea of love that's been put outthere as well?
Katherine Twamley (21:29):
Yeah, absolutely. So, reflecting, for
example, on the work of BevSkeggs, who obviously also did a
podcast with you around care.
So, when you think about whoreceives care and how that can
be legitimised through a loveand a personal connection. So,
if we think about, for example... I often think about the
justification around sending ourchildren to private schools. So,
(21:50):
we know on a kind of a societallevel – in the UK it's very
dominant in sort of policy andpolitics, political discourse or
how politicians talk abouteducation – we know that private
school is not good for socialmobility across the population.
And often politicians talk
about (22:08):
"Okay, so, we should get rid of" – particularly left wing
politicians – "we should get ridof private education", but at
the same time, they send theirchildren to private schools with
a justification of, well, I loveand I care for my child. And
having that kind of familialconnection can justify a
behaviour that is not good forsociety at large or is not
consistent with one, you know,one's political ideals. And so
(22:32):
that, I think, is an example ofhow love can be used to
legitimate a kind of abehaviour, which is not in
consonance with the professedideals of the person
Alexis Hieu Truong (22:42):
Katherine, I just wanted to go back on
something you said aboutcolonialism. And I was wondering
if you can elaborate on it maybeabout how we can imagine
decolonizing love, like, whatwould that look like?
Katherine Twamley (22:55):
I think that's a really interesting
question and one that hasn'tbeen sufficiently addressed in
sociology, and one which I'mtrying to work on with my
colleagues. So, we held a kindof a seminar series inviting
different people to consider thedecolonization of love and
relationships, and that reallykind of show the darth of
research in this area. Thinkingabout my own research in India,
(23:20):
I think what's reallyinteresting is that the kind of
suppositions that I made aboutwhat was happening in India,
were often based on a kind of amisunderstanding of what, in the
(23:40):
Global South, love andrelationships is like, and that
that it was not as "advanced" orwas on its pathway to what love
and relationships look like inmore, quote unquote, "modern"
societies. But actually, becauseof the colonial relationship,
the UK was hugely influential inhow intimate relationships now
are set up. In fact, they weremuch more fluid pre colonisation
from the UK into India, therewas more fluidity around gender,
as well, and genderrelationships and sexual
(24:02):
relationships. And there stillremained to be the case in
certain caste groups and incertain groups that weren't kind
of, not colonised, but weren'tbrought into the colonisation
process to the same extent. So,for me, decolonization of love
and intimacy is recognising howcolonisation has actually shaped
and is implicated incontemporary marriage and
(24:24):
relationships, and how we viewand how we see them.
Alexis Hieu Truong (24:27):
Yeah, that's definitely something we need to
think more about. One othernotion that's been discussed
more is maybe Zygmunt Bauman'sidea of liquid love. Can you
tell us a bit about that?
Katherine Twamley (24:38):
Yeah, absolutely. So, this is related
to the idea of theindividualization of society.
So, in modern or contemporarysociety, we are less beholden to
particular ideas about how weshould "appropriately" behave.
So, in pre-contemporary times,according to Bauman and Beck and
(25:01):
Beck-Gernsheim, and Giddens to acertain extent, the idea is that
people expected to have asimilar family a similar career
and a similar role in life totheir parents before them, and
that there was kind of strictideas about who we should be and
who we will be. And incontemporary society, things are
more liquid or fluid, in that wehave more choice in how we can
(25:24):
act in the world, there are moreoptions open to us, we can
migrate, there's much more kindof fluid boundaries between
different countries – inparentheses for some people, and
not for everybody – andtherefore, our relationships are
also more fluid; we can imaginedivorce now, we can get into a
relationship and not feel likewe have to stay within that
(25:47):
relationship, which we mighthave felt beforehand because of
traditional ideals of family andmarriage. So, this greater
liquidness is about fluidity inand out of different kinds of
relationships and family, andBauman's kind of very critical
and negative about that. Sosaying: "Well, this has brought
more fragility to intimateconnections between people and
ultimately is not very positivefor the wellbeing of individuals
(26:09):
and society".
Rosie Hancock (26:11):
But you, you kind of want to challenge all of that
a little bit. Right, Katherine?
Like, that isn't universally thecase?
Katherine Twamley (26:18):
I think it's not universally the case on a
kind of a global scale, and Ithink it's not universally the
case even in the UK, where hewas writing about, or Western
Europe. So, this idea that Isort of hinted at, that borders
are now fluid, of course, weknow that migration is, you
know, very contested. We hadBrexit recently here in the UK,
(26:41):
so certainly not everyone canmove about as freely in the
global world. But also, I thinkthe work around
individualization has beencritiqued for overlooking a lot
of empirical work, which showsthe lasting desire for
commitment, even if it alwaysdoesn't ... doesn't always pan
out. And so, the kind of ratesof marriage dropped a little bit
(27:03):
and certainly divorce went up.
But still, you know, rates ofmarriage on the whole, most
people do expect to and doultimately get married. And
people certainly put a lot ofemphasis on familial
relationships. And I think, youknow, another thing that was
overlooked is kind of genderdifferences. So, men are also
more free and have had moremoney historically, and even
contemporaneously, to be in andout of relationships, and we can
(27:27):
see that in the way we talkedabout young women's sexuality.
Of course, reflecting back onBev Skeggs' work again, how she
wrote about working-class womenand about how they're kind of
surveillanced more, and abouthow they are more restricted in
the kinds of relationships thatthey can have.
Rosie Hancock (27:45):
Thanks so much, Katherine. We'll be back soon to
talk about connection andintimacy in our supposedly
increasingly contactless world,but first, a word from Alice,
our producer.
Alice Bloch (28:00):
You're listening to Uncommon Sense from the
Sociological Review, where everymonth we sit down to talk with
an expert guest to grab hold ofa concept we all think we know,
everyday notions like home orschool or today's topic,
intimacy and love. And together,we work to see it a little bit
differently. It's not anacademic exercise, it's about
seeing the social world anew,all underpinned by the view that
(28:21):
change really is possible, andthat you don't have to be a
sociologist to think like one.
If you head to the podcast pageat thesociologicalreview.org
you'll find details on ourguests, plus recommended
reading. And if you've not doneso already, please do just take
a few seconds to tap "Follow" or"Subscribe" in the app you're
using to enjoy this. It helps usto keep making this podcast for
everyone. Thanks for listening.
Rosie Hancock (28:51):
This is episode four of Uncommon Sense, which
means by now you know what'scoming. This is where we often
pause to grab a buzzword, atrope, maybe a quote, and put it
under scrutiny. Ask what itreally means, what it says about
us and whether we can thinkabout it a bit differently. That
sounds good Alexis?
Alexis Hieu Truong (29:11):
Yes. And Katherine, today we thought we'd
talk to you about a word whoserise has, like so many things,
b (29:18):
contactless. It's a term that becomes commonplace thanks to
contactless payment cards. Butwhat kind of conversation does
that word – contactless –prompt, if we start to think
about it through a sociologicallens?
Katherine Twamley (29:35):
I think, for me, that conjures up stories of
the increasingly digitised worldthat we live in – of course,
accelerated, as you say, byCOVID – about how we are in
touch with other people viamediation. So, mediated through
technology – that we stay in ourhomes more, that we order online
more – and, I think, there'soften an assumption that this
(29:58):
leads to a kind of a coldersociety, that were less in
connection with one another.
And, I think, that's quitechallenged by the different
literatures. So, you can haveintimacy and closeness through
digital means. And although,recently we've been talking
about that in terms of COVID, wehave also seen that migrants
have been in touch with oneanother and building intimacy,
(30:18):
across transnational bordersthrough the digital realm. So, I
wouldn't be so negative. I thinka lot of the discourse is very
negative about it. And I thinkthere are pros and cons around
the increasingly contactlessworld.
Rosie Hancock (30:34):
I'm really interested to hear you talk
about sort of pros, because Idefinitely went straight to the
cons. When I heard this was ourbuzzword, right? Like, I think
about how something that'scontactless is somehow less
real, or intangible and sort ofhides the ways in which ... I
mean, I'm thinking about this inan economic sense, right? You
(30:55):
know, you buy something in acontactless way, and it obscures
any kind of moral aspect to thesystem. There's this guy, Nick
Crossley – guy ... he's asociologist [laughs], he's also
a guy – who works in socialmovement theory. He he writes
about anti-globalisationactivists and talks about them
(31:16):
trying to re-moralise thetransactions that we make or our
economic system in a way,because, the way capitalism sets
it all up is that we arealienated from people. And
actually, when you buy somethingyou are in relationship with the
people who make the things andare involved at various steps
along the journey of thatproduct ending up on your
(31:38):
doorstep. But that's hidden fromus. So, we like to think that
because we don't have thiscontact with them. And the more
frictionless these transactionsare, the more we feel like we're
escaping that moralrelationship. I'm totally
rambling, but, you know, like,at the beginning of the
pandemic, there was thisgrassroots group that I was
doing research with that weretalking about the need not to
(31:59):
conflate social distancing withphysical distancing; that
actually what we need isphysical distancing. And I'm
curious, Katherine, whether youthink maybe that when we, when
we do have an excessive amountof physical distancing that
sometimes maybe, you know, thiskind of contactless thing
obscures the relationships thatwe're in with people?
Katherine Twamley (32:21):
So, I think that's definitely a danger and a
possibility. I would justcaution against a kind of a
blanket (32:29):
"that's what's going to happen" and that's what
"necessarily" happens. So, workby Jessica Ringrose, which is
also in social activism aroundkind of the #MeToo movement and
young women's feminism showsthat the digital can help
connect people. And we can seethat with Greta Thunberg as
well, across a global level, andI think there's a real ... I
(32:50):
feel almost an intimateconnection with Greta Thunberg,
I follow her on Twitter and Ithink she's really connected
young people around the world toaddress a global problem. And, I
think, she manages to create anintimacy between her and her
followers and the people thatshe works with in the various
different contexts andcountries, which is so important
to push an activate people toreact and do something about the
(33:14):
climate crisis.
Alexis Hieu Truong (33:16):
Going back to COVID for a moment, and maybe
bouncing back on something thatRosie alluded to, COVID-19 has
been a time where touch andphysical contact was put on
hold, and it's had a deepimpact, maybe, on our lives,
right? You've done research onpeople's experiences through the
(33:36):
pandemic, do your findingsincline you to think that we, at
our core, are beings who needcontact, or is the future like
... if we imagine the futureagain, right is the future
contactless?
Katherine Twamley (33:49):
I mean, by contact, I think you're
referring to physical contact.
Would that be right? Certainly,that did come out in my
research. It was a longitudinalstudy. We followed families with
children from April 2020 – so,less than a month after the UK
lockdown; it was a 10-countrystudy, but I'll talk
specifically about the UK – andwe followed them for 13 months
up until the following summer inJune 2021. And initially, there
(34:12):
was a certain novelty and sortof a gratefulness to have online
forms of communication and beingin touch with one another. But
definitely, throughout the wholeyear, it was considered second
rate. And as time went on, inparticularly ... in particular
for young people, which wasreally interesting finding for
us, because young people areoften presented as at the
forefront of the digital eraand, you know, they know so much
(34:35):
and they're brought up withWhatsApp and Skype and those
kinds of things. But actually,the young people were saying to
us that they did really missperson to person connection. And
in particular, the spontaneityof person to person connection,
which I think we can allunderstand through Zoom meetings
and whatnot. Spontaneity is notsomething that is as easy and,
you know, spontaneous meetinginto one another, what often
(34:59):
people call the "watercoolermoment", is not promoted through
the digital.
Alexis Hieu Truong (35:04):
So, what I'm hearing is that we're not all
set for the metaverse just yet.
Then, we're not going todisappear into purely virtual
reality, right away.
Katherine Twamley (35:14):
Yeah, absolutely.
Rosie Hancock (35:15):
Yeah. Thank god.
Okay, so before we wrap up, thisis where we each throw in our
tip for something that's notacademic, but there has to be
something surprising to sayabout love and intimacy,
potentially something from popculture.
Alexis Hieu Truong (35:32):
Katherine, there's no shortage of stuff to
choose from, whether it's SallyRooney's "Normal People" or
James Baldwin's "Giovanni'sRoom" ... perhaps the entire
Motown catalogue or the madlyinfluential films of Richard
Curtis "Love Actually", "BridgetJones", etc. What will you pick?
Katherine Twamley (35:49):
Well, a book I read recently was Ian McEwan's
"Machines Like Me". The maincharacter in the book, he buys a
robot that looks like a humanbeing – it's kind of set in this
kind of parallel, slight time inthe future – and that brings up
so many questions, I think,around "love with things",
inverted commas. So, we oftentalk about our love
(36:11):
relationships with other people,but actually, we can also love
things. So, for example, there'sa whole sociology around the
love of teddy bears, and howlove can be perhaps unrequited
as well. But it also brings uphuge issues around consent and
intimacy and subjectivity.
Alexis Hieu Truong (36:29):
I feel like these kinds of reflections
around intimacy with objects orrobots can be, can be works that
are quite unnerving sometimes.
So, I'd like to share somethingalong the same lines. And that's
the work of Haruhiko Kawaguchi,who goes by the name
Photographer Hal, whose work Igot to know during the fieldwork
... my fieldwork in Tokyo. Whathe does is take pictures of
(36:49):
strangers, families all shrinkwrapped, it's like literally
wrapped up in clear plasticsometimes, like their whole
houses are wrapped up inplastic. And looking at his work
for the first time can be,again, quite unnerving. But I
think it opens a lot ofinteresting questions about
intimacy, physical contact, butalso love, proximity, and even
(37:11):
maybe, like, our own mortalitywith a particular relevance in
the context of Japanese socialnorms and values. Rosie, I feel
I've gotten pretty sidewayshere, depending on our
definitions of popular culture.
But I think you wanted tomention an artist who also
speaks to the theme of intimacy.
Rosie Hancock (37:32):
Yeah, also, maybe not, you know, a straight up pop
culture reference. But SophieCalle is a conceptual artist
whose work I really love. Andshe does these great projects
where, for example, she spends ayear working in a hotel and goes
through the personal itemsbelonging to guests and
(37:54):
photographs them, or picks astranger and follows him around
a city for weeks on andphotographing him. In a previous
life, I went to art school – Iam in fact an art school drop
out – and Sophie Cal reallyinspired some of my art. I, in
fact, made a major work, where Ibrought my own bed into an art
(38:17):
gallery, as in the student artgallery, and the only way you
could view the video work whichI had made – and this video work
was of me, sleeping in otherpeople's beds – was for people
to get into my bed and lie in mybed underneath a screen that was
really uncomfortably close tothe pillow. So, I was like
forcing this intimacy on people.
And, I think, what's interestingabout Sophie Calle's work and
(38:40):
which, you know, in my veryham-fisted way I tried to do as,
like, a second yearundergraduate student in art
school, is thinking about thethe norms that we have around
intimacy and what we allowpeople, who we consider to be
ourselves intimate with, accessto in our life. And how, when
you allow that with strangers –allow that level of intimacy
(39:05):
with strangers – it can be veryuncomfortable.
Katherine Twamley (39:08):
The Sophie Calle example brings up whole
issues around methods for me,like, how do we get it,
intimacy? How do we get peopleto talk? Or how do we view it,
something so personal? How do weget them to talk about it
without just staying on thelevel of the scripts that I
talked about earlier? How do weobserve and get into their
homes? And what intimacy do wecreate between ourselves and our
(39:32):
participants? And whatintimacies do we disrupt by
placing ourselves in thosepositions with them? And what
are we trying to achieve?
Rosie Hancock (39:40):
I mean, like, Sophie Calle was taken to court
by someone that she followedaround. I mean, you know,
conceptual artists can get awaywith things that a professional
sociologist maybe can't. Butthen, also, she didn't get away
with some of it as well.
Alexis Hieu Truong (39:54):
Well, it sounds like I'll definitely have
to look up the work of SophieCalle. We'll make sure to put
the details about her work andthose other recommendations,
too, in the episode notes forthis show. And Katherine, this
is also where we say goodbye.
So, thank you for joining ustoday. It's been a great
conversation, and reallyexpanded my thinking on what
(40:14):
intimacy means today.
Katherine Twamley (40:17):
Likewise, thank you very much for having
me.
Rosie Hancock (40:19):
Thanks, Katherine. Bye.
Alexis Hieu Truong (40:26):
And that's it from us, for now. You can
catch the reading list fromtoday's show, including our pick
of pieces from The SociologicalReview by heading to our
podcasts page atthesociologicalreview.org. Or
just take a look at our episodenotes in the app you're using to
hear this.
(40:48):
Rosie, I really enjoyed talkingto Katherine. And actually, it
made me really want to revisitsome of the data that I had from
my fieldwork in Japan. What areyou going to take away from this
discussion?
Rosie Hancock (41:02):
I mean, I really enjoyed when Katherine was
talking about how love can beused to justify sort of selfish
actions. I don't know, like, Ijust found that really
interesting.
Alexis Hieu Truong (41:15):
Yeah, I agree. And one really important
thing we also touched on was theidea of our "contactless world"
being a bit of a myth. Thatactually speaks a bit to the
theme that we'll be exploringnext month, security.
Rosie Hancock (41:31):
If you've enjoyed listening to Uncommon Sense, do
tap "Subscribe" and "Follow" andreview us in whatever app you're
using. And share us with yourfriends and family, which is
surely an act of love.
Alexis Hieu Truong (41:43):
Our executive producer was Alice
Bloch and our sound engineer wasDave Crackles. Thanks for
listening. Bye.
Rosie Hancock (41:49):
Bye!
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