Annotated Bibliography: Romantic Love And Anthropology

Romantic Love and Anthropology
Author(s): Charles Lindholm
Source: Etnofoor, Vol. 19, No. 1, ROMANTIC LOVE (2006), pp. 5-21
Published by: Stichting Etnofoor
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Romantic Love and Anthropology
Charles Lindholm, Boston University*
ABSTRACT
attraction

Westerners to an idealized

understand romantic love as a compelling generally other. The Western notion of romantic love is spreading

emotional worldwide, while

theorists argue that romance is losing its authority due to the conditions simultaneously of post-modernity.
This paper seeks tomove of love toward a more comparative the discussion and historical nor a uniquely Western level, and argues that romantic love is neither universal, as a form of the sacred, which appears institution. Rather, it is best understood in various forms

under certain

specific

social

conditions.

It can blossom

or fade, but the impulse

behind

it is not

likely to vanish.The paper provides a shorthistoryof the studyof romanticlove inWestern

social

cultures

thought and and epochs.

then goes

on

to present

a structural

analysis

of romantic

love

in several

Introduction
Does romantic love exist elsewhere? If so, what forms does it take and how can itbe understood? These may seem strange questions, since if there is anything thatmodern
Westerners take for granted, it is the importance - even the necessity - of falling in love. The songs, movies, and stories of our shared culture endlessly describe varia tions in thepain and ecstasy of love as it is found, challenged, lost,denied or thwarted, only to flare up again, carrying all before it,or else destroying the lovers in a confla gration of desire (Carey 1969). According to the romantic cliches, love is blind, love overwhelms, a lifewithout love is notworth living,marriage should be for love alone, and anything less isworthless and a sham. Romantic love cannot be bought and sold, love cannot be calculated, it ismysterious, true and deep, spontaneous and compel
- even themost hardened ling, it can strike anyone cynic can be laid low by Cupid.
For lovers love provides 'a kind of secular salvation ... thatcould redeem theirentire existence, even though theymight die of it ' (Illouz 1998:176). As the philosopher
Roberto Unger has remarked, this ideal is 'themost influentialmode ofmoral vision in our culture ' (Unger 1984:29). Powerful images of romance relentlessly invade, motivate and animate our ordinary lives - not only for those of us who are in hot pursuit of the dream of love but also for those of us who think love is a sham.
So potent is the romantic ideal that ithas steadily gained more and more currency internationally.Cross-cultural studies show thatyoung people from Pakistan toChina, fromPolynesia toMalawi, nowadays are likely to say theyno longerwant theirmar riages to be arranged; instead they hope for a passionate romantic affair thatwill

* I want to thankNicole
Hayes forher insightson thistopic. I hope her present researchon romantic love inAfrica will do much to help answer some of thequestions asked in this paper. ETNOFOOR,XIX(l) 2006,pp. 5-21

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5

sweep them off theirfeet and eventually unite themwith an ideal beloved in an idyllic marriage of soulmates.1 Of course, thisnew mode of desire may be nothingmore than the appropriation of a commercialized idealization of sexuality promoted by theubiq uitous mass media, movies, books and advertisements spewed forth by globally dominantWestern cultural machine.2 From this perspective, perhaps theworldwide evolution of a culture of romantic love is a commodified illusion; true romantic love is really only aWestern experience.
But perhaps that too is an illusion. In fact,many influential social scientists have

argued that romantic love, even in theWest, is nothing but a thindisguise for lust that has been sold to a gullible public. This was the view famously taken by Ralph Linton, thepioneering American anthropologist,who wrote:
The

hero of the modern

American

movie

is always

a romantic

lover, just as the hero of an

oldArab epic is always an epileptic.A cynicmay suspect thatinany ordinarypopulation the percentageof individualswith capacity forromanticlove of theHollywood typewas about as largeas thatof persons able to throwgenuine epileptic fits.However, given a littlesocial encouragement, either one can be adequately

imitated without

the performer

tohimself thattheperformanceis not genuine (Linton 1936:175).

admitting

even

Or, as Robert Lowie put it: 'practical points of view are foremost in inaugurating and maintaining the conjugal state.They eclipse romance not only among aborigines, but virtually everywhere except in small circles ofWestern society '. Even in these circles, he remarks, romance is nothingmore than 'a fiction ' (Lowie 1948:220; 1931:95).
According to several contemporary studies, the fiction of romance has increasingly become less and less convincing toWesterners as a result of its implication in com merce and in response to the increasing individualism, equality and autonomy in the postmodern social world. As Illouz writes, today 'romance in real life has become an empty form, acutely conscious of itself as code or cliche ' (Illouz 1997:293). And
Anthony Giddens has argued that inmodern circumstances, the quest for undying romantic love is being rapidly displaced by a series of confluent relationships each 'entered into for itsown sake, forwhat can be derived by each person from a sustained association with another; and which is continued only in so far as it is thoughtby both parties to deliver enough satisfactions for each individual to staywithin it ' (Giddens
1992:58). Terminated without regret or guilt when no longer satisfying, such affairs are valued only insofar as they are 'comfortable '. Gone is thepassion and idealization of romance; they have been replaced by placid 'pure relationships ' consisting of the pleasurable reciprocal exchange of fluids and feelings. For Giddens, this is a positive development thatwill lead to 'recognizing theother as an independent being, who can be loved for her or his specific traits and qualities; and it also offers the chance of

release from an obsessive involvement with a broken or dying relationship ' (Giddens
1992:93). So, according to these authors, precisely as romance is becoming a univer sal idiom for intimacy, it is simultaneously under threat,and likely to disappear. And a good thing thatwould be, according toGiddens.
However, when we look at how 'pure relationships ' are enacted across cultures,we find they are likely to reflect and express brutal inequities in influence and wealth,
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without any of the softening effects of romantic idealism. In such cases, sexual exchange can become simple exploitation, hidden beneath a veneer of free choice.
For

example, consider Hawa, theAfrican bar girl (ashawo), whose adventurous transna tional sexual lifehas been documented by JohnChernoff.While herjoie de vivre and ability to adapt to adverse circumstances is admirable, the truth is that she lives in a world where a singlewoman 's survival often requires submitting to the sadistic sexual

fantasies of the rich and powerful; Hawa 's life, devoid of illusion, is also devoid of options and almost devoid of hope. As she says, 'There is not any girlwho will wake up as a young girl and say, "As forme, when I grow up I want to be an ashawc>"
(ChernofF2003:203).
Perhaps, then, romantic idealization ought not be summarily dismissed as a delu sion propagated by themovies and propelled by commerce. Instead, I am going to argue that it ismore complex, and more interesting: it is a form of the sacred that is neither universal, nor unique to theWest, but instead is characteristic of certain kinds of social formations, (for earlier versions ofmy analysis, see Lindholm 1998a, 1998b,
1995, and 1988). If this is so, then romantic lovemay not be so easily done away with; and if it is on thewane, then its disappearance will not be without consequences.
But before Imake my argument, I firstwant to consider inmore detail some of theways inwhich romantic love has been conceptualized by anthropology.

Love among the anthropologists
Until very recently, anthropology has had almost nothing to say about how romantic love has been imagined, sought, or experienced, either in theWest or in other cultures.
Instead, ethnographers have been farmore comfortable writing about cannibalism and incest thanwriting about romance. Until recently, the lack of any professional anthro pological interest in romantic love was probably a product of a vain disciplinary hope to be recognized as objective scientists of culture. To achieve this aim, research on 'soft ' and 'feminine ' topics like love, or even emotion, was discouraged in favor of the investigation of more quantifiable aspects of power, social organization, and so on.

This became especially characteristic in the 1950s and 60s during the controversy over the culture and personality school of anthropology in theUnited States, which was discredited due to itsover-emphasis on the importance of early childhood training
(tellingly derided as diaperology) and itsuse of untrustworthypersonality tests for the discovery of the emotions characteristic of other cultures. In thewake of thisdebacle, the study of emotional lifewas left to clinical psychologists, who formulated pencil and paper tests that turned the analysis of personal emotional states into a matter of

statistics (Lindholm 2001).
However, with the 'Geertzian turn ' toward the anthropological interpretationof culturalmeaning systems, the study of emotion began to flourish once again, outside the discredited framework of the culture and personality paradigm. Rather, interest moved away from childhood socialization and themanner inwhich universal emo tionswere culturally selected and expressed and toward regarding emotion as 'embod ied cognition ' motivating actors within a coherent and enclosed

symbolic system
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(Rosaldol984; Lutz 1988). Even so, romantic love remained understudied as research on depression, anger and other dysfunctional feelings became a thriving subfield in anthropology as well as in the psychological and medical community.
Why have negative emotions, such as depression and anger, attracted so much academic attention,while research on romantic love has had so little?Perhaps a con trast and comparison can help to reveal some of the hidden causes of this apparent anomaly, and can set the stage for a more serious debate about the anthropology of love. The first thing to note is that the study of dysfunctional emotional states is sup posed to have a practical application. Analysis, it is thought,will lead to a therapeutic understanding and perhaps a returnto normality. Love too has often been spoken of in themetaphorical language of insanity.People in love are 'love-sick, ' lovers are 'crazy

for each other, ' and are expected to be out of touch with ordinary reality, prone to delusions and to heightened states of exaltation and anxiety.3Traditionally, the social scientists and marriage counselors who have written about love have taken the illness metaphor quite seriously, portraying romantic entanglement as an unhealthy escape from reality in fantasies thatmust be discarded in order to enter the desirable adult

stage of settled and reasonable companionate marriage.4
The imagery of romance as a kind ofmadness would be quite familiar to classical
Greeks and Romans, and to people inpre-modern Japan, India and China as well, who saw romantic attachment as a dangerous affliction (I 'll discuss the reasons for this later). The residual salience of thishistorical metaphor in themodern West may help explain thewariness with which the study of love has been approached by social sci entists. For if romantic love is understood implicitly to be a mental disorder, it is unique inbeing a kind of derangement that,according to our belief system, is ardently to be desired. Following the logic of the connection between love and disease, we can see that iffalling in love and depression are both regarded as kinds of insanity,and if rational analysis is regarded as therapy formental disease, then trying to explain and thereby cure depression or ragemakes sense, while explaining romance clearly does not. An underlying (and probably unconscious) assumption is that the use of rational reason is likely to destroy irrational feeling. In otherwords, studying love can cause its absence, and so should be avoided.
Whether this conjecture is accurate or not, certainly scholarly reluctance to study love is connected to theway romantic love has been imagined to be a transcendent experience that,by itsvery nature, resists any rational analysis. Francesco Alberoni has categorized this opposition in terms of the tension between charismatic experi ences of ecstatic illumination (which he calls nascent states) and institutions.

Since thenascent state is the truthof the institution falling in love is the truthof love it sees the institution as devoid

own

truth in the nascent

of truth, as pure power. And since the institution cannot see its state - which is precarious, it sees that fleeting, pure becoming state as irrationality, madness, scandal (Alberoni
1983:87).

From Alberoni 's perspective, it appears that intellectuals writing from within the authority of academic institutionalboundaries cannot recognize or convey the actual
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experience of love, while those livingwithin thenascent state of 'love-worlds ' cannot translate their reality into the institutional language of the academy. The premises of each of these conditions are reckoned to be mutually contradictory.
This radical incommensurability is evident in the two epistemes generally used in ordinary discourse about falling in love. Among lovers and the general public the poetic mode represents love as elevating and sublime, a moral good in itself. In sub versive opposition to thisparadigm is the joking pornographic mode, which comically unmasks the poetic lover as a sexual predator. But despite their differences, these discourses are alike in that theyboth remove love from the realm of rational discus sion. Poetry renders love ineffable; pornography reduces it to the obscene and ridicu lous. As a result, any interpretiveethnographic study of love may well appear to be

removing thepoetry from the experience, while at the same time engaging in a bit of keyhole peeking under theguise of research. Both make the investigator into an absurd figure.And absurdity is one thing that anthropology, which is already nervous of its status as a real social science, can ill afford.
On the other side of the divide are the hard scientists - psychologists and sociolo gists without disciplinary anxietywho trained to cultivate detachment and to admin isterreplicable tests and surveys. Following their taken-for-grantedorientation toward quantification and objectivity, theyhave ignored theproblem of conveying the experi ence of love and have spoken in a utilitarian and causal professional language which portrays romantic idealization as a means toward a desired end, usually sexual con

gress, but also the exchange of goods, themaximization of one 's gene pool, and so on.
From theirpoint of view, thepoetic and transcendentquality of love is an illusion that disguises the fundamental goal; the scientists in this instance seem tobe on the side of thepornographers, thoughwithout any of their subversive humor.5
Iwill discuss some of the implications of the scientific perspective shortly,but for
I simplywant to reiterate that a quantitative and calculative rationalistic moment the approach does not do justice to theway love is understood and talked about by lovers themselves. As

a result,

scholars

wanting

to study

romantic

love

are

stuck

between

tryingto speak the common language of love,which is eitherpoetic (to those immersed in thenascent state of 'being in love ') or pornographic (to skeptics), or else in the cool and detached discourse of experimental science, which is incongruously inconsistent with what the lover 's heart feels.
Calling attention to the strikingproblem of achieving an adequate discourse for addressing the topic of love is importantbecause itdirects our attention to the crucial and complex place that romantic love occupies inWestern thought.Awareness of the knot of epistemic contradictions obscuring, distorting, transformingor denying the experience of romance ought not to frightenus away from the topic, but rather should spark an interest in the serious study of romantic love.At the same time,what emerges from even the perfunctory outline I have attempted here is that the study of romance ought to be undertaken with a humbling sense of the inadequacy of our language and the limits of our understanding. So, with that caveat inmind, letme not so modestly outline some of the directions taken in the study of romantic love by anthropologists and theirallies, providing some illustrations along theway.

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Paradigms

for love: sexual and sacred

As I have already mentioned, it is very often assumed byWestern social scientists and philosophers that theWestern ideal of romantic love serves primarily as a socially acceptable reason to engage in sexual intercourse.A famous example occurs in Jean
Paul Sartre 's Being and Nothingness, where the philosopher scathingly imagines the bad faith of a young girl absently permitting her hand to be stroked by a suitorwhile she simultaneously imagines herself admired solely as a creature of purity and abstract intellect (Sartre 1956). From Sartre 's point of view, people who say they are 'in love '

are fooling themselves, disguising their simple human lust under a mask of idealiza tion; other cultures, not burdened by Christian morality, would supposedly not need such self-delusions, and sowould not develop romantic ideals (for examples, see Hunt
1959; Endelman 1989). Historians and sociologists have tended tomake similar assumptions, though theirapproaches have been somewhat different.Romantic love, the standard argument goes, was a direct response to the rise of capitalism, and served as a counterweight to the atomism that resulted from the breakup of traditional com munal forms of social life.For example, Howard Gadlin writes that: as we understand

them today, emerged during the early decades of the life is torn between the self-conscious individual whose century...with bourgeois twins the separated worlds of work and home. Individualism and intimacy are the Siamese

Intimate

relationships,

nineteenth

ofmodernization (Gadlin 1977:34; theclassic statementsof thisperspectiveare inParsons
1949,1951; see also Shorter 1977; Stone 1988).
According to this theory, isolatedmodern men and women, alienated by theirpartici pation in an impersonal marketplace, sought solace and meaning in the arms of an idealized lover.Love provided what thenewly industrialized society had taken away: a feeling of belonging and significance.Without capitalism, then, therewould be no love.6 However, of late these views of romantic love as uniquely modern andWestern have been challenged from two differentdirections. The first is from anthropological research that focuses on the contextual study of emotion, including the emotion of romantic attraction.The second, derived from sociobiology, envisions romance as an evolutionary mechanism that stimulates long-term sexual attraction and binds natu rally polygamous men and naturally monogamous women together in the stable

families required to propagate thehuman species (Fischer 1992. For other arguments, see Jankowiak 1995; de Munck 1998). Though each revalues romance, the claims made by these two new modes are in opposition. Anthropological students of emotion are interested in discovering when and where romantic love occurs, and in correlating its emergence with particular social and psychological preconditions (Goode 1959).
For them, romantic love is culturally constructed, though itmay be based on some more fundamental human impulses. Those most influenced by sociobiology, in con

trast,believe romantic lovemust necessarily appear in all human societies, and search for itbeneath thewelter of cultural variation.
My own sympathies are with the formerposition. I believe that the sociobiologi
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cal affirmation of the ubiquity of romantic love is unproven, and that the connection between love and sex isproblematic (as Iwill demonstrate below). I also believe that
Western civilization did not discover love. Other people, in other cultures, both now and in thepast, have also known thebittersweet pleasure and anguish of romance; the job of ethnography is to discover these cultures and outline the circumstances and trajectories of love in them. For example, a great body of literary evidence clearly demonstrates that the ideology and practice of romantic love was well developed, at least among the elite, inmany pre-modern non-Western complex societies, such
as
Japan, China, India, and theMiddle East, as well as among our own cultural ances tors in ancient Greece, Rome and elsewhere. Based on his study of thismaterial,
Yehudi Cohen goes so far as to argue 'romantic love in general, is an adaptation to pressures of life in a state society ' (Cohen 1969:666). In all of these cases there are remarkable similarities to our own modern experience of love, as well as some strik ing differences, which help to illuminate the relationship between love and social

structure.

The most obvious and surprising difference is that in every one of these cultures love and marriage were at odds with one another.As Seneca wrote: 'To love one 's wife with an ardent passion is to commit adultery ' (quoted inGrimal 1986:252). In fact, inmost of the complex societies forwhich we have records of romantic passion, conjugal love between husband and wife was considered both absurd and impossible.
The reason for this seeming paradox becomes evident ifwe make a comparative

analysis of the social organizations of these societies. In each case, themost important aspect of personal identitywas membership in one 's father 's clan. These patrilateral ties provided thepolitical and economic affiliations thatwere crucial for survival and status.Only throughmembership in a patrilineage could men make claims toproperty, or assert leadership; women relied on theirpatrilineage forprotection and honor. But lineages did not exist in isolation; theywere tied toother lineages through the exchange
- that ofwomen is, throughmarriage. Such alliances were vital tobuilding the strength of a clan

or

family.

too important a matter to be decided by young people swept away by passion. Rather, marriage arrangements were negotiated by powerful elders whose job was to advance the interestsof the clan much as royal new wife entered her husband 's extended fam marriages are still arranged today.The a ily as stranger,under the thumb of her in-laws. Usually, her lifewas confined to the home, where she could only gain status by bearing children;meanwhile, her husband was likely to avoid thewomen 's quarters altogether, competing with othermen for honor and renown in the public sphere. In these societies, men and women alike viewed marriage as a duty and a necessity; romantic attractionwas not a part of the
In this context matrimony was

bargain. Affection between husband and wife was generally frowned upon as an indi cation of potential disloyalty to the larger extended family.
While lovewith one 's spouse was next to impossible, romantic feelings (when they existed) were directed toward individuals one could not marry. This preserved the businesslike atmosphere of the family, but could sometimes have disastrous conse quences. In Tokugawa Japan, for example, love dramas always revolved around the conflicts caused by relationships between respectable men and theircourtesans.When
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these relationships drew men away from their duties and toward disgrace, the only answer was suicide. Similarly, in imperial Rome, patrician men sometimes found themselves falling deeply in love with the slaves theymet in brothels. This love was a release from the oppressive obligations and rivalries found in arranged marriages

and in the intrigues of public life.Roman poets idealized theirbeloved slave prosti tutes as domina, literally reversing the role ofmaster and slave. The problem was that nobleman smittenwith a prostitutewere likely to become obsessively anxious about her loyalty, since itwas to her great advantage to convince her clients of her sincerity.

One noble lover bitterlynamed thewoman who held him in sexual thralldom 'Nem esis ' - the sister of tenderness and deceit (quoted inGrimal 1986:164).
In other societies the dangers of sexual servitude were avoided by expediently guaranteeing the chastity of romantic relationships. The best-known examples are the
Medieval Troubadours, who, in a transformation of the cult of theVirgin Mary,

renounced physical contactwith thewomen theyworshipped. Modern commentators, who assume that love and sexual desire must be united, have been quick to see the hypocrisy in this ideal, and certainly some bards were not as innocent as they pre tended to be. But the assumption thata chaste ideology must be a disguise for sexual desire is assuming what needs to be proven. In fact, themodern Western notion of sex as an absolute good - summed up byWoody Allen 's comment that an orgasm is the
- is only thing on earth that 's good even when it 's bad actually quite unusual across cultures. In South Asia, for instance,men dread the debility they believe to be caused by semen loss, while in China excessive sexual activity is said tomake the penis

withdraw into the body, with potentially fatal results. Inmany other societies sexual intercourse is regarded as polluting, repellant and risky,and is surrounded bymultiple taboos and restrictions.
A deep fear of sexuality often correlates with a social configurationwhere chastity is inordinatelyvalued, as among theDugum Dani ofNew Guinea, who practice almost complete sexual abstinence (Heider 1970). In fact, inMelanesia the sexual act is gen erally something to be avoided except under themost extraordinary circumstances.
For instance, inManus, as reported byMargaret Mead, sexual intercourse is regarded as a disgusting, perilous and shameful business. In contrast:

Illicit love affairs,affairsof choice, are, significantlyenough, described as situations in which people need nothave sex iftheydo notwish to,but can simplysitand talkand laugh together.... The wonderful

1956: 361,405).

thing about

lovers

is that you don 't have

to sleep with

them (Mead

If this all seems too foreign,we can recall that in our own recent past, proper public
Victorian middle-class morality portrayed sexual desire as a degrading intrusion on reason, to be resisted and controlled by men, and denied completely by women. Pri vate accounts of Victorian private lives show that these efforts,while sometimes a struggle,were usually not in vain. For many, sexuality was indeed subdued at least

between husbands and wives. With this inmind, we should not be so skeptical of the courtier 's claim thathe saw his lady as a creature of sanctified innocence and virtue.

For these courtiers, and for their idealized beloveds, sexmight be appropriate in the
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household as a wifely duty and male prerogative or (formen) when paid for in broth els - but not between true lovers,whose love was pure.

Chaste

love among theMarri

Baluch

A culturally valued division between true love and sexuality is characteristic ofmany cultures. For an extended example, letme turnto theMarri Baluch, a nomadic people living in themarginal deserts of Iran,who were described in a classic work by Robert
Pehrson (1966). According to Pehrson, theMarri inhabit a harsh, isolated and unfor giving world. They are highly individualistic, self-interested and competitive, and

expect opportunism and manipulation from all social transactions. Their personal lives are dominated by fear,mistrust, and hostility; secrecy and social masking are at a premium, while collective action and cooperation are minimal. Yet among these people, as Pehrson writes, romantic relationships are idealized, and a love affair 'is a

thingof surpassing beauty and value ', implying absolute trust, mutuality, and loyalty; such a love is to be pursued at all costs (Pehrson 1966:65). Romance is both the stuff of dreams, and of life. Frustrated lovers among theMarri may commit suicide, and become celebrated in the romantic poems and songs thatare themainstay ofMarri art.

As one Marri woman
Marri '

tells Pehrson

'it is very great, very hard, to be a lover for us

(Pehrson 1966:62).
Unlike Western love relationships, romance among theMarri stands absolutely opposed tomarriage, which is never for love. It is, in fact, shameful even to show affection for one 's spouse. True romance has to be secret, and with a married woman

of a distant camp. This is a dangerous matter, since other camps are hostile, and meet ingwith unguarded women is punishable by death. The strikingcontrast to theWest is a consequence of the social organization of theMarri, who live in small patrilineal, patrilocal campsites ruled lightlyby a religiously sanctioned central authority,called the Sardar.

Although political domination does occur, the local units, permeable and shifting as they are, nonetheless have considerable solidity and autonomy, judging theirown disputes and controlling theirown relations of production within a framework of tra ditional knowledge and local consent. The patrilineal patrilocal ideology means that members of the campsite have absolute rights and duties to one another that are legitimated by close blood ties and co-residence. Participation in blood feuds, pay ment of fines, rights topasturage and thepunishment of adultery all are incumbent on theminimal lineage group.
However, thisminimal group is not one of cooperation and friendship. The camp members, despite their ties,work separately, have theirown tentsand property, coop erate as littleas possible, and aremutually suspicious and antagonistic. If they could, theywould separate, but theneed for defense and a varied labor pool keeps the camps

together; the rights and duties of kinship legitimize this pragmatic unity.Within this
Marri men continually manipulate to gain power inimical but constraining structure, and status. By attracting a loyal following among his cohorts, thepoor herdsman can

make a claim for becoming the local factotum of the Sardar, thereby gaining points

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over one 's nearest, and most hostile, lineage mates and rivals.7Marriage in this con text is not amatter of personal choice and attraction. Instead,Marri men use marriage in an instrumentalfashion to establish relationships thatwill help them to pursue their

political interests;women are treatedas chattel, tobe controlled and dominated for the honor and benefit of the patriarch.
For theMarri, romantic involvement, with all its risk, is one of the few human relationships that are felt to be of value in and for itself, and not as a means to the instrumental ends of personal power and prestige. It is understood to be opposed to marriage in every way. Marriage is a public and sanctioned relationship between

superiormen and inferiorwomen, oftenwithin the camp and the lineage, and always among allies; it is preeminently politically motivated, and it is expected to be cold and hostile at best. Romance on the contrary is secretive, private, and conducted with strangerswho are potential enemies. Its only possible political consequences are dis astrous enmity and feud. Romantic love has the potential for dividing groups while it unites the lovers; marriage aims to solidify groups, while permitting no attraction

within the asymmetrical couple. In marriage, thewoman is inferior and despised, while in romance she is honored and revered.
As in other similarly organized societies, theMarri claim thata true romantic rela tionship, in contrast tomarriage, is not sexual. Theoretically, at least, themale lover worships his beloved as a pure being and isworshipped in return;forgoing the connota tions of female inferiorityand degradation thattheMarri (likemany patrilineal peoples) believe to be implicit in the sexual act, the romantic couple lose themselves inmutual gazes, spontaneous recitations of poetry and the reciprocal exchange of confidences and love tokens.Whether or notMarri love affairs are actually chaste, what is impor

tant is that this is the cultural ideal of romantic love theMarri believe in and aspire to.
For theMarri, then, romance iswith a distant and untouchable other, and it is consciously perceived as negating the rivalries of power, the inferiorityof women, and the constraints of themarriage tie. In theory, it is chaste and highly idealized. This romantic complex occurs within a relatively rigidly structured,but characteristically competitive social formation. Far from providing the basis for reproducing the domi nant social order, romance in this instance opposes it in everyway. This same opposi tional pattern can be found throughout theMiddle East, where true loversmust never consummate theirpassion, and where love is only discussed in the language of poetry,

not inordinary discourse (Abu-Lughod 1990). In this culture, only a love that remains on the level of profound spiritual yearning isworthy of retelling.
As Imentioned, research indicates that the separation between sexual desire and romantic love is especially common in societies where sexual intercourse is regarded as an act of violence and domination, or where sexuality is associated with pollution

and spiritual danger. Such societies may also have elaborate notions of the comple mentarity of love relations that reverse the actual sexual asymmetry ofmale-female relations. Thus the degraded slave prostitute in imperial Rome becomes the domina while the downtrodden Marri wife (who, in thewords of oneMarri woman, is only fit to 'eat shit ') isworshipped as a goddess by her lover (Pehrson 1966:59).
Even in our own society, romantic idealization may severely impede sexual desire which, according to some studies, is farmore likely to be aroused by images of deg
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radation and rape than by images of tenderness and affection.We decry the polariza tion between an idealized virgin and a degraded whore, and try to unite the two by seeking to have sex with the one we adore. But it is evident that in other societies idealization and sexual desire are conceptually and actually separated. Perhaps, then, our demand that love and sex go together is no more 'natural ' or universal than our equally culture-bound requirement that love should lead tomarriage.

What

do we talk about when we talk about love?8

We do not know with any degree of certaintywhy people are drawn to one another with a fervor so compulsive and so overwhelming that itcan end in suicide; scholars still debate whether romantic idealization is a human universal, and what sorts of social conditions favor - or disfavor - expressions of love. At this point, we can say that cross-cultural surveys do indicate that in some areas (most spectacularly in sub
Saharan Africa) idealized romantic love rarely has any part in the indigenous cultural repertoire.9But thismay only be because these regions were studied by anthropolo gists who had little interest in emotional life. Because of the paucity of data, it is impossible to know with certaintywhich societies do not have an elaborated belief in romantic love. However, from may be quite rare. For example, took some years ago uncovered tion out of 248 cases: fivewere

the ethnographic record, it appears that such beliefs an ethnographic cross-cultural surveywhich I under

only 21 unequivocal examples of romantic idealiza inOceania (Murngin, !Kung, Tikopia, Tonga, Trobri ands), three inAfrica (Ashanti, Hottentot, Ife), five inAsia (theMarri Baluch, Ainu,
Gond, Miao, Semang), five inNorth America (Blackfoot, Commanche, Crow, Ojibwa,
Western Apache) and three in South America (Mataco, Ona, Yahgan).10 In contrast, another survey by Jankowiak and Fischer which used the same data, butwhich defined romantic love primarily as a matter of intense sexual attraction produced a much

largernumber of examples, leading the researchers to conclude that romantic love is most likely a human universal, though itsmanifestations are greatly effected by cul ture (Jankowiak and Fischer 1992). Clearly, how investigators characterize love will make a vast difference in thenumber of societies where they find it.
Despite disparities in findings due to divergences in definition, all recent research does admit that romantic love varies according to cultural constraints. Looking at the matter structurally, it seems plausible that relatively stable societies with solidified extended families, age-sets, and other encompassing social networks thatoffer alter native forms of belonging and experiences of participation in-group rituals are less prone to romantic involvement. It is also evident that people inmany cultures do experience powerful emotions thatwe can recognize as kindred to our own sense of falling in love; just as clearly, those emotions can lead in differentdirections and have different implications for them than theydo forus. In any case, social scientists can no

longer pretend that love exists only as a modern delusion, unworthy of serious study.
What then are the possibilities for developing an anthropology of romantic love?
There are many avenues to follow, but the path I have taken is structural and com parative. I have asked where and under what circumstances are 'romantic love com

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plexes ' found? Once the existence of such complexes is established, thenwe can begin to postulate what social factors promote and which extinguish the possibility of love. I have argued herein and elsewhere that one characteristic type of romantic idealization appears in societies sharing the relatively rigid and antagonistic social organization found among theMarri Baluch as well as in complex 'courtly ' societies, such as ancient Rome and Tokugawa Japan. Under the conditions of strong social constraint,well-formed primordial identities,and intense rivalry forpower found both in centralized stratified societies and in certain kinds of highly structured and inter

nally competitive simpler social formations, the idealization offered by romantic love offers a way of imagining a different and more fulfilling life. But because of the objective reality of the social environment, romance can never form the base for actu ally constructing the family, as ithas in contemporaryWestern society. Itmust instead stand against and outside of the central social formation, and will in consequence be fantastic and unrealistic in its imagery and dangerous in its enactment, unlike love in the flexible, egalitarian and atomistic cultures of themodern world.
In contrast, societies with extremely fluid social relationsmarked by mobility and competition, operating according to individualistic worldviews within harsh or other

wise insecure environmentsmay findmeaning and emotional warmth in themutuality of romantic relationships. Romance in these societies is associated with marriage, since the couple is idealized as the ultimate refuge against the hostile world, and functions as the necessary nucleus of the atomized social organization. Societies fit ting this description are an odd lot: they includemost of themodern developed world, as well as the simplest hunting and gathering groups.

There is, finally, another very different type of social formation,which seems to favor romantic love, though its outlines are less clear. These societies are neither cen tralized nor rigid, nor are they atomistic, or under any extreme social or ecological pressure. Rather, they are group-oriented, non-individualistic cultures that strictlycon

trolmarriage, but thatoffer compensation to theiryouth bymeans of institutionalized premarital sexual freedom, usually within a age-graded clubhouse; sexual relations inside the clubhouse are destined to be ephemeral, sincemarriage is only with outsid ers, but these early sexual experiences often lead topowerful romantic attachments and idealizations, and even to love suicide. Examples of this type are found in tribal India,
Southeast Asia and in theOceanic cultureswhere romantic love has been documented.
However, although I believe my structurallyoriented comparative analysis is logi cally coherent and credible, the data supporting it is relativelyweak. As I have noted, we know very little so far about romantic love cross-culturally, or even in theWest, due to the long-standing reluctance of anthropologists to address and document the emotional experiences of persons, and to take account of the trajectories of love, both in story and in life. Is romance actually wholly intertwinedwith sexuality, as socio biologists argue, or, as I have claimed, is it a form of the sacred, to be disentangled from sexuality and traced to its source as one way of transcending the existential limits of the self? Or is it something else?
In any case, romantic love is not to be confused with or reduced to its commercial expressions, though these are powerful indeed and worth studying.Rather, commodi fication is an attempt, quite successful, to cash in on deep human desires. A conse
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quence, well-documented by Ilouz, is the intrusionof calculation and cynicism into the ideal - both ofwhich stand at rightangles to idealization, and so render love sus pect (Illouz 1997). This iswhat makes itpossible forGiddens to argue that romantic love is likely to vanish in favor of utilitarian pure relationships where idealization is replaced by calculation. Sociobiologists would say that this is impossible because of a human genetic predisposition for idealization. A more anthropological-psychologi

cal approach, which I favor, affirms that romance can indeed fade, but the hope for something other than the daily routine and the practical pleasures cannot, and will instead find expression through some other compelling imaginary of the sacred - per haps in charismatic collectives, perhaps in other, as yet unknown forms.
I believe thatwhen we discuss 'whatwe talk about when we talk about love ' we need to remember thathuman beings always want to exceed their concrete lives and be more than rational maximizers of valued cultural goals. The existential desire to escape the limits of the given is the source of the human yearning for the sacred.
Romantic love is one modern form that thisyearning takes, offering the experience of salvation in thisworld, even ifonly sporadically and in fantasy; as the realization of an impulse to transcendence it exists in tension with reality and with other forms of existential commitment; itmay also sufferfrom internalcontradictions due tovarious interpretationsof how love should be enacted (for examples see Quinn 1987; Trawick
1990). However, that is only my opinion. So far, real answers towhat we talk about

when we talk about love are yet to be substantially grounded in ethnography. But anthropologists who combine rigorwith sympathetic insightmay be able to do justice to the complexity, passion and pain of love,while also revealing its cultural limits, its particular expressions, and its historical precedents. That iswhat I hope from this collection of essays.

E-mail:

[e-mail]

Notes
1
2

see Lipset 2004.
For a counter-example, in contemporary
Trinidad
For example, to is be much more complex. reality likely women to expect romantic rhetoric
Trinidadian
American soap operas have encouraged
The

and behavior

from their suitors. As

a result, sexual

practices

have

changed,

generally

to the

benefitofwomen (Birthand Freilich 1995). For anotherexample of thepower ofmedia images of love to transform

intimate relationships,

see Verheijen 's

essay

in this issue.

3 Freud
(1959) specificallypairs romantic love with depression. Both involve subjective comes as a result of and of self-loss. Classically, of being overwhelmed depression in love, while love is salvation from depression. inWestern socio distinction between 'falling in love ' and 'being in love ' is pervasive

senses

failure
4

The

logical and psychological literatureon the family,with the latterpraised and the former devalued as

'adolescent '.

InWeberian

and bureaucracy. was perhaps
Schopenhauer

terms, the equivalent

would

be the distinction

between

charisma

5

the firstmodern

philosopher

to make

this argument.

For

him,

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to persuade to accept the onerous respon love was necessary rational individuals never do if not bemused of raising children by romantic something they would 'if Petrarch 's had been satisfied, his song would delusions of bliss. As he writes, passion are laid ' have been silenced from thatmoment, just as is that of the bird, as soon as the eggs romantic sibilities

(1966:557).
6 This claim ismuch disputed byMacFarlane (1986, 1987) who argues thatromantic love arose inMedieval

with the relative autonomy and fluidity
Northern Europe coincidentally is a product, not a precursor, of a society where system. For him, capitalism

of the social
7

romantic
The

love predominates. social movement potential forminimal

importance, not the degree of move not evolve the love complex noted here

is of crucial

ment

possible. An absolutely rigid structure would because social pressure would be absent.

8 This phrase is takenfromCarver (1981).

9

a source of data for these surveys is the Human usual Area File (HRAF),
Relations
of data on approximately
350 human societies which have been extensively compendium to numbered studied by anthropologists.
This data is sorted according topics, which allows for rapid creation of comparative is a non-profit consortium that is data sets. The HRAF

The

at Yale

housed
10

The

but is widely available on-line. University, research was done in 1985-6 by two Harvard

actual

undergraduates

(Andrew

Buck

ser and Susan Rofman) who utilized theHuman Relations Area Files (HRAF), focusing

on small-scale especially and 'ideas about
(762),

and on the categories 'basis of marriage ' 'suicide '
(581),
was chosen because
The
'basis of (831). category marriage ' cultures with romantic love often link love and marriage.
But, as I have noted, this is hardly so I tried to measure in the culture the intensity of the romantic love ideology universal, societies

sex '

that life without
Since romantic love, by definition, means through the category of 'suicide '. the beloved is not worth living, my reasoning was that suicide, stemming from rejection, a grief at a lover 's death, or frustrated marriage plans would be good indicator of romantic idealization. 'ideas beliefs here were suicides from hurt pride or as revenge. The final category,
I assumed love stories and myths, which revealed yielded underlying In idealized their relationships. completing ratings, the researchers worked

Excluded

about about sex ',

to the degree to exist that romantic love appeared scoring cases according their findings, a final list of society as ideal and as action. After comparing see where romantic love seemed to exist was then made up. For a fuller account,

independently, in a particular societies Lindholm have (1998b).

enough

data

As

a side note,

to say whether

the two researchers

this outcome

are now

has any correlation

I do not happily married. with their research.

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