A stratified love: Narratives, practices and the infrastructure of love of three Chilean women of different socio-economical strata

Abstract

This article is an exploratory study that seeks to incorporate the stratification variable to the current academic discussion about the changes in the forms of intimacy and the way that love is lived in late modernity as the result of individuation processes. It also emphasizes the material conception of love, considering practices and objects of consumption as determining factors en the experience of love. Through an exploratory study based on narrative analysis of three Chilean women of different socio-economic strata, I seek to problematize the conceptual categories used in the sociological debate about love. As we shall see, the stratification factor shows that love is experienced in different ways depending on the social strata and also changes its material elements.

Keywords

• amor
• individualización
• modernidad tardía
• agencia material
• estratificación