The Tenacity of the Couple-Norm

The Tenacity of the Couple-Norm explores the ongoing strength and insidious grip of couple-normativityacross changing landscapes of law, policy and everyday life in four contrastingnational contexts: the UK, Bulgaria, Norway and Portugal.Byinvestigating how the couple-norm is lived and experienced, how it has changedover time, and how it varies between places and social groups, this book providesa detailed analysis of changing intimate citizenship regimes in Europe, andmakes a major intervention in understandings of the contemporary condition ofpersonal life. The authors develop the feminist concept of 'intimatecitizenship' and propose the new concept of 'intimate citizenship regime',offering a study of intimate citizenship regimes as normative systems that havebeen undergoing profound change in recent decades. Against the backdrop ofprocesses of de-patriarchalization, liberalization, pluralization andhomonormalization, the ongoing potency of the couple-norm becomes ever clearer.Theauthors provide an analysis of how the couple-form is institutionalized,supported and mandated by legal regulations, social policies and everydaypractices, and how this serves to shape the intimate life choices and trajectoriesof those who seem to be living aslant to the conventional heterosexualcohabiting couple-form. Attending also to practices and moments that challengecouple-normativity, both consciously chosen and explicit, as well as circumstantial,subconscious and implicit, The Tenacityof the Couple-Norm makes an important contribution to literatures oncitizenship, intimacy, family life, and social change in sociology, socialpolicy, socio-legal studies, gender/sexuality/queer studies and psychosocialstudies.