The institutions of love: courtship, love, marriage

Presentation

The debate still remains open between the position of certain currents in the human sciences (sociology, anthropology...) for whom only the West would know love, and that defended by literary scholars and psychologists, who maintain the opposite.

Between these two tendencies, this book reports on the multiple compromises made by different societies in Asia (China, Korea, Japan, Nepal, India) and the Indian Ocean (Madagascar) to navigate between individual expressions of love, inspired by Western practices, and the social norms that strongly control them. Ethnographic surveys of practices in force today show how these compromises are still expressed in "institutions of love" leading most often to marriage.

Interview

Directresses

Catherine Capdeville-Zeng is an anthropologist and sinologist. She heads the Chinese studies department at INALCO and is a member of the ASIES-INALCO team

Delphine Ortis has a PhD in social anthropology and ethnology. She is a lecturer at ESSEC, INALCO and EHESS.

370 pages
16 x 24 cm
Publication: 23/11/2018
ISBN: 9782858312795