MOBILIZING INTIMATE RELATIONSHIP – RESEARCH NETWORK

Mobilizing Intimate Relationship

The research network aims to establish an innovative research area on contemporary interpretations of intimate relationship. The network started an initiative of Kornelia Hahn and Mona Röhm and aims to bring international scholars together to exchange their research within the field of intimate relationships, develop innovative approaches, and work on joined projects. The research is based on processes of actively producing intimacy in globalized societies. It is relevant since the capability of (re-)establishing and sustaining intimate relationship is increasingly subject to a ‘normalizing’ order. At the same time, it is based on sophisticated challenges to create individual, unique, seemingly socially detached bonds with ‘intimate’ others. nn

Bild zu Mobilizing Intimate Relationship

The research field focuses on four dimensions of mobility:

  • the social construction of ‘intimacy’ from the viewpoint of different and diverse interpreters (individuals, role expectations, collective agents, discourses etc.)
  • the dynamic of signifying practices in the context of opportunities, resources, constraints, markets, media etc.
  • transcultural experiences due to transcending social, geographical, discursive, or mediated boundaries while constructing intimate relationships
  • (changing) normative and subjective concepts of intimacy

In respect to these dimensions, we develop an innovative methodology suited for the challenges of the research field:

  • emphasis on the negotiation process of intimate relationships
  • empirical interlinkages of diverse interpretations of intimacy
  • research in various social and cultural contexts
  • research which integrates perceived and/or imagined sexual, bodily, ethnic, and cultural belongings

Network Coordination: Mona Röhm,
New members are welcome! Please feel free to share your thoughts, call for paper, or other relevant information with us!

 

Members of the Mobilizing Intimate Relationship-Research Network