Towards a Sociological Understanding of Love: Insights from Research

Abstract

What is the object of a sociological or philosophical understanding of “love”? Should the aim of an inquiry on “love” be that of providing a general definition of “love”, or that of creating an approach which accommodates historicity, locality, and diversity of meaning-producing practices? This paper presents the epistemological premises and the operational steps of an original approach to love, the goal thereof is to understand personal and relational love experiences within the framework of historical change and cultural diversity, and to allow for rigorous empirical application. I discuss the theoretical foundations of this approach, that is the concept of “integrated semantics”, the latter’s empirical emergence form a pilot case-study, and its implementation in an ongoing research project focusing on the Canadian general population.