Reinventing Couples: Tradition, Agency and Bricolage

Carter, Julia; Duncan, Simon

Abstract

This book presents a new approach to understanding contemporary personal life, taking account of how people build their lives through a bricolage of ‘tradition’ and ‘modern’. The authors examine how tradition is used and adapted, invented and re-invented; how meaning can leak from past to present; the ways in which people’s agencies differ as they make decisions; and the process of bricolage in making new arrangements. These themes are illustrated through a variety of case studies, ranging from personal life in the 1950s, young women and marriage, the rise of cohabitation, female name change, living apart together, and creating weddings. Centrally the authors emphasise the re-traditionalisation involved in de-traditionalisation and the connectedness involved in individualised processes of relationship change.

• Book Type: Authored Book
• Online Publication Date: Jan 1, 2018
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2018
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Series Title: Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life
• ISBN: 9781137589606
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58961-3
• Keywords: reinventing, couples, tradition, agency, bricolage
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/872580
• Publisher URL: https://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9781137589606