What do cultural anthropologists know about love? To mark Valentine’s Day, a widely celebrated occasion in the United States, I did some research. Using the Anthropology Plus database available through my university library, and with love as my only search term, I came up with the following list of articles published by cultural anthropologists from 2007 to the present. This list offers a quick glimpse into the cultural anthropology of love.
Topics include romantic love, family love and love of country; love as a basis for establishing a marriage; breaking up when romance fades; professions of love in discourse and song and professions of love in the midst of a violent relationship or one that is risky in terms of HIV/AIDS.
Note: the journals are not open-source. If you email particular authors, however, they are likely to happily provide you with an electronic copy of their article. Often, the journal provides the email address of the author on the first page or at the end.
Abu-Rabia-Queder, Sarab. Coping with ‘Forbidden Love’ and Loveless Marriage. Educated Bedouin Women from the Negev. Ethnohistory 8(3):297-323, 2007.
Carlisle, Jessica. Mother Love. A Forced Divorce in Damascus. Anthropology of the Middle East 2(1):89-102, 2007.
Clapp, James A. The Romantic Travel Movie, Italian-Style. Visual Anthropology 22(1):52-63, 2009.
Faier, Lieba. Filipina Migrants in Rural Japan and their Professions of Love. American Ethnologist 34(1):148-162, 2007.
Foster, Robert J. Commodities, Brands, Love and Kula: Comparative Notes on Value Creation. Anthropological Theory 8(1):9-25, 2008.
Gershon, Ilana. Email My Heart: Remediation and Romantic Break-Ups. Anthropology Today 24(6):13-15, 2008.
Haeri, Shahla. Sacred Canopy : Love and Sex Under the Veil. Iranian Studies: Bulletin of the Society for Iranian Cultural and Social Studies 42(1):113-126, 2009.
Harrison, Abigail. Hidden Love : Sexual Ideologies and Relationship Ideals among Rural South African Adolescents in the Context of HIV/AIDS. Culture, Health and Sexuality 10(2):175-189, 2008.
Hart, Kimberley. Love by Arrangement: The Ambiguity of ‘Spousal Choice’ in a Turkish Village. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 13(2):345-362, 2007.
Helsloot, John. The Triumph of Valentine’s Day in the Netherlands: After Fifty Years. Lietuvos Etnologija 8(17):97-116, 2008..
Kapteijns, Lidwien. Discourse on Moral Womanhood in Somali Popular Songs, 1960-1990. Journal of African History 50(1):101-122, 2009.
Lipset, David. Women without Qualities: Further Courtship Stories Told by Young Papua New Guinean Men. Ethnology 46(2):93-111, 2007.
Marsden, Magnus. Love and Elopement in Northern Pakistan. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 13(1):91-108, 2007.
Melendez, Rita M., and Rogério Pinto. ‘It’s really a Hard Life’ : Love, Gender and HIV Risk among Male-to-Female Transgender Persons. Culture, Health and Sexuality 9(3):233-245, 2007.
Minge, Jeanine Marie. The Stained Body : A Fusion of Embodied Art on Rape and Love. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 36(3):252-280, 2007.
Neto, Félix. Love Styles: A Cross-Cultural Study of British, Indian, and Portguese College Students. Journal of Comparative Family Studies 38(2):239-254, 2007.
O’Keeffe Bickerdicke, Isabel. Sung and Spoken: An Analysis of Two Different Versions of a Kun-Barlang Love Song. Australian Aboriginal Studies 2:46-62, 2007.
Povinelli, Elizabeth A. Beyond Good and Evil, Whither Liberal Sacrificial Love? Public Culture : Bulletin of the Project for Transnational Cultural Studies 21(1):77-100, 2009.
Puig, Nicolas. Love, Shame and Prestige in Cairo: Musicians on Mohamed Ali Avenue, between Urban Intimacy and Estrangement. L’Homme 190:51-77, 2009.
Read, Rosie. Labour and Love: Competing Constructions of ‘Care’ in a Czech Nursing Home. Critique of Anthropology 27(2):203-222, 2007.
Richard, Analiese, and Daromir Rudnyckyj. Economies of Affect. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 15(1):57-77, 2009.
Rivera, Juan J. Devouring Passions and Tragic Feelings: The Topic of Love in some Ritual Songs from a Cattle Branding Ritual in the Andes. Revista De Antropología Social (Madrid) 17:309-349, 2008.
Rowe, Matthew S., and Gary W. Dowsett. Sex, Love, Friendship, Belonging and Place : Is there a Role for ‘Gay Community’ in HIV Prevention Today? Culture, Health and Sexuality 10(4):329-344, 2008.
Sarkar, Amitabha, and Samira Dasgupta. 2008. Combs as Expression of Creativity and Cognitive Symbol of Love. Eastern Anthropologist 61(2):273-276.
Settle, Heather. “the Coca-Cola of Forgetting” : Reflections on Love and Migration in a Post-Castro Age. Transforming Anthropology 16(2):173-175, 2008.
Szeto, Kin-Yan. A Moist Heart : Love, Politics and China’s Neoliberal Transition in the Films of Jia Zhangke. Visual Anthropology 22(2-3):95-107, 2009.
Tully, Sheila R. In the Name of Love: Modern Day Mail Order Brides. Visual Anthropology Review 23(2):173-174, 2007.
Vitebsky, Piers. Loving and Forgetting: Moments of Inarticulacy in Tribal India. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 14(2):243-261, 2008.
Wood, Kate, Helen Lambert, and Rachel Jewkes. ‘Injuries are Beyond Love’: Physical Violence in Young South Africans’ Sexual Relationships. Medical Anthropology 27(1):43-69, 2008.
Image: “all you need is love” from flickr user sensesmaybenumbed, licensed with Creative Commons.
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