The Tenacity of the Couple-Norm: Intimate Citizenship Regimes in a Changing Europe

Despite changes and challenges, coupledom has long been constructed as the normal, natural, and superior way of being an adult. The Tenacity of the Couple-Norm offers an anatomical dissection of the concept-an analysis of its structure, organization, and internal workings. It explores how the couple-norm is lived and experienced, how it has evolved and mutated, and how it varies among places and social groups. In doing so, the book provides an analysis of changing intimate citizenship regimes in Europe and makes a major intervention in understandings of the contemporary condition of personal life.

The Tenacity of the Couple-Norm makes an important contribution to literature on citizenship, intimacy, family life, and social change in sociology, social policy, socio-legal studies, gender/sexuality/queer studies, and psychosocial studies.