The Global Chaos of Love: Towards a Cosmopolitan Turn in the Sociology of Love and Families

Abstract

It is common knowledge that globalization has brought about major changes in economics, politics and the labour market (This text is first veing published by: Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim: “The Global Chaos of Love: Towards a Cosmopolitan Turn in the Sociology of Love and Families”, in: Judith Treas, Jacqueline Scott, and Martin Richards (Eds.): The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Families (Oxford: John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2014, forthcoming). The permission to include this text in this volume was granted by Mr. Ben Thatcher of Wiley in an Email to Ulrich Beck on 19 August 2013). But what about love, intimacy and families in the global age, what transformations are we witnessing here? What was our book the Normal Chaos of Love (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, The Normal Chaos of Love, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1995) all about? What is the global chaos of love all about?