Introduction

Abstract

Intimacy studies is an ever-changing field, due in part to ongoing social change with respect to what is recognised under the law as ‘intimacy’, increasing attention to intimate life within the media, growing social (mis-) recognition of practices of intimacy such as living apart together and polyamory, critiques of previously taken-for-granted gender and sexuality categorisations, debates around individualisation and relationality, and the use of ‘new’ methodologies in researching intimate lives (Barker et al. , this volume; Plummer, 1995; Weston, 1997; Roseneil, 2006; Weeks, 2007; Gabb, 2008; Barker and Langdridge, 2010; Sanger, 2010; Morgan, 2011). The increasing focus within sociology and related disciplines on emotion, reflexivity and relationality speaks to the importance of considering types, practices, configurations and reconfigurations of intimacy in contemporary society (for example, Hochschild, 1983; Adkins, 2002; Ahmed, 2004; Smart, 2007; Hopkins et al. , 2009; Roseneil and Frosh, 2012). The formation and re-formation of the self is intricately linked to how individuals engage with one another, with the most intimate of relationships arguably having the greatest impact on the becoming self (Giddens, 1992; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 1995; Jamieson, 1998; Smart, 2007). As such, collections of new and vibrant work on intimacy are vital to the flourishing of sociological thinking. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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