Abstract
The dichotomy between emotion and rationality has been one of the most enduring of sociological theory. This article attempts to bypass this dichotomy by examining how emotion and rationality are conjoined in the practice of the choice of a mate. We posit the fundamental role of culture in determining the nature of this intertwinement. We explore the culturally embedded intertwining of emotion and rationality through the notion of modal configuration. Modal configuration includes five key features: reflexivity, techniques, modal emphasis, modal overlap, and modal sequencing. We apply this framework to the topic of partner selection. Comparing primary and secondary sources on pre-modern partner selection and on internet dating, we show that emotion and rationality were intertwined in both periods but that what differs between them is precisely the emotion-rationality modality.
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Notes
For an exception from the field of psychology see Shoshana Shilow and Shenhav-Sheffer (2004).
Feminist studies of the emergence of the private sphere have also perpetuated the dichotomy between rationality and emotion. The rational-emotional dichotomy, the feminist literature argues, has been institutionalized in these two separate spheres—the private sphere is the site of emotions and the public sphere is the site of calculated rationality and competitition.
Of course, we do not mean to imply here that emotion and rationality are in opposition, rather that rationality is in opposition to the notion of romantic love. As Zelizer rightly argues in The Purchase of Intimacy, the “hostile worlds” approach that pits rationality against sentiment is particularly strong in the romantic impulse (2005, p. 121).
As the existing literature on modernization shows, it is difficult to define the parameters of socio-cultural periods such as “pre-modern” and “modern”—unlike periods of political history, they are not clearly marked by discrete events. For the purposes of this article, we use “pre-modern” to refer to the period that extended roughly from the fifteenth century through the late seventeenth/early eighteenth century. In contrast to Lantz (1982), we do not use the term “pre-modern” to mean “early modernity,”but, to indicate the period immediately preceding modernity. As we see it, modernity began with the onset of the Industrial Revolution, but our discussion of the modern situation focuses specifically on developments within the past few decades. Further study of the intervening period, examining nineteenth-century English novels and early dating practices in the twentieth century might help to understand the gradual development of modal configurations.
While this anecdote occurred on the border of what we define as the pre-modern and modern periods and romantic love spread rapidly throughout Europe in the eighteenth century, even affecting partner selection, (Lantz 1982; Stone 1979) we point out that the religious Jewish community, of which Gluckel was most certainly a part, tended to follow more traditional patterns of partner selection, which still maintained a powerful hold in many circles during this period (Stone 1979).
Certainly in the pre-modern period, there were many cases of local matches in which actors relied on long-term, in-depth information about prospective partners, yet as the examples here illustrate, in the cases that paralleled the modern acquaintance with previously unknown prospective partners, the information gathering was significantly less detailed and elaborate than in online dating.
In Boccaccio’s Decameron, VI, 6, the Baronci family members are described as extremely ugly.
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Acknowledgments
Our research for “An Odd and Inseparable Couple” was supported by a grant from the Israel Science Foundation (ISF). We would also like to thank Mabel Berezin and two other anonymous readers for their invaluable comments on earlier versions of this article.
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Illouz, E., Finkelman, S. An odd and inseparable couple: Emotion and rationality in partner selection. Theor Soc 38, 401–422 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-009-9085-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-009-9085-5