Intimacy and the Politics of Love

Abstract

This review provides an overview of the anthropology of love and some of the main bodies of ethnographic work and theoretical debates around studies of love. It surveys specific studies that make the politics of intimacy and love central to their analysis and that seek to make theoretical sense of its meaning and broader significance. This discussion is followed by work that draws together an example of the politicization of love in the shape of a claim around “love jihad,” which has dominated recent discussions of love in India and has begun to receive anthropological attention. In conclusion, the review argues that the politics of love will need to account for the meanings, constraints, and everyday vulnerabilities through which intimate lives become entangled with and illuminate political projects of every scale.