Abstract
Two identical figures stand next to each other; behind them is the sea. We can see it through the two transparent discs that form their heads. In the distance, the lower half of the sun is hidden below the horizon, but the sky is pitch-black. This surrealist painting is the cover of the book The Tenacity of the Couple Norm: Intimate Citizenship Regimes in a Changing Europe, written by Sasha Roseneil, Isabel Crowhurst, Tone Hellesund, Ana Cristina Santos, and Mariya Stoilova. The oranges, crimsons and golds that normally accompany sunrise and sunset are absent from this picture. Rather than an atmosphere of transition, we are plunged into one of permanence. The celestial vault, albeit starry, is covered in a darkness so uniform that we do not need to consult our watches to know that time is standing still.
Leaving aside the reasons why the authors selected this picture for the cover, I interpret the perennially dark sky, dark even when we do not expect it to be so, as a metaphor for the enduring power of the institution of the couple. In spite of the changes that have occurred in Europe in the domains of sexuality, relationships and citizenship, the union of two people has remained a strong reference point. This is the main argument of the book: although being single, in a distant relationship, or co-habiting with a same-sex partner is nowadays quite common, the cohabiting heterosexual couple is ubiquitously seen as the fundamental unit of social life. Those who do not conform to it may find that their needs are unmet by a welfare apparatus tailored to the traditional couple. On a personal level, they may suffer from the social assumption that fulfilment comes from being part of a couple, an assumption that is often interiorised. The book is innovative in topic, accessible in style, and promising in its potential to inform policy-making. Moreover, it will undoubtedly contribute to future scholarship in gender studies, sociology, anthropology and European studies.
As explained in the preface, as well as in the methodological appendix, the book emerged from the intimate citizenship strand of the ‘Gendered Citizenship in Multicultural Europe: The Impact of Contemporary Women’s Movements’ (FEMCIT) project, which was carried out between 2007 and 2011. The aim of the researchers was to elucidate how the development of intimate citizenship in contemporary Europe was influenced by the women’s movements, as well as other movements for gender equality.
The first part of the book, ‘Identifying the couple-norm’, starts with an introduction that clarifies the terms ‘coupledom’, ‘couple-form’ and ‘couple-norm’. The first refers to ‘the condition or state of living as a couple’ (p. 3), the second to ‘the structure of affinity that is composed of an intimate/sexual dyad’ (p. 4), and the third to the normalisation of coupledom as the ideal life for a good, adult, citizen. The following chapter presents a historical overview of the critique of the couple-norm made by both scholars and activists in the domains of feminism and queer and gay studies, as well as by researchers of singleness. In the last chapter of the first section, the plurality of disciplines that informed the present work, including feminist research, sociology and policy analysis, is brought to the fore. Here the authors also point out that, although the academic context in which they operated was British, each of them had competent knowledge of their respective geographical area, that is, London, Sofia, Oslo and Lisbon. In fact, a good proportion of the references are non-anglophone texts.
Each of the chapters in the second part of the book presents chronologically the key developments that characterised intimate citizenship in the United Kingdom, Bulgaria, Norway and Portugal. Legal, social, political and economic factors influence how difficult it is to live outside of a couple, and what shape the couple takes. This section offers a succinct but helpful contextualization to the personal narratives of people living outside a cohabiting heterosexual couple that are central to the third part. Here, we read the stories of a selection of research participants, which were elicited by the following question: ‘Can you tell me the story of your life and personal relationships?’ The researchers collaboratively analysed the data following the biographical-narrative interpretive method and presented it in vivid and humane descriptions of their interlocutors. For instance, in Oslo we meet Shrini, who we see navigating her dual Pakistani/Norwegian identity while trying to rebuild her life after an arranged marriage that broke up. In Lisbon, we encounter Vera, another heterosexual woman, who is determined to remain childless and not to cohabit with her partner. She currently lives with a gay friend, with whom she has bought a flat. The reader will find that these and more case studies give substance to the authors’ argument, which is reiterated in part IV: it is the couple-norm, that is, the injunction of being part of a couple, not coupledom, that is at the root of the quandaries and, at times, suffering that their participants experienced.
The authors observe that, although there is at present no advocacy movement in favour of the overcoming of the couple as the dominant social entity, the combined actions of individuals like their interviewees can slowly change the ways in which people obtain love, intimacy, and everything that a couple is supposed to provide. They auspicate a reshaping of welfare policy that does not discriminate against solo- or group-living, and an intimate citizenship regime that leaves room for less conformist personal choices. They even advocate the enshrining in human rights law of the right to live as a single person, just as the right to family life is recognised by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
In focussing on the couple-norm as an object worthy of enquiry, the book is highly innovative in its subject matter. As a pioneering piece of work, its limitation is not to be able to explore all the potential avenues for research that it opens up. Some of them, such as the future of the couple-norm in these and more European capitals, are quite intuitive. I believe, however, that there may be even more promising projects on issues that are not touched upon in the book. I will point out two. First, as the authors’ choice of interviewing people from minoritized/racialised groups suggests, drawing boundaries between ‘the West’ and ‘the rest’ is simplistic, as people move across continents and form relationships across cultural divides. Therefore, it seems apposite to ask what norms replace or coexist with the couple-norm beyond Europe, and what characteristics these other norms present in these contexts. For instance, just as the transition from multi-generational household to nuclear family is often cited as concurrent with urbanisation and progress, how has the couple – if at all – worked as a tool of globalisation and/or modernisation? In other words: what role has it had – if any at all – in the performance of a globalised, modern way of being? Second, I notice that in social science research even multidisciplinary projects like this one shun biological, evolutionary approaches. How could the present study benefit from a dialogue with these perspectives? These questions remain to be explored.
Even so, if a good book is one that can offer new insights well after the context in which it was written has changed, then the present book has already proved its worth. For instance, it may be a precious source for those studying how the Covid-19 pandemic has reshaped how we conceive and fulfil basic human needs, such as that for company and for material and moral support. For example, ‘the support bubble’, that is, the domestic union of a single person with one other household, which was instituted by the UK Government during lockdown, is a testimony to the possibility of alternative forms of intimacy.
Some writers dedicate their book to someone; many dedicate it to their partners. In this book, a dedication is conspicuously absent. The authors do ‘thank all those in [their] intimate circle’ in the acknowledgements, but they elude the challenge of writing a sentence that, all alone on a page, speaks not to the many, but to the few, or to the one. Had each author chosen to dedicate the book to their partner, would five people have made the page too crowded? Would it have created an imbalance if some of them had decided to address their dedication to their special other, and some to a mentor, parent or friend? Or did the project perhaps take so long to complete that, by the time it was over, some of the authors’ partners had vanished from their mantlepiece?
The tenacity of the couple-norm or, more precisely, the wish to elude such tenacity is, in my view the first suspect for the ‘theft’ of the dedication from the book. As someone for whom the couple is more source of puzzlement than a norm, I have never dedicated my own books to a partner, nor to an individual person. Rather, I like to let those few, hermit words wander free and meet whomever they may resonate with. ‘To those who call their happiness “luck”’, said Oceano e Nomade. ‘To those who chase their dreams beyond the clouds’, said The Tail of the Lizard. ‘To those who . . . ’ I am sure will say the second edition of this book and, in so doing, it will, perhaps, tinge that pitch-black sky with coral.