Distant Love

Love and family life in the global age: grandparents in Salonika and their grandson in London speak together every evening via Skype. A U.S. citizen and her Swiss husband fret over large telephone bills and high travel costs. A European couple can finally have a baby with the help of an Indian surrogate mother. In their new book, Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim investigate all types of long-distance relationships, marriages and families that stretch across countries, continents and cultures. These long-distance relationships comprise so many different forms of what they call world families , by which they mean love and intimate relationships between individuals living in, or coming from, different countries or continents. In all their various forms these world families share one feature in common: they are the focal point in which different aspects of the globalized world become embodied in the personal lives of individuals. Whether they like it or not, lovers and relatives in these families find themselves confronting the world in the inner space of their own lives. The conflicts between the developed and developing worlds come to the surface in world families- they acquire faces and names, creating confusion, surprise, anger, joy, pleasure and pain at the heart of everyday life. This path-breaking book will appeal to a wide readership interested in the changing character of love in our times.

Love and family life in the global age: grandparents in Salonikaand their grandson in London speak together every evening viaSkype. A U.S. citizen and her Swiss husband fret over largetelephone bills and high travel costs. A European couple canfinally have a baby with the help of an Indian surrogatemother.In their new book, Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheiminvestigate all types of long-distance relationships, marriages andfamilies that stretch across countries, continents and cultures.These long-distance relationships comprise so many different formsof what they call 'world families', by which they meanlove and intimate relationships between individuals living in, orcoming from, different countries or continents. In all theirvarious forms these world families share one feature in common:they are the focal point in which different aspects of theglobalized world become embodied in the personal lives ofindividuals. Whether they like it or not, lovers and relatives inthese families find themselves confronting the world in the innerspace of their own lives. The conflicts between the developed anddeveloping worlds come to the surface in world families- theyacquire faces and names, creating confusion, surprise, anger, joypleasure and pain at the heart of everyday life.This path-breaking book will appeal to a wide readership interestedin the changing character of love in our times.

Translator's Note viiIntroduction 11 Globalization of Love and Intimacy: The Rise of World Families 42 Two Countries, One Couple: Tales of Mutual Understanding and Misunderstanding 203 Love Has Two Enemies: Distance and Closeness 444 Cosmopolitan Communities of Fate 675 Intimate Migrations: Women Marrying for a Better Life 776 Love Displaced: Migrant Mothers 1037 Male Hegemony in Decline? Why Women Gain Power in World Families 1238 Transnational Family Networks: Winners of Globalization? 1389 My Mother Was a Spanish Ovum: Baby Tourism and Global Patchwork Families 14410 The Intimate is Global: The Model of Distant Love 16611 Are World Families Pioneers of Cosmopolitanism? 183References and Bibliography 194Index 208