Romantic Love

This article analyzes three concepts of romantic love. The feminist approach considers romantic love, as it is recognized and evaluated today, as a product of the West. Feminists consider that Western culture, with its capitalist discourse and coding, turns emotional love into a desirable form of love behavior and speech. In that sense the representation of romantic love is yet another kind of control over women and their emotional needs. The second approach, represented by Anthony Giddens, considers romantic love as liberating, for women in the first place. The democratism of romantic love which is propagated with this approach, is subject to a particular critique regarding Giddens's stated argumentation. Finally, the author presents the third concept advocated by anthropologists, which is outlined in the question: Is romantic love a product of the West or is it a universal phenomenon, and how is that problem explored in ethnographic materials?