Recall our earlier discussion of the engagement as a changing set of practices. In general, American law currently treats engagement as a quasi contract to marry. It intervenes when the contract is fraudu­lent, when one party breaks the engagement improperly, or, most commonly, to settle disputes over property when an engagement ends contentiously. To do […]

Both criminal and civil law intervene in intimate relations, some­times to enforce certain rules of intimacy, sometimes to prevent certain forms of intimacy. Criminal law covers such offenses as pros­titution, incest, rape, pedophilia, sexual harassment, and pornogra­ phy. Civil law likewise deals with intimacy but in a rather different manner, sometimes enforcing obligations, sometimes protecting […]

In a largely forgotten but still telling article first published in 1952, C. Wright Mills vented his famous indignation on rich men who condemned street prostitutes but maintained high-priced mis­tresses, frequented call girls, purchased sexual services for their customers, and thus lured young women into vice; “American salesmanship and plutocratic demand,” he argued, offered irresist­ible […]

Nevertheless, many American women—and some men—have at one time or another earned their livings through the sale of explic­itly sexual services. For pay, they have participated in interactions that regularly produce sexual arousal in their purchasers. Informal estimates place the American commercial sex industry in the vicinity of $8 billion to $10 billion a year […]

Engagement takes its place in a wide range of courtship relations. From the early twentieth century to the 1950s, for example, middle — class Americans distinguished a whole series of possible relations between unmarried couples other than engagement, most notably dating and going steady (for eighteenth-century practices, see God — beer 2002). Originating as a […]

Courtship practices, meanings, and relations, to be sure, vary dra­matically from one setting to another. Take the case of engagement; the transition from courtship to engagement still marks an im­portant moment in American young people’s lives. For many cou­ples, it involves substantial expenditures. Indeed, a recent study shows they spend an estimated annual $9 billion […]

A surprisingly similar dynamic operates in the very different world of courtship and sexual relations. Clearly, in both cases, participants regularly mingle economic transactions with strong intimacy. Al­though moralists and participants often invoke hostile worlds con­cerns when sexual relations are at risk, in fact the differentiation of relations, the marking of boundaries, and the matching […]

Similar differentiation occurs with very different consequences in relations among friends, neighbors, and kin.[19] Margaret Nelson and Joan Smith’s study of interhousehold exchanges among Coolidge County, Vermont, working-class residents captures some of this variation. Examining economic survival strategies in this rural com­munity, Nelson and Smith found extensive differentiation of the ser­vices that neighbors, friends, and […]

Many professions build in stringent boundaries separating appro­priate from inappropriate relations between practitioners and cli­ents. The boundary protects against abuse by the professional and inappropriate demands by the client. Remember the clinician’s guide for psychotherapists. In addition to the practices mentioned in chapter 1, it warns sternly against providing patients with falsified diagnoses that qualify […]

This chapter concentrates on paired relations that—like those of Berg with R. M. and Kritzik with Harris—involve the possibility of extensive intimacy. In both these cases, the intimacy was sexual, but similar principles apply to a wide range of intimacy. Sharing of se­crets, handling confidential files, providing advice, giving insider economic information, offering solace, and […]