Jean-Claude Kaufmann

Broschiertes Buch

The Single Woman and the Fairytale Prince

Beschreibung

The number of one-person households is rising steeply all over the world and a growing proportion of these 'new singles' are women. It is estimated that one woman in three lives on her own. This development reflects general social trends, ranging from rising divorce rates to the growing professionalization of women and their dissatisfaction with a traditional model that offers them a future organized solely around 'husband-baby-home'. At the same time, the attractions of that model still linger and the fairytale prince is by no means a figure from a story or a remote past. Even in an age in which the internet promises that love is 'just a click away', many women still wait for their prince to come. Jean-Claude Kaufmann's sympathetic study of the lives, aspirations and sometimes despair of the 'new single women' is based mainly on an analysis of a sample of the hundreds of letters sent to Marie-Claire magazine after it published a first-hand account of the single life. Funny, touching and at times profoundly sad, the letters paint a collective portrait of the single woman and her life that is both intimate and socially significant. Kaufmann concludes by situating their stories in a broad comparative context and considering the possible impact of novel phenomena such as the recent vogue for 'mail-order brides'.

Autor

Jean-Claude Kaufmann is a Sociologist and Director of Research at the CNRS (National Centre for Scientific Research) in the University of Paris V, Sorbonne.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Polity Press
• Seitenzahl: 200
• Erscheinungstermin: 1. Oktober 2008
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 231mm x 151mm x 22mm
• Gewicht: 481g
• ISBN-13: 9780745640501
• ISBN-10: 0745640508
• Artikelnr.: 25695337

Rezensionen

"Kaufmann is a wise and clever microsociologist, inspired by ErvingGoffman, by fashion magazines, and by kittenish and cougarishwomen. He is the voice of the annoyed, the vexed, the fearful, andthe comforted."
Contemporary Sociology

"Freedom and autonomy have their glories and theirmiseries. Jean-Claude Kaufmann has composed a thoroughly researchedinventory of both, while analysing in depth the present-daycondition of women and its impact on the male half of humanity. Aswomen replace self-effacement with newly gained self-confidence,the lynchpin is driven out of the family and the private sphere,and the hard-to-reconcile drives to autonomy and companionshipresult in the increasing fragility of commitments and fear

ofloneliness for both women and men. In masterly fashion, Kaufmannrecords the ongoing transformations in the human condition thatfollow. His findings hit at the very heart of the harrowingdilemmas which most men and women confront these days and struggleto resolve."
Zygmunt Bauman, Universities of Leeds and Warsaw

"Anyone seeking to understand the fastest growing trend inpersonal life - more people living alone - should readthis book. Jean-Claude Kaufmann moves elegantly between broad-brushhistorical overviews of changes in family life and fine-grainedscrutiny of the narratives of women ensnared in the drama of thesenew demographics. Paradoxically, the opening up of personal choicesfor everybody seems to close down the options for many women, whoare finding it harder to find the partners they longfor."
Lynne Segal, Birkbeck College, author of WhyFeminism?

"This is a brilliant book on the everyday effects of therise in female singledom. Kaufman provides fascinating insightsinto the pressures that single women experience today, fromsociety's disapproval of female autonomy as a threat to traditionalfamily models, to the hopes and disappointments of the moderndating world."
Veronique Mottier, University of Lausanne