Rethinking relationships / Steve Duck.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Old and new ways of seeing relationships -- Personal and social orders : Relating, meaning, and talking -- What has personality got to do with relationships? -- The bodily materiality of relating -- Sense and sensuality : The relationship between sexual activity and knowledge of the world -- Wealth, place, gifts, and rituals : The material structures and practices of relational experience -- The language of relationships in a social order -- Talk and speaking personal orders.

In this book, Steve Duck, a founder of and prolific cross-disciplinary contributor to the field of relationships research, challenges students to re-examine their assumptions about relationships. Duck shows that in order to understand relationships properly, students must understand the roles that society, language, our taken-for-granted assumptions, and other people who share those assumptions play in the conduct of relationships.