THE PHENOMENON OF POLYAMORY IN MODERN SOCIETY: SOCIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS

• Main Author: O. V. Grigorenko
• Format: Article
• Language: Russian
• Published: Publishing House of Lomonosov Moscow State University 2018-06-01
• Series: Vestnik Moskovskogo Universiteta: Seriâ 18, Sociologiâ i Politologiâ
• Subjects: typology of love; sexuality; romantic love; polyamory; ethos; confluent love; transformation of intimacy
• Online Access: https://vestnik.socio.msu.ru/jour/article/view/398

In modern society the phenomenon of polyamory arises in terms of growing tendency of personality individualization, crisis in nuclear family, spiritual and moral fragility, increasing feelings of abandonment and loneliness, “shrinking present” and shortening of interpersonal relations due to the extension of social circles and intensified interaction. The paper aims to define the concept of polyamory, its formal and substantive boundaries, to research components of ethos of polyamory, and also to detect prerequisites for the emergence and spread of the phenomenon of polyamory in modern social reality. The analysis is devoted to transformation of intimacy – from classical kind of love to nascent neopostclassical, from romantic relationship through confluent love to polyamory. Besides, it is a demarcation between promiscuity and polyamory. It is also emphasized that postclassical confluent love is in a substantial crisis now – sexuality without love is being transformed into omnisexuality, which has a variety of forms and absence of sense, and then converted to asexuality, transsexuality and love to inanimate objects. In such a case polyamory tries to bridge the crisis of sexuality and reincarnate the elements of history by combination of different sexual practices of postclassical love and spirit of classical love.