Format: hybrid (in person and online)
Language: russian, english
Mail: lovestudiesagency@gmail.com
Organizers:
Novikov Ilya Pavlovich, MSSES, NRU HSE

In 1920, Charles de Rouvre wrote a biographical book about Auguste Comte – one of the founders of sociology, – and Clotilde de Vaux. There he stated that throughout history more ink had been used for describing the relationship between the two than for understanding the role of love in social life (Rouvre, 1920). More than a century has passed since then, but the picture has hardly changed: love still remains on the periphery of the humanities.

When researchers do turn their attention to this magical phenomenon, they often diminish its role and significance. No matter where we look, love is hardly a force to be reckoned with. Foucault (1996) points out that love is often instrumentalized by power, Bauman (2003) sees how it gets deformed by capitalism, Eva Illouz (2022) documents how love is being dispersed and weakened by the fashion for rationalization. Compared to other social structures, love supposedly has no chance: it plays by the rules of other institutes and thus regularly gets deformed and reshaped. Scientists, as if on purpose, satisfy various prejudices about their rationality and close their eyes on the fact that our world and we ourselves would be completely different without love – as Comte's example clearly demonstrates.

All because love can actually be incredibly powerful. Its capabilities go far beyond the banal clouding of one’s mind: love can change the world around us and terraform entire institutions. It penetrates every work of culture, shapes the meaning of the slightest body movements, and forms the hierarchical rules in primitive tribes thousands of kilometers away from any civilization. Love is so powerful that when we try to analyze and demystify it, it immediately hides behind a mountain of concepts that leave not a trace of its original magic. Liv Strömquist is right when she says that it is impossible to analyze love in detail by breaking it down into parts (Strömquist, 2023). Therefore, indirect signs of its existence and active operation is the best thing we have to track down love and capture its influence.

Educational events such as “Academic Situationship” (SAS), “It's all for Love” (Blueprint & Peredelkino), and “Feelings Strike Back” (Stasis) have already laid the foundation for interdisciplinary knowledge about love in Russia. We invite researchers from various fields of social sciences – sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, and others – to continue developing this knowledge with a focus on how love transforms us and the world around us.
In the section “Love Studies: All you need is Agency,” we will share love with each other, of course, and at the same time explore how it becomes an active and significant participant in social reality.