Episode description

LOVE & ROMANCE – Laurie Taylor unpacks different conceptions of love. He’s joined by Raksha Pande, Senior Lecturer in Social Geography at Newcastle University, whose latest research explores arranged marriages amongst people in the British-Indian diaspora. She finds that they have skilfully adapted cultural norms to carve out an identity narrative that portrays them as modern migrants offering a different take on romantic love. She’s joined by Eva Illouz, Rose Isaac Chair of Sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who considers the ways in which romantic affairs in Western culture fail to spark or break up. What can ‘the end of love’ tell us about the effects of consumer culture on personal relationships?

Producer: Jayne Egerton