sh.sePublications
Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • harvard-anglia-ruskin-university
  • apa-old-doi-prefix.csl
  • sodertorns-hogskola-harvard.csl
  • sodertorns-hogskola-oxford.csl
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
I Imagine You Here Now: Relationship Maintenance Strategies in Long-Distance Intimate Relationships
Södertörn University, School of Social Sciences, Sociology. Södertörn University, Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES), Baltic & East European Graduate School (BEEGS). Uppsala universitet, Sociologiska institutionen.
2015 (English)Doctoral thesis, comprehensive summary (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

Today, individuals can relatively easily meet and communicate with each other over great distances due to increased mobility and advances in communication technology. This also allows intimate relationships to be maintained over large geographical distances. Despite these developments, long-distance relationships (LDRs), i.e. intimate relationships maintained over geographical distance, remain understudied. The present thesis aims to fill this knowledge gap and investigates how intimate partners who live so far away from each other that they cannot meet every day make their relationship ongoing beyond face-to-face interaction.

Theoretically, this study departs from a symbolic interactionist viewpoint that invites us to study phenomena from the actor’s perspective. Conceptually, the thesis builds on the recent development in sociology of intimate lives that sees intimacy as a relational quality that has to be worked on to be sustained, and that focuses on the practices that make a relationship a relationship. Empirically, the thesis is based upon 19 in-depth interviews with individuals from Latvia with long-distance relationship experience.

The thesis consists of four articles. Article I studies the context in which LDRs in Latvia are maintained, focusing on the normative constraints that complicate LDR maintenance. Article II analyses how intimacy is practiced over geographical distance. Article III examines how long-distance partners manage the experience of the time they are together and the time they are geographically apart. Article IV explores the aspect of idealization in LDRs. Overall, the thesis argues for the critical role of imagination in relationship maintenance. The relationship maintenance strategies identified within the articles are imagination-based mediated communication (creating sensual/embodied intimacy, emotional intimacy, daily intimacy and imagined individual intimacy); time-work strategies that enable long-distance partners to deal with the spatiotemporal borders of the time together and the time apart; and creating bi-directional idealization. The thesis is also one of the few works in the field of intimate lives in Eastern Europe and analyses the normative complications that long-distance partners face in their relationship maintenance in Latvia.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2015. , p. 78
Series
Digital Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Social Sciences, ISSN 1652-9030 ; 108Södertörn doctoral dissertations, ISSN 1652-7399 ; 104
Keywords [en]
intimacy, sociology of intimate lives, time, temporality, imagination, living apart together, symbolic interactionism, Latvia
National Category
Sociology (excluding Social Work, Social Psychology and Social Anthropology)
Research subject
Politics, Economy and the Organization of Society; Baltic and East European studies
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-26539ISBN: 978-91-554-9161-1 (print)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:sh-26539DiVA, id: diva2:793275
Public defence
2015-03-27, MB503, Södertörns högskola, Alfred Nobels allé 7, 13:00 (English)
Opponent
Supervisors
Funder
The Foundation for Baltic and East European StudiesAvailable from: 2015-03-06 Created: 2015-03-06 Last updated: 2020-12-18Bibliographically approved
List of papers
1. Do I Qualify for a Love Relationship?: Social Norms and Long-Distance Relationships in Post-Soviet Latvia
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Do I Qualify for a Love Relationship?: Social Norms and Long-Distance Relationships in Post-Soviet Latvia
2015 (English)In: Sexuality & Culture, ISSN 1095-5143, E-ISSN 1936-4822, Vol. 19, no 2, p. 388-406Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Not all couples live together; some partners live far from each other, causing potential challenges to relationship maintenance in terms of keeping the relationship ongoing. In the present study, complications in relationship maintenance experienced by heterosexual long-distance partners in post-Soviet Latvia are analysed. The complications are examined in the light of social norms as conceptualized by Parsons and Shils (Toward a general theory of action. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1962) in their notion of dominant value orientations. The article suggests that the norm conflicts experienced by the long-distance partners are illustrative of the value transitions in societies undergoing rapid social change, such as in Latvia. The analysis is based on 19 in-depth interviews with individuals with long-distance relationship (LDR) experience. The social norms complicating or hindering LDR maintenance were found to be generation-specific and gender-specific. The interviewees born and raised in Soviet Latvia referred to collective-oriented norms while the interviewees born in the independent neo-liberal Latvia referred to their own interests that complicated their LDR maintenance.

Keywords
Latvia, Long-distance relationships, Post-Soviet, Relationship maintenance, Social norms
National Category
Sociology
Research subject
Baltic and East European studies
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-26336 (URN)10.1007/s12119-014-9263-0 (DOI)000443440100008 ()2-s2.0-84939984791 (Scopus ID)
Available from: 2015-02-06 Created: 2015-02-06 Last updated: 2018-09-26Bibliographically approved
2. Imagining the absent partner: Intimacy and imagination in long-distance relationships
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Imagining the absent partner: Intimacy and imagination in long-distance relationships
2015 (English)In: Innovative Issues and Approaches in Social Sciences, ISSN 1855-0541, Vol. 8, no 1, p. 223-241Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Keywords
imagination, intimacy, long-distance relationships, mediated communication, practices of intimacy
National Category
Sociology (excluding Social Work, Social Psychology and Social Anthropology)
Research subject
Politics, Economy and the Organization of Society; Baltic and East European studies
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-26363 (URN)10.12959/issn.1855-0541.IIASS-2015-no1-art13 (DOI)
Available from: 2015-02-05 Created: 2015-02-09 Last updated: 2016-01-19Bibliographically approved
3. When Less is More: On Time Work in Long-Distance Relationships
Open this publication in new window or tab >>When Less is More: On Time Work in Long-Distance Relationships
2015 (English)In: Qualitative Sociology, ISSN 0162-0436, E-ISSN 1573-7837, Vol. 38, no 2, p. 185-203Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Keywords
Mead, Flaherty, long-distance relationships, temporality, time, time work, time-place zones
National Category
Sociology (excluding Social Work, Social Psychology and Social Anthropology)
Research subject
Politics, Economy and the Organization of Society; Baltic and East European studies
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-26362 (URN)10.1007/s11133-015-9304-5 (DOI)000354188400004 ()2-s2.0-84937763394 (Scopus ID)
Funder
The Foundation for Baltic and East European StudiesHelge Ax:son Johnsons stiftelse
Note

Som manuskript i avhandling. As manuscript in dissertation.

Available from: 2015-02-05 Created: 2015-02-09 Last updated: 2018-07-20Bibliographically approved
4. I Know that I Don’t Know: Bi-Directional Idealization in Long-Distance Relationships
Open this publication in new window or tab >>I Know that I Don’t Know: Bi-Directional Idealization in Long-Distance Relationships
2015 (English)Article in journal (Refereed) Submitted
National Category
Sociology (excluding Social Work, Social Psychology and Social Anthropology)
Research subject
Sociology
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-26364 (URN)
Note

Som manuskript i avhandling. As manuscript in dissertation.

Available from: 2015-02-05 Created: 2015-02-09 Last updated: 2015-03-06Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

No full text in DiVA

Other links

Fulltext

Authority records

Jurkane-Hobein, Iveta

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Jurkane-Hobein, Iveta
By organisation
SociologyBaltic & East European Graduate School (BEEGS)
Sociology (excluding Social Work, Social Psychology and Social Anthropology)

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar

isbn
urn-nbn

Altmetric score

isbn
urn-nbn
Total: 3519 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • harvard-anglia-ruskin-university
  • apa-old-doi-prefix.csl
  • sodertorns-hogskola-harvard.csl
  • sodertorns-hogskola-oxford.csl
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf