Distant Love

von Ulrich Beck Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim

Love and family life in the global age: grandparents in Salonikaand their grandson in London speak together every evening viaSkype. A U.S. citizen and her Swiss husband fret over largetelephone bills and high travel costs. A European couple canfinally have a baby with the help of an Indian surrogatemother.

In their new book, Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheiminvestigate all types of long-distance relationships, marriages andfamilies that stretch across countries, continents and cultures.These long-distance relationships comprise so many different formsof what they call 'world families', by which they meanlove and intimate relationships between individuals living in, orcoming from, different countries or continents. In all theirvarious forms these world families share one feature in common:they are the focal point in which different aspects of theglobalized world become embodied in the personal lives ofindividuals. Whether they like it or not, lovers and relatives inthese families find themselves confronting the world in the innerspace of their own lives. The conflicts between the developed anddeveloping worlds come to the surface in world families- theyacquire faces and names, creating confusion, surprise, anger, joy,pleasure and pain at the heart of everyday life.

This path-breaking book will appeal to a wide readership interestedin the changing character of love in our times.