Power and faint of private money : the dynamics of individualisation of intimate relationships

Abstract

"Advancing modernisation not only renders fragile, ambivalent and hybrid the categorical order of 'first modernity' together with its fundamental social and cultural semantics. Rather, modernity's basic institutions and principles governing the social are changed as well. With these central assumptions of the theory of reflexive modernity as a background, this paper discusses the effects of money in modern dual-career couples an power, inequality and individualisation. The money arrangements observed in such couples exhibit peculiar patterns of ascription of 'mine, yours, our' that refer to an increasing reflexivity of intimate relationships of men and women through which first modernity's 'either-or' of money and love is transformed into an 'as well as through couples' characteristic constructions of 'relationship money'. These observations point to first signs of a transformation of the relationship between the private and the public as a (gender) specific figuration of power and domination in first modernity into a privatised 'self-domination', internalised by individuals, that takes hold of both genders, albeit with different preconditions and consequences concerning inequality. Overall, this contribution aims at establishing an empirically grounded, 'reflexive-modern' sociology of money in intimate relationships that at the same time is sensitive to questions of inequality, power and domination." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

Cite article

Schneider, W., Hirseland, A., Ludwig-Mayerhofer, W. & Allmendinger, J. (2005): Macht und Ohnmacht des Geldes im Privaten. Zur Dynamik von Individualisierung in Paarbeziehungen. In: Soziale Welt, Vol. 56, No. 2/3, p. 203-224.