An Anthropologist Goes Looking for Love in All the Old Places: A Personal Account

Authors

William Jankowiak, University of Nevada, Las VegasFollow

Document Type

Book Section

Publication Date

12-1-2018

Publication Title

The New Psychology of Love

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Publisher Location

Cambridge

Edition

2

First page number:

240

Last page number:

258

Abstract

In 1986, I returned to Inner Mongolia, having lived there between 1981 and 1983. I wanted to understand how Mongolian youth were adapting to what was then becoming a new discourse in their lives – one in which the criteria for selecting a mate was changing. There was a shift away from social attributes as the dominant factors in mate selection to new criteria that saw love as an important consideration. Although “love,” the term itself, was rarely mentioned or infrequently referred to, I was struck by how many individuals felt that it was something to be valued, even cherished.

Keywords

Inner mongolia; Mongolian youth; Social attributes and context; Mate selection

Disciplines

Anthropology | Social and Behavioral Sciences | Social and Cultural Anthropology

Language

English

Repository Citation

Jankowiak, W. (2018). An Anthropologist Goes Looking for Love in All the Old Places: A Personal Account. The New Psychology of Love 240-258. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/9781108658225.013