Cover -- Contents -- List of Tables, Figures, and Boxes -- Notes on the contributors -- 1 Introducing a Sociology of Personal Life -- What is 'personal life'? -- What is sociological about personal life? -- Some illustrations of personal life in sociology -- The 'personal' is relational -- Personal life is socially constructed -- The chapters -- 2 Conceptualising the Personal -- Introduction -- The 'social construction' of 'the personal' -- Persons and selves -- Personal practices -- Social distinctions and inequalities -- Concluding remarks -- 3 Couple Relationships -- Introduction -- Gender, sexuality and intimate life -- 'Doing' couple relationships -- To what extent have couple relationships changed? -- Concluding remarks -- 4 Kinship: How Being Related Matters in Personal Life -- Introduction -- What does it mean to be related? -- Kinship in everyday life -- Is kinship a special connection between people? -- New technologies, new families, new kinship -- Concluding remarks -- 5 Friendship and Personal Life -- Introduction -- What is a friend? -- Friendship and technology -- Social change and the significance of friendship -- The social patterning of friendship and the limits of choice -- Friendship as the ideal relationship? -- Concluding remarks: Friends versus family? -- 6 Material Cultures -- Introduction -- What is material culture and how can we understand it? -- Material practices: Keeping, using, sorting, and disposing -- Love and loss -- Personal and global connections -- Concluding remarks -- 7 Personal Life across the Life Course -- Introduction -- The life course: Stages and transitions -- Temporal scripts -- Personal life and the life course -- Childhood -- Adulthood -- Later life -- Concluding remarks -- 8 Consumer Culture -- Introduction -- The emergence of consumer culture -- Consumer culture: The corrosion of personal life.
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