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Dedication
To the Bergström family
The New Laws of Love
Online Dating and the Privatization of Intimacy
Marie Bergström
polity
Published in association with INED Éditions
Copyright Page
First published in French as Les nouvelles lois de l’amour: Sexualité, couple et rencontres au temps du numérique © Éditions La Découverte, 2019
This English edition © Marie Bergström 2022
Revised and adapted for the English language edition. This book has been through the normal scholarly process of anonymous peer review, carried out both by Polity and by the French Institute for Demographic Studies (INED). It is based on a book originally published in French in 2019 by Éditions La Découverte. The text was translated by Bernard Cohen and substantially rewritten by the author for the English language edition. The translation was funded by INED and CNRS, GIS GENRE. Quotations from original untranslated French sources have been translated by the author and by Bernard Cohen for this edition.
The right of Marie Bergström to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2022 by Polity Press
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Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK
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All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4351-9
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4352-6 (pb)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021939855
by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NL
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
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Acknowledgments
A great many people have contributed to this book in different ways.
I would first like to thank all the persons interviewed for this research who shared their experiences of online dating but to whom I cannot refer individually. I am truly grateful to Meetic Group for our cooperation, which allowed me to take an original and international approach to user behavior. Special thanks to Héloïse de Monstiers, Stéphane-Laure Bernelin, and Hélène Point for their trust and encouragements.
A big thank you to John Thompson at Polity, who made this publication possible and provided me with valuable advice, and to Wanda Romanowski, Eva Lelièvre, and Alain Blum at INED Éditions for their incredible support. Thanks also to Michel Bozon, who has played an important role in this research as my advisor, and to Eva Illouz for encouraging me to publish this book and helping me to do so. I was delighted to work with Bernard Cohen, who translated several chapters of this book, and Rébecca Lévy-Guillain, who conducted interviews for this project.
I am indebted to all the people who have commented on various chapters of this book, first of all Étienne Ollion, who helped me improve the text in a decisive way. Thanks also to the anonymous reviewers at Polity and at INED Éditions, as well as to Florence Maillochon, Jan Bergström, and Louise Caron. I received valuable feedback on previous versions of this text by Annabelle Allouch, Milan Bouchet-Valat, Thomas Collas, Joseph Confavreux, Thomas Depecker, Claire-Lise Gaillard, Josué Gimel, Gwenaëlle Mainsant, Elise Marsicano, Camille Masclet, Marie Plessz, Clément Rivière, Mathieu Trachman, and Florian Vörös: I wish to thank all of you. My gratitude goes also to Arnaud Régnier-Loilier and Wilfried Rault, who introduced me to the EPIC survey team.
Finally, I would like to thank the institutions who funded this research: the French Institute for Demographic Studies (INED), the GIS Institut du Genre, the Oxford-Sciences Po Programme (OxPo), and the Observatoire sociologique du changement (OSC) at SciencesPo Paris.
I feel incredibly fortunate with my loving and supportive family. After years of publishing in French, I am delighted to be able to share my research with those to whom I owe so much. This book is dedicated to Ulla, Hans, Jan, Linda, Ebba and Oskar Bergström.
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