The institutional logics of love: the order of passion in an intimate field

We use Multiple Correspondence Analysis to capture the institutional logics of love and intimacy among a random sample of American university students. Comparing the theoretical assumptions of field theory and the institutional logics approach we explore whether institutional logics of intimacy exist, what kinds of practices are gathered in these logics, and whether these institutional logics are shaped by the actors’ field capitals, viz. gender and social class. Using survey data collected from a random sample of 1315 students from a large Pacific university (PU) we find that institutional logics of intimacy come in multiple forms: abstinence, loving sex and hookup sex, each characterized by its specific doings, feelings, and sayings. Our analyses further suggest that the logics of intimate practice have their own internal order, or grammar, which is only weakly conditioned by persons’ class or gender positions in the social structure. Although the perduring logics of intimacy are largely autonomous from persons’ positions in the field, the effects we do find largely echo Armstrong and Hamilton’s account of college life as a class project of young privileged women whose social networks formed through the Greek party scene (Armstrong and Hamilton in Paying for the Party. How College Maintains Inequality, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2013). Constellations of meaningful practice, not distributions of capitals among persons, overwhelmingly organize the pathways of practice.