Julia Carter
Biographic Data
| ID | 3637544 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Julia Carter |
| GIVEN NAMES | Julia |
| FAMILY NAME | Carter |
| SIGNATURE | CARTER J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Canterbury Christ Church University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1845-1670 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 111 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
The Shaping of Contemporary Morality in Intimacy Decision-Making in Britain
In this paper I aim to draw attention to the continued emphasis on ‘moral tales in stories of family construction. In research projects on both conventional family practices such as marriage and non-conventional ones such as living apart together (LAT) and mixed-sex civil partnerships, morality continues to emerge as a core guiding principle for how relationships are organised and maintained. Yet beyond the importance of children in these moral t…
Living Together Apart
In this article, we seek to establish the importance of living together apart (LTA), where ex-partners continue to co-reside following relationship breakdown. Although LTA is commonplace, it has been almost completely overlooked by family sociology and social policy. Because LTA is conceptually unrecognised, there is little empirical information and because there is so little information, it remains conceptually unrecognised. In this article, we …
Exploring Civil Partnership From the Perspective of Those in Mixed-Sex Relationships
Civil partnerships first became available to mixed-sex couples in England and Wales in December 2019. To date, there has been no research exploring the perspectives of mixed-sex couples who choose to become civil partners. We interviewed 21 people, as individuals or in couples, who were considering, planning, or had already entered into a civil partnership. Our thematic analysis resulted in two themes. In Free from the patriarchal baggage of marr…
Mixed-sex civil partnerships
Civil partnerships were extended to mixed-sex couples in England and Wales at the end of 2019, shortly followed by Northern Ireland (2020) and Scotland (2021). Since then, thousands of mixed-sex couples have entered a civil partnership. While civil partnerships were favoured by politicians as an alternative to legal rights for cohabitants, we know little about why mixed-sex couples would choose a civil partnership. In 2020–21 we interviewed indiv…
Traditional Inequalities and Inequalities of Tradition
The (British) white wedding offers a unique lens for studying a number of social and cultural phenomena from practices of intimacy, consumption, and romance to macro level studies of economics, value, and exchange. The wedding also represents an ideal focus for studying the intersection of intimacies and inequalities as it acts as a location for the practice and performance of intimacy which simultaneously encapsulates historical and contemporary…
Intersections of Intimacies and Inequalities
Romantic Relationships in a Time of ‘Cold Intimacies’
Understanding Tradition
Marital surname change is a striking example of the survival of tradition. A practice emerging from patriarchal history has become embedded in an age of detraditionalisation and women's emancipation. Is the tradition of women's marital name change just some sort of inertia or drag, which will slowly disappear as modernity progresses, or does this tradition fulfil more contemporary roles? Are women and men just dupes to tradition, or alternatively…
Women (Not) Troubling 'the Family
This article is concerned with examining the ways in which young women make choices about their family lives and in so doing reproduce traditional unequal gender norms and family practices. In a time when it is (supposedly) increasingly easy to live alternative lives (living apart together, for example), a significant number of young people continue to marry and live together in heteronormative family units. By exploring the narratives produced i…
Individualised Conformity
Drawing on notions of tradition, invention, and agency discussed in preceding chapters, this chapter explores the construction of the wedding as a process of bricolage. The breakdown of standard marriage encourages celebrants to pursue a uniquely personal wedding, but ironically it is in trying to find distinction that uniformity emerges. For the breakdown of old traditions leads to the re-emergence of tradition as resource and legitimation. Soci…
Reinventing Couples
This book presents a new approach to understanding contemporary personal life, taking account of how people build their lives through a bricolage of ‘tradition’ and ‘modern’. The authors examine how tradition is used and adapted, invented and re-invented; how meaning can leak from past to present; the ways in which people’s agencies differ as they make decisions; and the process of bricolage in making new arrangements. These themes are illustrate…
White weddings and the reproduction of white femininity
When my colleague and I entered the wedding show venue in London we were immediately confronted by a salesperson asking if she could see our legs so that she could administer a hair removal treatment. This was somewhat off-putting and neither my colleague nor I took her up on her offer. It also, however, set the tone for the rest of our visit to this wedding show and to the subsequent shows we visited- our bodies were central to the experience of…
Constructions, reconstructions and deconstructions of 'family' amongst people who live apart together (LATs)
This article explores how people who live apart from their partners in Britain describe and understand 'family'. It investigates whether, and how far, non-cohabiting partners, friends, 'blood' and legal ties are seen as 'family', and how practices of care and support, and feelings of closeness are related to these constructions. It suggests that people in LAT relationships creatively draw and re-draw the boundaries of family belonging in ways tha…
Wedding paradoxes
Marriage rates in twenty-first-century Britain are historically low, divorce and separation are historically high, and marriage is no longer generally seen as necessary for legitimate sexual relationships, long-term partnership or even parenting. Yet at the same time weddings have become more prominent, both as social aspiration and as popular culture. But why have a wedding, especially an ornate, expensive and time-consuming wedding, when there …
Why Marry? The Role of Tradition in Women's Marital Aspirations
While the individualisation trend has given way to a relational, reflexive turn in the sociology of relationships, there continues to be a writing out of convention and tradition in understanding relationship processes (excepting Gilding 2010 ). This paper aims to write tradition back into discussions around relationships by drawing on the accounts of young women and the central role that tradition plays in their relationship narratives. The anal…
Sex, Love and Security
Drawing on a 2011 national survey and 50 semi-structured interviews, we explore the differing ways in which those in living apart together (LAT) relationships discuss and experience notions of commitment. We found that sexual exclusivity in LAT relationships is expected by the large majority, regardless of their reasons for living apart. The majority of the interviewees also expressed a high degree of commitment to their partner in terms of love,…
Age-dissimilar Couples and Romantic Relationships
This very accessible, anthropologically informed, book presents a new and interesting addition to the existing literature on relationships. As a popular media reference yet under-researched area wi
Why do people live apart together
Interpretations of living apart together (LAT) have typically counter-posed ‘new family form’ versus ‘continuist’ perspectives. Recent surveys, however, construct LAT as a heterogeneous category that supports a ‘qualified continuist’ position – most people live apart as a response to practical circumstances or as a modern version of ‘boy/girlfriend’, although a minority represents something new in preferring to live apart more permanently. This a…
The Curious Absence of Love Stories in Women's Talk
Sociological debate has dealt with love in a number of different ways. For some, love offers a unique opportunity; it is a path to salvation ( Jackson, 1993 ; Langford, 1999 ). Others, however, take a more sceptical approach to love in modern society: for Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (1995) love represents the path to extreme individualization, for Illouz (1997) it is ultimately underpinned by consumerism, and perhaps most extreme, for Bauman (2003) l…
What is commitment? Women’s accounts of intimate attachment
Commitment is a widely acknowledged concern among the general public as well as among academics and scholars. What commitment actually constitutes, however, is not easily defined. This article explores existing theories of commitment and how these fit in with the responses I found among young heterosexual women when asked what commitment meant to them. During the summer of 2008 I interviewed 23 women between the ages of 19 and 30 to discover thei…
Legal rights for people who ‘Live Apart Together’
About 10% of adults in Britain have a living apart together (LAT) relationship; they are nearly always administratively and legally defined as single but in fact they have a partner who lives elsewhere. The question then arises, should LAT couples have access to legal rights and protection in the same way as proposed (in Britain) or achieved (in other jurisdictions) for unmarried cohabitants? Using both a national survey and in-depth interviews, …
What went wrong? The attempt to establish a Wesleyan day school in Wimborne minster in the 1880s
What can a local study tell us about the interaction between religion and education in the 19th century? This study looks at the interaction between these two important social factors in the later 19th century, at a time of change. It provides an interesting insight into the Wesleyan Methodists' attitudes towards community involvement and how this was changing. It also looks at the impact a religious denomination could have on a small market town…
Why do people live apart together
Interpretations of living apart together (LAT) have typically counter-posed ‘new family form’ versus ‘continuist’ perspectives. Recent surveys, however, construct LAT as a heterogeneous category that supports a ‘qualified continuist’ position – most people live apart as a response to practical circumstances or as a modern version of ‘boy/girlfriend’, although a minority represents something new in preferring to live apart more permanently. This a…
Wedding paradoxes
Marriage rates in twenty-first-century Britain are historically low, divorce and separation are historically high, and marriage is no longer generally seen as necessary for legitimate sexual relationships, long-term partnership or even parenting. Yet at the same time weddings have become more prominent, both as social aspiration and as popular culture. But why have a wedding, especially an ornate, expensive and time-consuming wedding, when there …
Constructions, reconstructions and deconstructions of 'family' amongst people who live apart together (LATs)
This article explores how people who live apart from their partners in Britain describe and understand 'family'. It investigates whether, and how far, non-cohabiting partners, friends, 'blood' and legal ties are seen as 'family', and how practices of care and support, and feelings of closeness are related to these constructions. It suggests that people in LAT relationships creatively draw and re-draw the boundaries of family belonging in ways tha…
What is commitment? Women’s accounts of intimate attachment
Commitment is a widely acknowledged concern among the general public as well as among academics and scholars. What commitment actually constitutes, however, is not easily defined. This article explores existing theories of commitment and how these fit in with the responses I found among young heterosexual women when asked what commitment meant to them. During the summer of 2008 I interviewed 23 women between the ages of 19 and 30 to discover thei…
Sex, Love and Security
Drawing on a 2011 national survey and 50 semi-structured interviews, we explore the differing ways in which those in living apart together (LAT) relationships discuss and experience notions of commitment. We found that sexual exclusivity in LAT relationships is expected by the large majority, regardless of their reasons for living apart. The majority of the interviewees also expressed a high degree of commitment to their partner in terms of love,…
Legal rights for people who ‘Live Apart Together’
About 10% of adults in Britain have a living apart together (LAT) relationship; they are nearly always administratively and legally defined as single but in fact they have a partner who lives elsewhere. The question then arises, should LAT couples have access to legal rights and protection in the same way as proposed (in Britain) or achieved (in other jurisdictions) for unmarried cohabitants? Using both a national survey and in-depth interviews, …
Why Marry? The Role of Tradition in Women's Marital Aspirations
While the individualisation trend has given way to a relational, reflexive turn in the sociology of relationships, there continues to be a writing out of convention and tradition in understanding relationship processes (excepting Gilding 2010 ). This paper aims to write tradition back into discussions around relationships by drawing on the accounts of young women and the central role that tradition plays in their relationship narratives. The anal…
Understanding Tradition
Marital surname change is a striking example of the survival of tradition. A practice emerging from patriarchal history has become embedded in an age of detraditionalisation and women's emancipation. Is the tradition of women's marital name change just some sort of inertia or drag, which will slowly disappear as modernity progresses, or does this tradition fulfil more contemporary roles? Are women and men just dupes to tradition, or alternatively…
The Curious Absence of Love Stories in Women's Talk
Sociological debate has dealt with love in a number of different ways. For some, love offers a unique opportunity; it is a path to salvation ( Jackson, 1993 ; Langford, 1999 ). Others, however, take a more sceptical approach to love in modern society: for Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (1995) love represents the path to extreme individualization, for Illouz (1997) it is ultimately underpinned by consumerism, and perhaps most extreme, for Bauman (2003) l…
Women (Not) Troubling 'the Family
This article is concerned with examining the ways in which young women make choices about their family lives and in so doing reproduce traditional unequal gender norms and family practices. In a time when it is (supposedly) increasingly easy to live alternative lives (living apart together, for example), a significant number of young people continue to marry and live together in heteronormative family units. By exploring the narratives produced i…
Traditional Inequalities and Inequalities of Tradition
The (British) white wedding offers a unique lens for studying a number of social and cultural phenomena from practices of intimacy, consumption, and romance to macro level studies of economics, value, and exchange. The wedding also represents an ideal focus for studying the intersection of intimacies and inequalities as it acts as a location for the practice and performance of intimacy which simultaneously encapsulates historical and contemporary…
Mixed-sex civil partnerships
Civil partnerships were extended to mixed-sex couples in England and Wales at the end of 2019, shortly followed by Northern Ireland (2020) and Scotland (2021). Since then, thousands of mixed-sex couples have entered a civil partnership. While civil partnerships were favoured by politicians as an alternative to legal rights for cohabitants, we know little about why mixed-sex couples would choose a civil partnership. In 2020–21 we interviewed indiv…
Intersections of Intimacies and Inequalities
White weddings and the reproduction of white femininity
When my colleague and I entered the wedding show venue in London we were immediately confronted by a salesperson asking if she could see our legs so that she could administer a hair removal treatment. This was somewhat off-putting and neither my colleague nor I took her up on her offer. It also, however, set the tone for the rest of our visit to this wedding show and to the subsequent shows we visited- our bodies were central to the experience of…
What went wrong? The attempt to establish a Wesleyan day school in Wimborne minster in the 1880s
What can a local study tell us about the interaction between religion and education in the 19th century? This study looks at the interaction between these two important social factors in the later 19th century, at a time of change. It provides an interesting insight into the Wesleyan Methodists' attitudes towards community involvement and how this was changing. It also looks at the impact a religious denomination could have on a small market town…
What is commitment? Women’s accounts of intimate attachment
Commitment is a widely acknowledged concern among the general public as well as among academics and scholars. What commitment actually constitutes, however, is not easily defined. This article explores existing theories of commitment and how these fit in with the responses I found among young heterosexual women when asked what commitment meant to them. During the summer of 2008 I interviewed 23 women between the ages of 19 and 30 to discover thei…
Legal rights for people who ‘Live Apart Together’
About 10% of adults in Britain have a living apart together (LAT) relationship; they are nearly always administratively and legally defined as single but in fact they have a partner who lives elsewhere. The question then arises, should LAT couples have access to legal rights and protection in the same way as proposed (in Britain) or achieved (in other jurisdictions) for unmarried cohabitants? Using both a national survey and in-depth interviews, …
Why do people live apart together
Interpretations of living apart together (LAT) have typically counter-posed ‘new family form’ versus ‘continuist’ perspectives. Recent surveys, however, construct LAT as a heterogeneous category that supports a ‘qualified continuist’ position – most people live apart as a response to practical circumstances or as a modern version of ‘boy/girlfriend’, although a minority represents something new in preferring to live apart more permanently. This a…
The Curious Absence of Love Stories in Women's Talk
Sociological debate has dealt with love in a number of different ways. For some, love offers a unique opportunity; it is a path to salvation ( Jackson, 1993 ; Langford, 1999 ). Others, however, take a more sceptical approach to love in modern society: for Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (1995) love represents the path to extreme individualization, for Illouz (1997) it is ultimately underpinned by consumerism, and perhaps most extreme, for Bauman (2003) l…
Sex, Love and Security
Drawing on a 2011 national survey and 50 semi-structured interviews, we explore the differing ways in which those in living apart together (LAT) relationships discuss and experience notions of commitment. We found that sexual exclusivity in LAT relationships is expected by the large majority, regardless of their reasons for living apart. The majority of the interviewees also expressed a high degree of commitment to their partner in terms of love,…
Age-dissimilar Couples and Romantic Relationships
This very accessible, anthropologically informed, book presents a new and interesting addition to the existing literature on relationships. As a popular media reference yet under-researched area wi
Constructions, reconstructions and deconstructions of 'family' amongst people who live apart together (LATs)
This article explores how people who live apart from their partners in Britain describe and understand 'family'. It investigates whether, and how far, non-cohabiting partners, friends, 'blood' and legal ties are seen as 'family', and how practices of care and support, and feelings of closeness are related to these constructions. It suggests that people in LAT relationships creatively draw and re-draw the boundaries of family belonging in ways tha…
Wedding paradoxes
Marriage rates in twenty-first-century Britain are historically low, divorce and separation are historically high, and marriage is no longer generally seen as necessary for legitimate sexual relationships, long-term partnership or even parenting. Yet at the same time weddings have become more prominent, both as social aspiration and as popular culture. But why have a wedding, especially an ornate, expensive and time-consuming wedding, when there …
Why Marry? The Role of Tradition in Women's Marital Aspirations
While the individualisation trend has given way to a relational, reflexive turn in the sociology of relationships, there continues to be a writing out of convention and tradition in understanding relationship processes (excepting Gilding 2010 ). This paper aims to write tradition back into discussions around relationships by drawing on the accounts of young women and the central role that tradition plays in their relationship narratives. The anal…
Individualised Conformity
Drawing on notions of tradition, invention, and agency discussed in preceding chapters, this chapter explores the construction of the wedding as a process of bricolage. The breakdown of standard marriage encourages celebrants to pursue a uniquely personal wedding, but ironically it is in trying to find distinction that uniformity emerges. For the breakdown of old traditions leads to the re-emergence of tradition as resource and legitimation. Soci…
Reinventing Couples
This book presents a new approach to understanding contemporary personal life, taking account of how people build their lives through a bricolage of ‘tradition’ and ‘modern’. The authors examine how tradition is used and adapted, invented and re-invented; how meaning can leak from past to present; the ways in which people’s agencies differ as they make decisions; and the process of bricolage in making new arrangements. These themes are illustrate…
White weddings and the reproduction of white femininity
When my colleague and I entered the wedding show venue in London we were immediately confronted by a salesperson asking if she could see our legs so that she could administer a hair removal treatment. This was somewhat off-putting and neither my colleague nor I took her up on her offer. It also, however, set the tone for the rest of our visit to this wedding show and to the subsequent shows we visited- our bodies were central to the experience of…
Women (Not) Troubling 'the Family
This article is concerned with examining the ways in which young women make choices about their family lives and in so doing reproduce traditional unequal gender norms and family practices. In a time when it is (supposedly) increasingly easy to live alternative lives (living apart together, for example), a significant number of young people continue to marry and live together in heteronormative family units. By exploring the narratives produced i…
Romantic Relationships in a Time of ‘Cold Intimacies’
Understanding Tradition
Marital surname change is a striking example of the survival of tradition. A practice emerging from patriarchal history has become embedded in an age of detraditionalisation and women's emancipation. Is the tradition of women's marital name change just some sort of inertia or drag, which will slowly disappear as modernity progresses, or does this tradition fulfil more contemporary roles? Are women and men just dupes to tradition, or alternatively…
Traditional Inequalities and Inequalities of Tradition
The (British) white wedding offers a unique lens for studying a number of social and cultural phenomena from practices of intimacy, consumption, and romance to macro level studies of economics, value, and exchange. The wedding also represents an ideal focus for studying the intersection of intimacies and inequalities as it acts as a location for the practice and performance of intimacy which simultaneously encapsulates historical and contemporary…
Intersections of Intimacies and Inequalities
Mixed-sex civil partnerships
Civil partnerships were extended to mixed-sex couples in England and Wales at the end of 2019, shortly followed by Northern Ireland (2020) and Scotland (2021). Since then, thousands of mixed-sex couples have entered a civil partnership. While civil partnerships were favoured by politicians as an alternative to legal rights for cohabitants, we know little about why mixed-sex couples would choose a civil partnership. In 2020–21 we interviewed indiv…
Exploring Civil Partnership From the Perspective of Those in Mixed-Sex Relationships
Civil partnerships first became available to mixed-sex couples in England and Wales in December 2019. To date, there has been no research exploring the perspectives of mixed-sex couples who choose to become civil partners. We interviewed 21 people, as individuals or in couples, who were considering, planning, or had already entered into a civil partnership. Our thematic analysis resulted in two themes. In Free from the patriarchal baggage of marr…
Living Together Apart
In this article, we seek to establish the importance of living together apart (LTA), where ex-partners continue to co-reside following relationship breakdown. Although LTA is commonplace, it has been almost completely overlooked by family sociology and social policy. Because LTA is conceptually unrecognised, there is little empirical information and because there is so little information, it remains conceptually unrecognised. In this article, we …
The Shaping of Contemporary Morality in Intimacy Decision-Making in Britain
In this paper I aim to draw attention to the continued emphasis on ‘moral tales in stories of family construction. In research projects on both conventional family practices such as marriage and non-conventional ones such as living apart together (LAT) and mixed-sex civil partnerships, morality continues to emerge as a core guiding principle for how relationships are organised and maintained. Yet beyond the importance of children in these moral t…
Sociology (20 works) · Gender Studies (16 works) · Law (13 works) · Political science (12 works) · Psychology (11 works) · Social Psychology (8 works) · Intergenerational Family Dynamics and Caregiving (7 works) · Social science (7 works) · Epistemology (6 works) · Marriage and Sexual Relationships (6 works)