Equality in Intimate Life - MANCEPT Workshops

Intimate life and politics are connected closely, and this workshop, which will be one of this year’s MANCEPT workshops, seeks to explore their interrelationships. We hope to build on two successful workshops held at MANCEPT over the previous two years.
Broadly, we are open to talks which try to understand and/or ameliorate an aspect of intimate life as shaped by the state and other social institutions. In recent years, much work has charted the different forms intimate life can take, and argued for a greater acceptance of diverse sexual practices and experiments in
living. Often, people will suggest that any form of intimate life is acceptable as long as people relate as equals. But the connections between the growing literature on political egalitarianism – understood in terms of resource or relation – and intimate life are underexplored and ripe for analysis.

With this in mind, this year we are particularly interested in exploring equality in intimate life. We invite abstracts of no more than 500 words on the following questions, or on any other topic related to this theme: 

• Is equality an important value in intimate life?
• What does equality in romantic life look like? What does equality in other intimate relationships look like?
• What role does the state have in promoting or securing equality in intimate life?
• Is intimate equality best understood in terms of resource, opportunity, or standing?
• What are the connections between intimate equality and autonomy or being free from domination?
• What relationship practices best promote intimate equality?
• Can people consent to be unequal partners in intimate life? Under what conditions?
• How acceptable are relationship anarchy, or hierarchical nonmonogamy, as intimate configurations?
• Can sex ever be egalitarian? Should it be?
• Is sex between partners of unequal standing always morally problematic?
• Do egalitarian relations ‘make safe’ various kinds of sexual or romantic objectification?
• Does the inherent inequality between buyers and sellers of sex render sex work unethical?

We are receptive to interdisciplinary explorations of these ideas, provided they are accessible to the nonspecialist. More broadly, we actively welcome in-progress work and seek to foster a friendly and collaborative environment. PhD, post-docs, and ECR are especially welcome.

The workshop will be predominantly in-person, although we reserve a few hybrid presentation slots in case speakers are impacted by travel restrictions, illness, or have constraints on their accessibility. For more details about the conference, see the website below. Registration opens in May and a closing date has not been specified yet, but the closing date to apply for graduate bursaries is 27th June.

Please send abstracts to [email protected] by  June 6th 5pm.