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 peoples agencies differ as they make decisions; and the process of bricolage in making new arrangements. These themes are illustrated through a variety of case studies, ranging from personal life in the 1950s, young women and marriage, the rise of cohabitation, female name change, living apart together, and creating weddings. Centrally the authors emphasise the re-traditionalisation involved in de-traditionalisation and the connectedness involved in individualised processes of relationship change.

Reinventing Couples will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines including sociology, social work and social policy.

Julia Carter is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Canterbury Christ Church University, UK.

Simon Duncan is Emeritus Professor of Comparative Social Policy at the University of Bradford, UK.

1. Introduction.- 2. Pragmatic tradition: personal life in the 1950s.- 3. Choosing Tradition: getting married.- 4. Inventing tradition: the case of cohabitation.- 5. The leakage of meaning: traditional naming practices.- 6. Differential agency: living apart together.- 7. Individualised conformity: creating a wedding.- 8. Afterword: extending intimacy.