Where do we find intimacy today? Are our interactions with acquaintances and strangers, particularly online, a sign of deepening, widespread intimacy? Or are our personal relationships becoming increasingly empty, structured by selfish individualism?

In this second edition of her landmark book, Lynn Jamieson provides an updated exploration of the many types of intimate relationships that are formed in modern societies: families, kinship, friendships, parent–child relationships, sexual relationships and couple relationships. Examining new evidence, the book investigates the nature of such relationships across societies and explicitly questions whether the association of intimacy with face-to-face relationships has passed in an era in which people use digital technologies to stay connected at a physical distance. Jamieson pays particular attention to the issue of ethnocentrism and the global applicability of the concept of intimacy, and finds that, while recent literature suggests disclosing intimacy is increasing on a global scale, this is more present in popular rhetoric than in practice.

Ultimately arguing for a more grounded, gendered and complex picture of this phenomenon, Intimacy will remain a key reading for scholars and students of sociology, women’s studies and gender studies.

Lynn Jamieson is Professor of Sociology, Families and Relationships at the University of Edinburgh