How to cite: Barker, Meg and Langdridge, Darren (2010). Whatever happened to non-monogamies? Critical reflections on recent research and theory. Sexualities, 13(6) pp. 748-772.For guidance on citations see FAQs. Whatever happened to non-monogamies? Critical reflections on recent research and theory AbstractThe last decade has seen an explosion of interest in consensually non-monogamous relationships. This paper critically reviews current research and theory in this area, focusing particularly on polyamory, swinging, and gay open relationships. The sociohistorical context in which these forms of relating emerged is considered and discussed in order to better understand why these has been such a significant increase in scholarly work on non-monogamies at this moment. Furthermore, we categorise the extant literature into two groups, 'celebratory' and 'critical', and argue that such polarisation frequently works to reinforce partial and dichotomising understandings of the topic. Research so far has primarily concentrated on the rules and boundaries which people employ to manage such relationships and we contend that future work needs to pay more attention to diversities of meanings and practices, intersections with other identities and communities, and the troubling of dichotomous understandings 1 .

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There has been significant growth in critical approaches to social psychology in recent years. Phenomenological, discursive and psychoanalytically informed perspectives, amongst others, have become increasingly popular alternatives to 'mainstream' cognitive social psychology. This paper describes the fundamental philosophy and methodology underpinning phenomenological psychology along with discussion of a number of key issues in qualitative research in social psychology. In particular, I discuss the role of interpretation, the turn to language and need for political engagement within critical social psychology. More recently, there has been a growth in phenomenologically informed narrative theories and methodologies and in this paper I introduce my own development of a critical narrative analysis. In the process I discuss some of the most pressing debates about research within the phenomenological tradition and provide rebuttals, solutions and possible future directions for phenomenological theory and research that may lead to yet greater recognition for this social psychological perspective.

Phenomenological psychology refers to an approach to psychology that draws on phenomenological, existential, and hermeneutic philosophy. The focus in all such work is on making sense of the meaning structures of the lived experience of a research participant or psychotherapeutic client. That is, in Husserl’s terms—the founder of phenomenological philosophy—we go “back to the things themselves” as they present themselves to consciousness in order to determine the “essence” (eidos) of the phenomenon. There is not one approach to phenomenological psychology, however, with the perspective better being understood as a family of methods and modes of practice. All psychological research and practice within this tradition will have its roots in the thought of Husserl and key concepts therein but will also likely be informed by other philosophical work, such as that of Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Sartre from the existential tradition, or Gadamer and Ricoeur from the hermeneutic tradition. Phenomenological psychology has its origins in European psychiatry with the work of Karl Jaspers in the early 1900s, along with figures including Ludwig Binswanger, Medard Boss, Viktor Frankl, Eugene Minkowski, and Jan Hendrick van den Berg. The primary aim of these thinkers was (a) the rejection of traditional notions of psychopathology, in favor of Husserl’s descriptive method of analyzing psychological experience; and (b) the application of ideas from existential philosophy to therapeutic practice. A variety of modes of psychotherapeutic practice have evolved from this early work including Daseinsanalysis, logotherapy, British School existential analysis, and existential-humanistic psychotherapy. The Utrecht School in The Netherlands has been identified as the location of the first attempt to apply phenomenological philosophy to psychological research. Influenced by the work of the psychologist Adrian van Kaam and the philosopher Henry Koren, Amedeo Giorgi (beginning in the early 1970s) developed a systematic phenomenological psychology methodology at Duquesne University in the United States. Other important early figures working to develop phenomenological psychology at Duquesne include Rolf von Eckartsberg, Constance F. Fischer, and Paul F. Collaizi, with the latter developing his own phenomenological method, which is more hermeneutic than the Giorgi method. Another relatively early major methodological development came about in Canada in the late 1970s with the work of the pedagogical researcher Max van Manen, who drew directly on the Utrecht School to develop a hermeneutic phenomenological methodology. Recent developments include methodologies that draw more extensively on hermeneutics or forms of critical social theory or both, including feminist theory. Some of these developments have proven controversial, with ongoing debates in the field about the boundaries and methods of phenomenological psychology.