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A parallel is drawn in this article between influential theoretical perspectives on the contemporary culture of romantic intimacy, and Durkheimian interpretations off modernity, individualism and social solidarity. The author sketches generalities of Durkheim's account of individualism and solidarity in modern society; this sketch serves as a heuristic for cataloguing and distilling North American and European theories of contemporary intimacy that have emerged post-1960. Scholarly discourse on intimacy is shown to share rhetorical and substantive ground with Durkheimian understandings of individual interest and social obligation. Self-development and collective ties, and the potential for these to be mutually reinforcing, are central concerns in intimacy theory. Though not commonly engaged in such a manner, perspectives on contemporary intimacy present an opportunity to explore personal relationships in a style uniquely consistent with the generalist inclinations of past sociological traditions, and to move beyond heavily normative claims about individualism in intimacy. KEY WORDS Durkheim / individualism / intimacy / sexual relationships / social solidarity / theoretical problems

Much has been written by important sociocultural theorists about the role played by risk in late modem societies, and some, like Beck and Giddens, have ventured to contend that industrial society is turning into 'risk society'. Little empirical research has been conducted, however, that has sought to examine the speculations of grand theories about 'risk society'. This article discusses findings from an Australian interview-based study that sought to elicit the participants' understandings of the notion of risk. Three major issues from the interviews are examined: the ways in which the participants defined 'risk', the risks they nominated as most threatening to themselves and those they saw as threatening Australians in general. The findings reveal that the 'risk society' thesis was supported in some ways. Other findings, however, challenged this thesis, including the participants' critique of government's role in protecting its citizens from risk, the ways in which many of them represented risk-taking as positive, their relative inattention to environmental risk and the role played by such factors as gender, age and sexual identity in structuring risk perceptions. KEYWORDS: Australia / reflexivity / risk / risk society / sociocultural theory