Culture and the Sociology of Sexuality: It's Only Natural?

Abstract

183This article locates six themes in the overlap between the sociology of culture and the sociology of sexuality, highlighting both institutionalized and discursive forms of power. These themes include (1) works that develop or problematize economic metaphors in the study of sexuality;(2) studies of commercial sex that problematize cultural assumptions about sex, money, and morality;(3) explorations of "nonsexual"-seeming institutions, which can reproduce or challenge hierarchies of race and gender as they transmit sexual norms; (4) considerations of the sexual underpinnings of citizenship and personhood; (5) analyses of mass-mediated discourses of sexual personhood; and (6) critiques of sociology itself, as reproducing discursive power by neglecting to problematize certain assumptions about sexuality. The article ends by considering sociology's relationship to humanities-based queer theory, arguing that sociologists should bring analyses of emotions and feelings rules into our considerations of how people develop a sense of self through social interactions.

Patients’ Sexual Health: A Qualitative Research Approach on Greek Nurses’ Perceptions

“…Sociocultural factors and familial upbringing also constituted barriers in sexuality discussions, a finding that is in accordance to previous studies [2,29]. Indeed, the adoption of a cultural perspective is important for the exploration of how people internalize and transmit sexual schemas [30]; therefore, sexuality cannot be understood outside the cultural context within which it exists [31]. It has been documented that parents as primary socialization agents, especially maternal attitudes, have a significant role in adolescents' acquisition of sexual knowledge and perceptions [29,32,33].…”

“…In total, 44 staff nurses (42 females and 2 males) participated in the study. They had a mean age of 37.89 (Ϯ3.95) years (age range: [27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45] and an average of 14.04 (Ϯ4.84) years of professional experience; their distribution across employment settings is presented in Figure 1.…”

Libidinal Heterodoxy

“…A denaturalizing critique of gender and sexuality categories associated with social constructionist and postmodern directions has been well established since at least the 1990s (Moon 2008;Beasley 2005;Jackson 1998;Seidman 1998;Jagose 1996). However, this fluidity appears almost exclusively to apply to minority sexualities (and marginalized gender positions) frequently named as queer.…”

(Re)conceptualizing resistance to (re)conceptualize campus climate challenges: Analyzing the resistant register of student reflection writing in a university diversity course

“…It is this dichotomous debate that serves as the foundation for how homosexuality is talked about in society. In most instances, if homosexuality is being discussed, it is done so as an argument where one side argues that many passages in the Christian Bible directly indicate it is morally wrong while the other side holds that homosexuality is a biological and, therefore, scientific construct as being an evolutionary aspect of life (Moon 2008). The implications of this "either/or" debate, influenced by Christianity, is that individuals are taught to either agree or disagree that homosexuality is inherently sinful.…”

“…Importantly, there is social power in claiming homosexuality is a "sin" due to the influence the early American Protestants held in the past, and continue to hold today. By engaging in this type of Discourse every day, by constructing homosexuality as either "right" or "wrong," institutions and individuals have learned to talk about homosexuality as well as individuals who identify as gay or lesbian much like the larger social discourse does, either as sinful or not (Moon, 2008).…”