Sexualities Research

Critical Interjections, Diverse Methodologies, and Practical Applications

Andrew King, Ana Santos, Isabel Crowhurst, Andrew King, Ana Santos, Isabel Crowhurst, Andrew King, Ana Cristina Santos, Isabel Crowhurst

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317529675
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Genderforschung

How is sexuality studied methodologically? How are we innovating, methodologically, in the study of sexuality? What impact, if any, has the increase in mixed methodologies had on the study of sexuality?

Sexualities Research brings together original contributions by emerging and world-leading scholars of sexuality. Through this volume the authors seek to address how theoretical and methodological choices enable wider dissemination and social impact of sexualities research. Indeed, covering a diverse range of theoretical perspectives and methodologies to provide important new insights into human sexuality, the chapters cover an array of topics from the experience of researching sexuality, to using theories in new and innovative ways. With an international scope, Sexualities Research also builds on the re-emergence of the European Sociological Association Sexuality Research Network and asks important questions about the study of sexuality in contemporary societies against the background of political upheaval and economic troubles. Certainly, this collection shows the importance and vitality of sociological understandings of human sexuality in the twenty-first century.

An enlightening volume consisting of a variety of case studies and theoretical research, Sexualities Research will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as postdoctoral researchers who are interested in fields such as Sociology, LGBT/Queer Studies and Gender Studies.

1 Introduction

Andrew King, Ana Cristina Santos and Isabel Crowhurst

This book introduces readers to a wide and exciting range of sexualities research currently being conducted by scholars who have, in one way or another, engaged with the European Sociological Association Sexuality Research Network in recent years. The principal aim of this chapter is to provide a broad overview of the book, situating it within a number of contexts. We begin with a discussion of the place of sexualities research in current European Sociology, explaining how the book emerged at a particular point in time—one dominated by policies and measures associated with economic austerity and embedded in neo-liberalism—which forms the backdrop to a number of the chapters in the book. The subsequent section provides a sketch of some the key theoretical and methodological trends that have proved highly influential to the development of the sociology of sexualities and which, in different ways, are picked up by the contributors to this the book. Whilst not an exhaustive overview of theories and methodologies that can be applied to sexualities research, those used, discussed and sometimes critiqued in this book do illustrate the diverse ways that sociologists, and those who have influenced them, have attempted to study and make sense of human sexuality. In the final section of this chapter, we provide an overview of the chapters that comprise the book.

Putting ‘Sexualities Research’ in Context

The chapters in this book were generated through a conference organised by the editors as part of the European Sociological Association Sexualities Research Network (ESARN23). The conference, which took place in London in January 2013 was, in many ways, the culmination of the re-establishment of ESARN23, a process which had commenced in 2008. The conference, in which 50 delegates presented and discussed their work, constituted a turning point for the consolidation of this Research Network within ESA, which has been growing in the past nine years and now gathers members across a broad spectrum of geographical locations. Hence, the book is a celebration of that process and the work that has contributed to the development of European sexualities research in the early 21st century. This process of re-emergence occurred at a time when a crisis in the global financial system appeared to gather pace, especially in European and other Western countries. Whilst reactions to the crisis have been manifold, one of the key responses has been the inculcation of an era of austerity which has in turn impacted on sexuality studies in different ways.

Firstly, austerity has led to restricted budgets within academia making attendance at events, such as the one which led to this publication, more difficult. This is especially the case for Early Career Researchers and those without direct institutional support. Whilst organisations such as the European Sociological Association might be able to offer limited bursaries and support, ensuring that the next generation of sexualities scholars can fully participate in the discipline is essential. This is of course the case for social (and other) research more generally. However, changes in terms of restricting research grant provision, orienting research to the development of larger grants or those only available to specific ‘high priority’ topics as a consequence of the need to provide ‘value for money’ impacts on the ability of researchers to undertake research on the sexual. In effect, austerity has the ability to limit the scope of future research into sexualities and thereby a profound effect on knowledge production. In an era where all research must demonstrate its impact, to what extent will sexualities research in the social sciences be funded? Will governments and academies under financial strain reinforce the stigma of sexuality research as ‘dirty work’?

Secondly, there is the now well established link between poverty and sexual exclusion, marginalisation and sexual exploitation, homophobia/biphobia/ transphobia and precarious jobs or unemployment (Santana 2002, Takács 2006, Armas 2007, Richardson and Monro 2012). In short, how people’s sexualities intersect with the material remains an abiding issue. Research from previous periods of economic recession indicates that in such times sexualised inequalities and how they are addressed, or not, may well be magnified (Richardson and Monro 2012). Such a situation requires a robust scholarly response—to be able to undertake rigorous research to highlight these disparities and inequities and help to shape future policy and practical responses. Yet, as we have already suggested, the academic grounds on which this might be formulated is, at the same time, being slowly divested. Although Foucault (1978 103) was not adopting a materialist view of sexuality when he referred to it as “an especially dense transfer point for relations of power”—it is interesting to note that the current flourishing of European sociological research about sexualities occurs in a climate of redistribution of economic resources, which knits together the material, the discursive and the symbolic, as a number of chapters in this book illustrate.

Indeed, the third reason why sexualities research is intimately infused with the economic and financial climate currently being experienced in Europe relates to how austerity affects populations who are defined and surveyed by their sexual identities. A number of chapters in this book make explicit and implicit reference to this—either because funding cuts have led to the withdrawal or alteration of policies and practices that seek to support sexual minorities, or because such initiatives are viewed as embellishments that cannot be afforded when money is scarce. The politics of knowledge about the sexual is impacted by austerity and the need to ‘make every penny count’.

The argument we have made above may seem alarming and in some ways unwarranted and rather pessimistic at the beginning of a book that, in many ways, celebrates the vibrancy and diversity of sexualities research in Europe. But, as editors of this book, we believe that it is important to provide a clarion warning call about the future of sexualities research at such a socio-political juncture. We cannot and do not undertake sexualities research divorced from the wider social, economic and political contexts in which those we research live their lives and in which we, as politically engaged scholars, are also situated. We cannot ignore the wider context and its role in shaping such a central part of sociological research and social life.

We now turn to sketch out some key theoretical and methodological trends that have influenced sexualities research, especially in a European context, but which continue to influence the sociology of sexualities and provide a further context to the chapters that are contained within this book.

Sexualities in Theory and Practice

Over the course of its relatively short life, the sociology of sexualities has drawn on an eclectic theoretical and methodological palette. In this section of the chapter we will focus on those that have, arguably, been the most influential, challenging and productive, certainly over the past 50 years in Europe and elsewhere, and which many of the authors in this book utilise to productive effect. As the social historian Jeffrey Weeks (2010) has said, researching sexualities back in the 1960s was a ‘virgin field’. Such a dubious pun, is not, of course, only intended to raise a knowing, ironic smile amongst fellow sociologists, but a statement regarding the lack of sociological interest in the study of sexualities at the time. However, the study of sexuality was not missing. Sexology and psychoanalysis were particularly important, but as Weeks (2010) and others (Jackson and Scott 2011) have acknowledged, these broad perspectives have been largely countered by sociologists, although they have weighed heavily on the sociological imagination. It is therefore expedient to consider this legacy and how sociologists have sought to move beyond it, both in theory and practice.

Early sexologists, including Havelock Ellis and Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, sought to categorise sexuality, but also to frame it in positive, indeed utopian terms. To an extent this continued into the 20th century with Magnus Hirschfield’s Scientific Humanitarian Committee (established in 1897), which was dedicated to campaigning for the recognition of sexual minorities and led to the establishment of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sex Research) in Berlin in 1919 (until it was forcibly closed and its library burned by the Nazis in 1933). However, at the same time other sexologists, notably Richard von KrafftEbing, Iwan Bloch and Otto Weininger, offered theorisations of sexuality more akin to the pathological. In this respect, as Hawkes (1996) has previously noted, the pleasure/danger dichotomy of sexuality was manifested theoretically, as well as in terms of morality and behaviour. But, like others who have followed them, the sexologists believed in a scientific (and to an extent, a social scientific) approach to the study of sexuality.

The sexologists’ methods were diverse and often contentious. Detailed case studies, psychological therapies, physical examinations, surveys and statistics were all employed to a greater or lesser extent and certainly this diversity has continued over the course of sexualities research. Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis (1894) presented hundreds of case studies to substantiate his theories about human sexuality and its pathologies. Hirschfield’s Institute was multidisciplinary, in methods as much as scope. Moreover, in the early to mid-20th century, the methods and theoretical approaches used to instantiate a science of sex and sexuality were enormously influenced by Freud and his followers.

Freud’s legacy for the sociology of sexualities has been contentious at best, and potentially divisive, although some recent work that has influenced the sociology of sexualities has drawn on psychoanalytic understandings and concepts (as will be discussed later in relation to psychosocial studies and Queer Theory). Creating and then employing the methods of psychoanalysis, Freud challenged existing understandings of sexuality that had emerged from the sexologists; in particular, the simple distinction between pleasure/perversity, the notion that sexual desires emerge in adulthood and perhaps most crucial from a sociological viewpoint, that repression is central to the emergence of modern societies. As Jackson and Scott (2011) have noted, it was the latter that was taken up and revitalised by the sexual radicals of the post-World War II era, such as Wilhelm Reich as well as Hebert Marcuse, who drew Freud’s ideas together with Marx to provide a critique of sexuality under capitalism. Subsequently, Freud’s ideas were critiqued from within the psychoanalytic tradition, the most radical being in the work of Jacques Lacan (particularly in Écrits [1977]). Lacan adopted a profoundly anti-essentialist and anti-humanist view that later informed theoretical understandings of sexuality, particularly Queer Theory.

One line of critique of Freud’s work also emerged in the mid-20th century in the guise of the bookkeepers of sexuality: the work conducted in the US by Alfred Kinsey and his colleagues (Jackson and Scott 2011). Kinsey was critical of psychoanalysis and other sexological research because he felt it lacked scientific rigour. Kinsey and colleagues undertook significant survey research, in terms of both scope and public attention. Certainly, Kinsey’s work, with its attendant scaling of sexual behaviour on a spectrum from exclusively heterosexual to exclusively homosexual. Yet while this has provided a quantitative foundation to the study of sexualities and, to an extent, recognised sexual diversity and its social construction, Kinsey never fully accepted what we might term a more sociological approach. Indeed, Kinsey retained an essentialist view of sexuality that latter work within sociology would significantly challenge.

Developing both during and after the Kinsey era, however, another significant vein of critique was feminism. One of the principal criticisms of Freud’s work and indeed much early psychoanalysis was that it privileged male sexuality, creating a phallocentric view of female sexuality and reinforcing patriarchy. Feminists such as Kate Millet (1970) and later Elizabeth Wilson (1981) offered compelling critiques of psychoanalytic theory, but as Bristow (2011) notes, although a number of European feminists have critiqued Freud, others (Rose 1983) have reconsidered and utilised his work. In these cases, the methods of psychoanalysis and the reinterpretation of texts are frequently employed—leading to a somewhat symbolic view of sexuality. More recently, psychoanalytic ideas have made a resurgence in sexualities research, in their influence upon Queer Theory. Butler (1990), for instance, utilised, albeit in a critical way, Freudian ideas in Gender Trouble; whilst Edelman’s (2004) No Future, which critiqued the notion of reproductive futurity, drew heavily on psychoanalysis. More recently, the emergent field of psychosocial studies has drawn on psychoanalytic and queer theorisations (Johnson 2015).

Since the 1970s, feminists have radically questioned what once were orthodox views about women’s sexuality, and have critically examined the role of patriarchy in creating women’s sexual oppression, linking of the personal and the political and the relationship between gender and sexuality. In so doing, feminists have engaged with both the structural dynamics of women’s oppression through sexuality and, more recently, its cultural manifestations. A range of feminisms have influenced the development of a sociology of sexualities, including lesbian feminism (Rich 1980), radical feminism (Dworkin 1987, MacKinnon 1987) and other structural approaches (Rubin 1975), as Jackson and Scott (2011) ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• Part I Critical Interjections
• Part II Critical Methodologies
• Part III Critical Practices
• Index