Chapter 12 Reading the Social: Erving Goff man and Sexuality Studies

Theory Aside ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 237-260
Keyword(s):  
Sexualities ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 136346072110136
Author(s):  
Caroline Bem ◽  
Susanna Paasonen

Sexuality, as it relates to video games in particular, has received increasing attention over the past decade in studies of games and play, even as the notion of play remains relatively underexplored within sexuality studies. This special issue asks what shift is effected when sexual representation, networked forms of connecting and relating, and the experimentation with sexual likes are approached through the notion of play. Bringing together the notions of sex and play, it both foregrounds the role of experimentation and improvisation in sexual pleasure practices and inquires after the rules and norms that these are embedded in. Contributors to this special issue combine the study of sexuality with diverse theoretical conceptions of play in order to explore the entanglements of affect, cognition, and the somatic in sexual lives, broadening current understandings of how these are lived through repetitive routines and improvisational sprees alike. In so doing, they focus on the specific sites and scenes where sexual play unfolds (from constantly morphing online pornographic archives to on- and offline party spaces, dungeons, and saunas), while also attending to the props and objects of play (from sex toys and orgasmic vocalizations to sensation-enhancing chemicals and pornographic imageries), as well as the social and technological settings where these activities occur. This introduction offers a brief overview of the rationale of thinking sex in and as play, before presenting the articles that make up this special issue.


Author(s):  
Megan Goodwin

New religions have historically been sites of sexual experimentation, and popular imaginings of emergent and unconventional religions usually include the assumption that members engage in transgressive sexual practices. It is surprising, then, that so few scholars of new religions have focused on sexuality. In this chapter, I consider the role of sexual practice, sexual allegations, and sexuality studies in the consideration of new religions. I propose that sex both shapes and haunts new religions. Because sexuality studies attends to embodied difference and the social construction of sexual pathology, the field can and should inform theoretically rigorous scholarship of new religious movements.


Paragraph ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 164-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Régis Revenin

This article endeavours to present an overview rather than a complete inventory of LGBTQ studies undertaken in France, in French, mainly in the social and human sciences, in particular in history, but also in law, psychology and psychiatry. A number of explanatory hypotheses will also be advanced to account for why France has lagged behind in this particular area, as well as more broadly in feminist, gender and sexuality studies.


Sociology ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy L. Fischer

The social study of sexuality encompasses investigating sexual practices and behaviors, sexual feelings, sexual orientation, and the ways in which particular sexual identities and behaviors are reinforced or discouraged by societal institutions and culture. Sexuality studies are interdisciplinary and include work from anthropology, gender and women’s studies, history, LGBT studies, psychology, queer studies, and sociology. The social study of sexuality contrasts with biological approaches to human sexuality, which frame sexual expression as resulting from anatomy and hormones. Contemporary social approaches to studying sexualities—the focus of this article—took shape during the late 1960s and early 1970s, when sociologists, feminists, and gay liberationists argued that sexuality (desire, orientation) was not innate, but socially constructed. Thus, contemporary research and theory operates under the assumption that sexual desires, identities, and behaviors are socially constructed. Sexuality studies seek to explain how social institutions and social interaction patterns shape sexual meanings and practices. A significant portion of sexualities work focuses on inequalities between genders, between heterosexuals and nonheterosexuals (of which there are an expanding array of identities, particularly as gender identities expand), races and ethnicities, and social classes.


Author(s):  
Heiko Motschenbacher

This chapter highlights the role of the concept of normativity in language and sexuality studies. It is argued that normativity has played a central role in this field, even if as a largely undertheorized concept. The theoretical discussion of normativity is advanced by conceptualizing norms as discursive formations and by distinguishing prescriptive from descriptive norms as well as normative mechanisms on the social micro-level from those on the social macro-level. Central patterns that are involved in the discursive construction of various sexual normativity types are outlined, namely heteronormativity (i.e., the notion that a particular version of heterosexuality is natural or preferable), homonormativity (i.e., normative notions of how gay men and lesbian women are supposed to be), and other sexual normativities. The concluding section discusses potential agendas for language and sexuality scholars in terms of changes in sexual normativities.


1959 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 51-79
Author(s):  
K. Edwards

During the last twenty or twenty-five years medieval historians have been much interested in the composition of the English episcopate. A number of studies of it have been published on periods ranging from the eleventh to the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. A further paper might well seem superfluous. My reason for offering one is that most previous writers have concentrated on analysing the professional circles from which the bishops were drawn, and suggesting the influences which their early careers as royal clerks, university masters and students, secular or regular clergy, may have had on their later work as bishops. They have shown comparatively little interest in their social background and provenance, except for those bishops who belonged to magnate families. Some years ago, when working on the political activities of Edward II's bishops, it seemed to me that social origins, family connexions and provenance might in a number of cases have had at least as much influence on a bishop's attitude to politics as his early career. I there fore collected information about the origins and provenance of these bishops. I now think that a rather more careful and complete study of this subject might throw further light not only on the political history of the reign, but on other problems connected with the character and work of the English episcopate. There is a general impression that in England in the later middle ages the bishops' ties with their dioceses were becoming less close, and that they were normally spending less time in diocesan work than their predecessors in the thirteenth century.


2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Hirshleifer ◽  
Siew Hong Teoh

AbstractEvolved dispositions influence, but do not determine, how people think about economic problems. The evolutionary cognitive approach offers important insights but underweights the social transmission of ideas as a level of explanation. The need for asocialexplanation for the evolution of economic attitudes is evidenced, for example, by immense variations in folk-economic beliefs over time and across individuals.


2019 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter C. Mundy

Abstract The stereotype of people with autism as unresponsive or uninterested in other people was prominent in the 1980s. However, this view of autism has steadily given way to recognition of important individual differences in the social-emotional development of affected people and a more precise understanding of the possible role social motivation has in their early development.


2019 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mirko Uljarević ◽  
Giacomo Vivanti ◽  
Susan R. Leekam ◽  
Antonio Y. Hardan

Abstract The arguments offered by Jaswal & Akhtar to counter the social motivation theory (SMT) do not appear to be directly related to the SMT tenets and predictions, seem to not be empirically testable, and are inconsistent with empirical evidence. To evaluate the merits and shortcomings of the SMT and identify scientifically testable alternatives, advances are needed on the conceptualization and operationalization of social motivation across diagnostic boundaries.


2019 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michele Ilana Friedner

Abstract This commentary focuses on three points: the need to consider semiotic ideologies of both researchers and autistic people, questions of commensurability, and problems with “the social” as an analytical concept. It ends with a call for new research methodologies that are not deficit-based and that consider a broad range of linguistic and non-linguistic communicative practices.


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