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Sex and sociality - Comparative ethnographies of sexual objectification

Rival, Laura, Slater, Don, Miller, Daniel (1998) Sex and sociality - Comparative ethnographies of sexual objectification. Theory, Culture and Society, 15 (3-4). pp. 295-321. ISSN 0263-2764. (doi:10.1177/0263276498015003015) (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:17043)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.
Official URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0263276498015003015

Abstract

This article is intended as a critique of recent theorizations of sexuality and desire, which have led performative theorists to contend that gender is an effect of discourse, and sex an effect of gender. It results from informal discussions between the three authors on the mechanisms through which sexuality gets objectified in modernity. The ideas of influential Western thinkers (in particular Georges Bataille) are confronted with field data on sexuality - as lived and imagined - that the authors have been gathering in Amazonian societies, Trinidad, and on the Internet. Ethnographic data and Western theories about the nature of eroticism are used to argue that the utopian definition of sexuality as sexual desire and will to identity is too divorced from the mundane - love: domesticity and reproduction in a broad sense - and based on a too limited sphere of social experience. Consequently, to apply this definition to how and why humans engage in sexual activity leads to erroneous generalizations. For when encountered ethnographically, sexuality consists of practices deeply embedded in relational contexts. The article concludes with the proposition that debates about the possibilities of human sexuality and of its political intervention will make no significant progress unless we stop repeating that 'sexuality is socially constructed', and start looking at the ways in which it is lived as part of everyday social life.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1177/0263276498015003015
Subjects: H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Women
G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GN Anthropology
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Human and Social Sciences > School of Anthropology and Conservation
Depositing User: Tara Puri
Date Deposited: 04 Jul 2009 16:30 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 09:55 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/17043 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

Rival, Laura.

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