The Sociology of Sexualities: Queer and Beyond

We identify three trends in the recent sociology of sexuality. First, we examine how queer theory has influenced many sociologists whose empirical work observes sexuality in areas generally thought to be asexual. These sociologists also elaborate queer theory\u27s challenge to sexual dichotomizing and trace the workings of power through sexual categories. Second, we look at how sociologists bring sexuality into conversation with the black feminist notion of “intersectionality” by examining the nature and effects of sexuality among multiple and intersecting systems of identity and oppression. A third trend in the sociology of sexuality has been to explore the relationships between sexuality and political economy in light of recent market transformations. In examining these trends, we observe the influence of globalization studies and the contributions of sociologists to understanding the role of sexuality in global processes. We conclude with the contributions sociologists of sexuality make toward understanding other social processes and with the ongoing need to study sexuality itself

Normal Sins: Sex Scandal Narratives as Institutional Morality Tales

Sex scandals are widely assumed to be tales of individual transgression, serving as reminders of the normative sexual order. This paper, a qualitative multiple-case comparison of three contemporary media-conveyed sex scandals narratives, suggests otherwise. Drawing on extensive news documents, the study considers three stories, each revolving around the same sexual behavior, but each playing out in a different institutional environment: televangelist Jimmy Swaggart\u27s encounter with prostitute Debra Murphree in 1988, actor Hugh Grant\u27s encounter with prostitute Divine Brown in 1995, and presidential advisor Dick Morris\u27 encounter with prostitute Sherry Rowlands in 1996. On the one hand, within the same overarching narrative, different themes become dominant. In one case, the relationship with a prostitute gives rise to a story primarily focused on hypocrisy; in another, to a story focused mainly on recklessness; in the last, to a story focused mainly on amorality and disloyalty. On the other hand, the stories share a common dynamic and common themes: the discussions of sexual misbehavior, which kick each story into gear, are rapidly edged out by themes of inauthenticity, and by suggestions that hypocrisy, risk, or disloyalty are facilitated by the man\u27s particular institutional environment. Sex scandal stories, rather than remaining stories of individual sexual transgression, are transformed into institutional morality tales. Such a pattern, the author argues, results from pronounced needs on the part of mainstream media organizations to both mimic and distinguish themselves from tabloid media, and from journalists\u27 interest in transforming soft into hard news stories. While they draw on and buttress familiar cultural givens about masculine sexuality, these scandal stories offer an even more theoretically challenging twist: an unexpected cultural reversal, in which sexual sins as narrated by American news media, reveal not individual, but institutional pathologies; not a normative order, but institutional decay

Silence, Death and the Invisible Enemy: AIDS Activism and Social Movement Newness

Examining the dynamics and activities of the AIDS activist movement--here, through an analysis based on a participant-observation study of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) in San Francisco--provides an opportunity to clarify issues on which social movements literature tends to be hazy. ACT UP mixes strategic action and material targets with expressive action and cultural targets; their cultural activity takes the form of boundary-crossing and the contesting of images. They often have difficulty distinguishing their targets, and are caught both denying and affirming that AIDS is a gay disease. I argue that these actions and dilemmas are best understood in the context of changed forms of domination, more and more an invisible and disembodied process of normalization, with the state gradually less directly involved. This argument not only explains the particulars of ACT UP\u27s activism, but also poses challenges to theorizing on contemporary ( new ) social movements

Solidaires, unitaires et démocratiques: social movement unionism and beyond?

A contribution to a Special Issue on trade union renewal that focuses on this topic in relation to the radical French trade union Solidaires, Unitaires et Démocratiques (SUD)

The iconicity of celebrity and the spiritual impulse

Celebrity has a powerful material presence in contemporary consumer culture but its surface aesthetic resonates with the promise of deeper meanings. This Marketplace Icon contribution speculates on the iconicity of celebrity from a spiritual perspective. The social value or authenticity of contemporary celebrity, and the social processes through which it emerges, are matters of debate amongst researchers and competing approaches include field theory, functionalism, and anthropologically inflected accounts of the latent need for ritual, myth and spiritual fulfillment evinced by celebrity “worship.” We focus on the latter area as a partial explanation of the phenomenon whereby so many consumers seem so enchanted by images of, and stories about, individuals with whom they, or we, often have little in common. We speculate that the powerful presence of celebrity in Western consumer culture to some extent reflects and exploits a latent need for myths of redemption through the iconic character of many, though by no means all, manifestations of celebrity consumption