Global Modernity and Sexual Science

Abstract

This chapter examines how the social history of urbanization influenced the emergence of sexual science by focusing on the case of male homosexuality and female prostitution during the period 1850–1950. It first considers the notions of sexual chaos and order that emerged within nineteenth-century anthropology and how they were related to urbanization, with an emphasis on the case of Buenos Aires. It then discusses some aspects of the global history of transportation and urbanization and how it affected prostitution and homosexuality in different parts of the world. It also explores the simultaneous emergence and similarity of the so-called cities of sin and how they became incubators of a sexual science in which the evolution or devolution of human society was debated in sexual terms and described as a fact of daily life. The chapter suggests that “civilization encourages prostitution” as the sexual drive is increasingly put under control.