Sexual Fields: Toward a Sociology of Collective Sexual Life

Abstract

The rise of urbanization and mass communication and the decoupling of sexuality from reproduction and moral regulation have contributed to the late modern expansion of specialized erotic worlds catering to a variety of sexual tastes. Organized by appetites and dispositions related to race, ethnicity, class, gender, and age, these arenas of sexual exploration become sites of stratification and dominion wherein actors vie for partners, social significance, and esteem. These are what Adam Isaiah Green calls sexual fields, and to help us to navigate them, he offers a groundbreaking new framework. To build on the sexual fields framework, Green has gathered a distinguished group of scholars who together make a strong case for sexual field theory as the first systematic theoretical innovation since queer theory in the sociology of sexuality. Expanding on the work of Bourdieu, the contributors develop this distinctively sociological approach for analyzing collective sexual life, showing how these semiautonomous sites are where the sexual life of our society resides today. And by coupling field theory with the ethnographic and theoretical expertise of some of the most important scholars of sexual life at work today, Sexual Fields offers a game-changing approach that will revolutionize how sociologists will analyze and make sense of contemporary sexual life for years to come.