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The Sexual Curriculum (Oct.,
2002) [to
Volume
II Index] [to
Main Index Page] Janssen,
D. F. (Oct., 2002). Growing Up Sexually. Volume II: The Sexual
Curriculum: The Manufacture and Performance of Pre-Adult Sexualities. Interim
Report. Amsterdam, The Netherlands Chapter
Abstracts [back if referred] 1 The Sociology of Life Span Sexualities:
"Anthropological" Traditions and Entries
This
chapter identifies sociological traditions in approaching human sexual
"development", resulting in a choice of perspective informing the present
literature review. These traditions were tested for their utility in surveying
and interpreting ethnographic accounts of sexual socialisation processes. To
further map the orientations of academic interests in "developmental sexuality"
research, a range of agenda in approaching sexual socialisation was tested for the use of ethnographia. To complement this exploration, some
preliminary notes are offered on "lateral" constructions and biases in
approaching socialised (or sociologised) phase-identified sexual behaviour. The
definitive format chosen included constructionist elements informing a "performed sexuality" or "modified"
scripting perspective. [go there now] 2 Sexologising Childhood: Historical
Antecedents of "Developmental Sexology"
This
chapter identifies selected historical antecedents of contemporary sexological
conceptualisations of the child, with a reference to ethnographic import.
First, it is argued that "developmental sexologies" or ontologies are cultural
constructs that describe and legitimise given curricular operationalisation
efforts. It is suggested that the theme of age salience in early sexology is
neglected by historians. Specifically, masturbation evolved from a poorly
curricularised pathological discourse (until 1850s) to one that seemed to be
based solely on phase ideologies (1905 to late 1960s). A breakthrough in
developmental sexology was established by Von Krafft-Ebing's considering all prepubertal sexual phenomena as
"paradoxic" to nature, a pathology not fully eradicated until the 1930s.
Slowly, pathology gave way to a stress on early sexuality as "play" and
"experimentation", as illustrated by the ethnographic notes of Tessmann. This
seemed to have been arrived at by the transitional recognition of "love" development. It was argued that the
influx of non-western data, single authors excepted, was markedly delayed past
key theoretical efforts (Freud); the systematic,
and later numeric, cross-cultural
approach is still in its infancy, a surprising fact regarding the wide interest
in cross-cultural sexology today. Highlights are briefly summarised. [go there now] 3 Cultural Developmental Sexologies: A Sociological Entry to Ethnohistorical Data This
chapter provides a theoretical outline of a framework for describing
cross-cultural patterns of sexual behaviour socialisation. This framework
describes the process of sexual behaviour and identity socialisation in terms
of operationalisation rather than permissiveness. This process identifies
cultural tasks defining individual curricular sexual identities, and curricular
subcultural countertasks by which children and youth respond to, assimilate,
renegotiate these claims. That is, a specific (sexual) socialisation curriculum
creates a specific (sexual) subculture, as can be described and studied via its
being grounded in self-devised forms and self-imposed tasks. On this basis, the
current literature review was identified as aiming to facilitate a
demonstration of social definitions operationalising any part and level of the
process of socialisation: acts, actors, bodies (and their biological
evolutions), and body parts (and their biological functions). From an
interactionist perspective, the concept of "negative" or antagonist
socialisation is theoretically problematic, since, it was argued, antagonist
pedagogism always originates in a curricularised positive discourse. Theoretical
disciplines governing sexological principles for different cultures were
explored along two dimensions. It was observed that pedagogical cultures, as a
whole, may uniformise and institutionalise paradigmatic entries to developing
sex, or rationalise practices in a less organised, more individualised fashion.
[go there now] 4 Language, Culture and Developmental Sexology: A Constructionist Identification This chapter explores constructionist
perspectives on the developmental representation of sexuality in verbal
exchanges. A specifically human trait, language, more than behaviour, is
identified as a structuring agent capable of organising and shaping curricular
hierarchies within gendered subcultures. This was demonstrated for two male
curricular verbal cultures incorporating sexologist narratives: the
Afro-American ritual of "sounding", "homophobic" slander, , and the curricular "sexist"
discourse. Ethnographic material expands on this model in suggesting that restrictions and proscriptions
on rapport and exchange shape the totality of sexual/erotic timescapes,
curriularising and compartimentalising both "exterior", social spaces (gender,
age and kinship dimensions) and "inner"-spaces (bodies). Language, in short, (1)
curricularises sexual / body trajectories, (2) segmentalises sexological
societies on the basis of several social gradients, and (3) organises
discursive and situated sexualities. Poststructural perspectives on
sexual/erotic identity are to identify individuals localising themselves within
the order of communicated hypothetical sex rather than solely within the
biographical realm of lived-experiences. It was emphasised that narratives,
albeit locating sexuality, are
further used to shape sexuality on
discursive and situational levels. This was tentatively potentialised by
addressing how sexualities are autobiographically reconstructed, or fitted
within a pedagogical discourse. [go there now] 5 Puberty: Manufacturing, Operationalising and Regulating Chronology and Discontinuity This
chapter explores cultural operationalisations of puberty, particularly within a
sexological context. It was hypothesised that two major identifiers of sexual
cultures (chronology and discontinuity) are related to social structure as
regarding its curricular organisation of reproductive affiliations. This was
approached via three interrelated levels: the manufacturing,
operationalisation, and regulation of puberty. It was further demonstrated how
discontinuity was effected through nosological and magical operationalisation.
On the basis of SCCS data, a rough preliminary baseline was created for
cultural sexologies of puberty. [go there now] 6 Coitality, Koitomimesis and Coitarche: Construing Chronology, Status, Scenario, Residence, and Dyadicism Taking a
contemporary scripting approach (cf.
section 1.1.3.1) to human coitus development as a starting point for
facilitating a demonstration of cross-cultural variations in prepubertal sexual
behaviour, it is explored how the form and formality of such behaviour will
closely reflect social contexts used by children to actively shape legitimising
scenarios. At this point, this modification is utilised in describing children
as "using" legitimising scripts (e.g., marriage) to facilitate the fulfilment
of thus hidden scripts (genital
behaviour). In this sense, children may modify
existing scenarios to fit specific agendas, and within such ad hoc
scenarios recruit (operationalise) potential partners. Coital patterning scripts (curricular scripts) are closely related to other patterning
scripts, such as those addressing intimacy and pairbonding. Thus, form and timing of coitarche proper and coital
patterning proper are shaped according to curricularising tendencies that,
cross-culturally, are variably operationalised and organised. Genitality in nonprototypical
(self-invented scenarios, nondyadicism) or protovariant (non-quasi "marital")
contexts were interpreted as allowing the situational generating and
modification of scripts, as opposed to the adoption of complete stereotypical
ones. [go there now] 7 Sex Training: The Neglected Fourth Dimension in Erotagogical Ideologies The
concept of sexual training, as it is
virtually unknown in Western erotic discourse, is discussed. Observations are
reviewed on various instances of explicit
and direct transmission of sexual techniques: coitus demonstrations,
institutional intructrices, semi-formal age-stratified coital introductions,
less flagrant age-dismatched patterns, age-nonsegregated dormitory systems,
active shaping of heterosexual identity/role, and enforced coitarche.
Compromising previous ramifications, these processes advocate a bidirectional
classification of sex education discourses, allowing for positive
operationalisations. [go there now] 8 Preadult Sexualities: Ethnohistorical Materials for a Discourse Analysis This
chapter explores discourses associated with what are identified as "typical" or
"non-typical" sexual developmental pathways.
It is suggested that
the occurrence of these pathways is a function of curricular opportunities and
restrictions, and, tentatively, that cultural tolerance levels tend to take
these mechanisms into consideration in their attitudes. That is, tolerance for
(curricular) atypical patterns is a trade-off for abstinent parenthood.
Pedagogue's positioning follows discourses which for the purpose of this
article could be trichotomised as legitimising tolerant, restrictive and
stimulative attitudes. A mechanism is suggested that, on individual and subcultural
curricular levels alike, operationalisations of (e.g., partner-identified)
sexual behaviour categories represent an economy of possibilities and
probabilities, that loses hierarchical definition if and when cultural environments
take nonoperationaling positions. While cultural patterns may be typified by an
identical set of possibilities and probabilities, any "possible" or "probable"
act may still be subject to a specific explanation: frustration, practice,
indifference, hesitance, etc. This is suggested by a parallel presentation of
historical and ethnological examples. [go there now] 9 A Lesser Known Parenting
Ethologism: Baby's Genitals and the Grand Scheme of Things Sexual
This
chapter explores cultural determinants of nonpreparatory nonhygienic nonmedical
genital handling. It was observed that these interactions represent early
operationalisations of heterosexual identity, and the intergenerational
anticipation and certification of sexual values and functions. Its absence (from
public discourse) in industrial societies is linked to the relative
nonintervening attitude toward sexual and reproductive ontogenesis as
associated with the absence of direct intergenerational interest with these
issues. [go there now] 10 "Primal Knowledge": Physiology and TraumatologyThis
chapter explores the generational stratification of sexological technology.
This is demonstrated for (parental) coitus as a narrative and as an image.
Within the concept of performed sexualites, the prevention of knowledge
acquisition thought to operationalise given, or any, sexual behaviour
categories is identified as a fundamental principle. This information gradient
establishes the age stratification it is thought to be necessitated by, in
terms of motivational development. Apart from a poststructuralist approach
(sex-knowledge is the currency of Western sexual discourses, and its
transmission takes place within power domains) a number of alternative
theoretical ramifications are briefly listed. [go
there now] 11 Medicalisation and Curricularisation of Sexual Behaviour Trajectories This chapter is concerned with demonstrating how
cultures, contrary to Foucault's thesis, universally resort to biological and nosological
legitimisations of moral choices connected to given sexual behaviour curricula.
It is further argued that this tendency continues to be a definite hallmark of
contemporary Western society, particularly in the issue of age stratification. [go there now] 12 Bodies, Functions and Culture I: Operationalising Organs, Transitions and
Erotics
The
first of a duet, this chapter explores sociological and cultural determinants
in the socialisation directed to organs, providing social meanings and, closely
related, grounds for culture-specific experiences of their development. It was
argued that the sexual body is gradually and progressively "assimilated"
through the curricular assignment of pragmatic identities. Tracking down the
assimilated body, instances are encountered where this assignment is delayed,
does not occur unambiguously, or does not adequately seem to be assimilated by
intergenerational interventions. In any case, the body unfolds within the
larger political discourses, that recruit,
complement and identify its potential. In traditional societies, for instance, the
female body is variably dealt with according its "meaning" within the political
scene of bride transferral. A central issue is the dissociation between
reproductive and otherwise productive operationalisations of bodies. The
operationalisation is demonstrated to be closely related to affective responses
to bodies and bodily changes. [go there now] 13 Bodies, Functions and Culture II: Instrumentalising and De-Instrumentalising the Coital Body This chapter
expands on the preceding chapter by demonstrating how (especially African)
cultures actively promote or incapacitate the young body as an instrument for
sexual use. The prosexual techniques include preparation of cunnus
(beautification, elongation of labia pudenda), breasts (shaping, enlargement)
vagina (introcision, artificial defloration), and extragential areas
(scarification, siccatriciation, piercing, etc.); in males, techniques include
phallopoesis and preputial preparation. The practices are self-directed or
mutual, in other cases it is effected maternally, ceremonially or in less
extreme informal age stratified situations. Morphological alterations
demonstrate the degrees of instrumentalisation and authorisation of the coital
body. Further, anatomical structures (e.g. foreskin) are appointed variable
sexological operationalisations which reflect culture's tendency to intervene
in and control developmental processes. [go there
now] 14 Curricular Subjectification
/ Objectification of Erotic Personhood
This paper
explores eroticisation processes in age-stratified settings. It is to suggested
that the cultural erotological meaning attached to childhood and puberty is
associated with curricular recruitment into adult sexual cultures. This defines
whether the child is in any sense a participating agent (e.g., participating
victim) in (hypothetical) contacts with the ruling age class, and if so, what
role it is granted. The data suggest that cultures, opposing a universal taboo,
may normalise age-stratified contacts by redefining a given basis of exchange
or utilisation to pedagogical principles. In other cultures, where recruitment occupies a marginalised
status because of the need for such recruitment being incidental rather than
pervasive, such functions are interpreted as symptomatic of individual,
stereotypical failures to accomplish (curricularised) social agendas, the
result of which falls subject to pathologising. The conclusion reads that
cultures (as do individuals) operationalise children as erotic "objects" when
such may be facilitated or required by teleiosocial blockages or lateral
interests; if not required, children are counter-operationalised
as "victims" of such (individual) operationalisation. The result is an
individualised (as opposed to a culturally or subculturally peer-shared) operationalisation conflict. More
generally, complementation arguments
are used variably to legitimise given social imperatives. If not, identification processes are embraced to
legitimise social recognition of nascent erotic citizenship. This
complementation / identification duality can be used to study cultural
operationalisation principles. A
constructionist study of age stratified sexual affiliation is not available in
most cases; for the contemporary American situation, ethical implications
compromise the methodological soundness of future study. [go there now] 15 Rolling Down a Hill Together in Each Other's Arms: An Ethnohistorical Inventory of Play / Rehearsive Love and (Pre-) Institutonal Dyadic Affiliation This
chapter provides a rough sketch of love development trajectories as encountered
cross-culturally and historically. As such it explores the extent of cultural
diversity in such indefinite concepts as love and romanticism, thereby
providing a vademecum for future study of its developmental principles. It
establishes a chronological baseline of love as a subjective experience by
reviewing relevant numeric data available for Western societies. It further
overviews some of the cultural determinants that have been identified as to
shape love trajectories. Lastly, some theoretical excursions are offered. [go there now] 16 Making and Arresting Sexual/Erotic People: A Cultural Issue: Erotogenetics, Object/Subject Debates, and (Non-) Erotic Citizenship This chapter
examines cultural ways of regarding, and effecting, so-called sexualisation /
eroticisation processes. It was observed that Western discourses avoid a
positive, or in any way interactionist, operationalisation of erotic
development, and tend to concentrate on the identification of its misdirection
in 'pathological' situations, as paralleled with a general "hurried erotics"
discourse. Together with this clinical problem, the later 20th century has been
characterised by a avoidance of defining the ontogenesis of erotic (rather than
sexual or reproductive) personhood. It has been claimed that erotic objectivity
and subjectivity are both produced and consumed within a culturally specific
economy of complementation and identification requirements, as communicated by
scripts and interactions, and within a complex double-axis
(horizontal/vertical) plot. It is further suggested that the individual's
(erotic) experience of "society" and "society"'s (erotic) experience of the
individual provides for an interactionist discourse in negotiating meaning.
This is demonstrated by the Islamic and Western "knowing eye". In fact, the
"erotic" child is consumed and produced within very misty cultural implicits.
Psychoanalytic, feminist and ethnographic impressions of the eroticisation
process are provided with an emphasis on the concepts of objectification
(complementation) and subjectification (identification). It was noted that
structuralist-activist literature has conceptualised female erotic curricula as
either manufactured or obliterated within a "sexist" discourse; the male
analogy is much more unexplored. It was concluded that the divergence of these
views sensitises any constructionist perspective. [go
there now] 17 Selected Theoretical Proceedings This
chapter provides a cursory inventory of theoretical statements made in chapters
1 through 16. [go there now] Appendices
I Structural Determinants of Sexual Curricula: A Review and Critique of the "Cross-Cultural Method" The
following appendix presents an overview of systematic cross-cultural studies
investigating the structural determination of the human sexual behaviour
curriculum, together with rough description of their conclusions as organised
by a selected number of entries to the problem. (For a more detailed and
complete analysis, the reader is referred to a preliminary overview.) The first
three entries explore the control of sexual behaviour from within the
macrocultural, sexological and pedagogical frameworks. The last entry more descriptively
covers the cross-cultural patterns of (gender-specific) curriculum. A short
summary and focal critique of the cross-cultural method is followed by a
challenging of its fundamental operationalisation ("permissiveness" /
"restraint"). [go
there now] II Ethnographic Coverage of Early "Sexual" Behaviour Development and Socialisation: An Impression This
Appendix provides a rough outline of ethnographers' tendencies to cover sexual
developmental issues. The extent of this coverage is specified using numeric indications
as provided by cross-cultural studies; this is followed by a focal critique of
this type of studies. Ethnographer's coverage in a qualitative sense is
explored via a rough historical appraisal, and further by a discussion of
selected problems in descriptive material encountered in the current study. [go there now] III Playground Sexualities: The Performative-Interactionist Localisation of Schools This
Appendix provides a rough "ethnographic" outline of contemporary preadult sexualities
within the U.S. school setting. An argument is made for the curricularising
properties of schooling systems, determining the key issues of stratification,
mobility, and sexual identity/orientation. Taking a performative-interactionist
approach, feminist and gay activist agendas have in the past decade localised
school environments as the central arenas in which sexualities "have their go"
in the form of positioning and oppositioning, and through the agonism and
antagonism of verbal, physical and ideological manoeuvring. [go there now] IV Ontologist Sexologies: The Case for a
Post-Developmentalist Course
This
concept paper argues for a reappraisal of hegemonic ontologist (especially ethnocentric developmentalist) theories
of sexual (gendered, erotic) trajectories. The paper further recommends a
critical reinterpretation of structural elements through which the
sexual-sexological is expressed, particularly in curricular perspective. [go there now] |