|
The Sexual
Curriculum (Oct.,
2002) [to
Volume II Index] [to
Main Index Page] [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [I] [II] [III] [IV] 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 1
[next
chapter] The
Sociology of "Developmental" Sexualities. Traditions and Entries
for an "Anthropological" Format[1]
"Instead
of teaching the boy civil manners, the father desires him to beat and pelt the
strangers who come to the tent; to steal or secret in joke some trifling
article belonging to them; and the more saucy and impudent they are, the more
troublesome to strangers and all the men of the encampment, the more they are
praised as giving indication of a future enterprising and warlike disposition"[2] "If
you notice, it is the puppies that seem to go against Nature, but grown dogs,
never"[3] "Is
he allowed to take a few favorite toys to bed with him so that before he goes
to sleep and after he wakes up, he has things to keep him happy and busy?"[4] "Knowing,
just where you're blowing Getting
to where you should be going"[5] Summary: This chapter
identifies sociological traditions in approaching human sexual "development",
resulting in a choice of perspective informing the present literature review;
this choice serves to inform specific elaborations offered further on, in chapter 3.
These traditions were "tried on" 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
explored for the use in doing
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. Contents [up]
The Sociology of "Developmental" Sexualities. Traditions and Entries for an "Anthropological"Format 1.0 Introduction: The
"Ontological" in the "Sexologist" 1.1 Biological versus
Sociological Traditions and Age-Based Sexual Stratification 1.1.1
Structural-Functional Theories 1.1.2
Marxist ( / Conflict) Theory: The Sexual Economy 1.1.3.1
Contemporary Specifications / Modifications of Script Theory 1.1.3.2
Scripts: Culture to Individual 1.1.3.3
Symbolic Interactionism 1.1.3.4 Sexual Pedagogy and Civilisation 1.1.4
Ethnomethodology and Phenomenology 1.2 Academic Traditions in
Approaching Sexual Socialisation: An Agenda Classification 1.2.1
The Psychoanalytic Agenda 1.2.1.1
The "Psychocultural" / Psychoanalytic Anthropological Agenda 1.2.3
The Psychohistorical Agenda 1.2.5
The Medical and Demographic Agendas 1.2.8
The Literary/ Folklorist Agenda 1.2.9
The "Sexologist" (Homosexologist) Agenda
1.2.10
Activist / Interpretationist Agendas 1.2.10.1
The Liberalist/Political Agenda 1.2.10.3
The Gay Theorist / Activist Agenda 1.2.10.4
The Globalist / Antiglobalist Agenda 1.2.11
Recapitulating: Agenda and Developmentalist Sexology 1.3 Ethnocentrism and
Developmentalism 1.4
Recapitulation: Fitting Ethnographic and Cross-Historical Data into
Sociological Models 1.0
Introduction: The "Ontological" in the
"Sexologist" [up] [Contents]
A
number of arguments for the study of sexual behaviour trajectories have been
proposed, of which the most important ones are reviewed below. These approaches
to sexual behaviour curricularisation not usually add up to "pure paradigms",
instead appear to be blended so as to inform a range of authors' personally
satisfying modes of ideologising. In a literature review of the orthodox
cross-cultural method presented in Appendix I, it will be concluded that "neither
any single entry or level of analysis will be able to explain the total
variance of cultural attitudes toward sexological phases. The literature
suggests an interplay of pedagogical, sexological and otherwise curricular
dynamics, which make a particular activist curriculum seem logical". The
lasting impression that characterises at least some childhood encounters is
rarely addressed in available materials[6],
a problem that seems to affect all layers of methodological proximity. With all
means of compromise, it can be maintained that "psychosexual development" has
been studied on cultural[7],
subcultural (cf. §3.2.1), familial[8]
and individual levels. Of primary interest here, the study of "sexual cultures"
(e.g., Herdt, 1999)[9] is an
established discipline within the sexological field. Conducting cross-cultural
research on sexuality, however, exacerbates conceptual and methodological
issues that occur within singular cultural contexts[10].
As "cultural" attributes, sexuality, sexology and sexual socialisation are part
of an intimate circle of reality, whether addressed within behavioural,
transitional, or identity discourses[11].
As Herdt[12] states: "The creation of a sexual culture is
an epistemology, a system of knowledge about the world, and about things in the
world. Sexual culture provides for a culture its received theory of what human
nature is. What is a man? What is a woman? What is manliness? What is
womanliness? What is a boy? What is a girl? What is heterosexuality? What is
homosexuality? What is sex for? What is good about sex? What is bad about sex?
Those questions are all being iterated as a set of distinctions from the
locally created theory of human sexual nature. This theory is then being
promoted and taught to children, becomes part of their individual ontologies,
and then feeds back into what we might call the collective pool of the sexual
culture and its public representations for the culture as a whole". Hostetler
and Herdt (1998)[13] more
recently have positioned the "ontological" within a culturalist approach: "We do not mean to say merely that
identity is a process; we also mean to suggest that the phenomena typically
glossed as "sexual identity" includes a narrative of origins (an ontology), a
fantasy of an ultimate purpose and future fulfilment (a teleology), (3) and a
theory of and/or plan for moral action in the world (deontology)". In
reminding ourselves of the fact that cultures and ontologies meet at the level
of public performance, we might appreciate the portrait of the Choung family,
headed by a Chinese immigrant grocery store worker, which provides the
following encounter[14]: "Their second son had arrived in the
summer of 1986, but had trouble in school. He was placed in a bilingual class,
but Mr. and Mrs. Choung were unhappy with his teacher, a Filipino-Chinese, who
had taught in Taiwan. The teacher said that their son liked to touch other boys
and that people in the United States would think him homosexual. Mrs. Choung
said, "He must be crazy. It is normal for kids to play like that. In Taiwan
kids do it, so he does it here. I have seen American kids touching each other.
They are too young to know about "gays". Don't you see the kids play like that
in the United States?". The
focal review below identifies approaches that may help describe cross-cultural
as well as subcultural variability in the experience of growing up within
gendered and sexualised contexts. Specifically, it is explored how
ethnography-derived sexual regulation modalities are to be presented within
established scientific faculties. To at least avoid ignorance on involved
"subjectivities"[15], this
requires a discussion at three levels: (a) sociological (versus biological)
traditions in approaching human sexuality (§1.1); (b) academic uses of anthropology in
approaching sexual socialisation as identified by specific agendas (§1.2); and (c) "lateral" constructions and biases
in approaching socialised (or sociologised) phase-identified sexual behaviour (§1.3). 1.1
Biological versus Sociological Traditions and Age-Based Sexual Stratification [up] [Contents]
What is "adolescent sex"? Schalet
(1994, 2000)[16] found that
US parents describe this issue as a biologically driven, individually based
activity that causes disruption to the teenager and the family. Dutch parents,
by contrast, emphasize love relationships and social responsibility of
teenagers, making their sexuality a "normal" phenomenon. US parents would
exclude "sexuality of teenagers" from conversation and the family, while Dutch
parents accommodate culturally prescribed forms of "teenage sexuality" in the
home. Schalet demonstrates how two constructions of adolescent sexuality, and
the conceptions of personhood and social life that engender them, constitute
"fundamentally different cultural logics". However, even reasoning within a
single cultural setting, authors argue that "men and women often pursue
radically different paths in response to the sexual "awakening" of adolescence"[17]. Sociologists
have always -yet progressively- questioned the place of biology, in their
search of social ramifications of "sexuality"[18].
Stich and Du Bois-Reymond (1999)[19]
discussed this growing "sociologisation" for adolescent sexuality. Sociologists
have proposed social control, social learning, social
contagion, social exchange, differential association and strain
theories to explain adolescent coitarche[20].
Current theorists,
however, also tend to refer to "biosocial" models of specific, adolescent "sexual" beginnings
(coitarche)[21].
In this respect, it could be argued that, "[…] although there may be theories and research that conjoin biological and
social influences, there can be no true conjoining of essentialism and social
constructionism"[22]. Selected
studies indeed argue for an exclusively sociologist[23]
or biologist positioning of sex research, while others seek to "combine" or "integrate"
them (e.g., Woodson, 2002)[24]. Notwithstanding
"modern" biosocial positions, Stein[25]
demonstrates how sociologists have relocated their emphasis from "drives"
(psychoanalysis, traditional sexology) to "identities" / "roles"
(functionalism, symbolic interactionism, social constructionism) and to
"activities" (post-structuralism). With the latter perspective, Foucault
discards agency along structure, creating a diffuse, or rather un-localisation of power, which would
render its foundations of less direct interest for sociologists, and for
idealists[26]. Stein
(with others, including Redman and Angelides) argues for blendings of
sociological and cultural analysis that combine insights of psychoanalysis,
symbolic interactionism, and discourse analysis to focus on "the cultural
scenarios that make sexual practices possible in culture"[27];
others advocate the localisation of sex at "the
interconversion between the body and the social"[28]. Using
a "cognitive scripting" entrance, Carr (1999)[29]
notes that "ontologies" of sexuality come in three curricula: the
"essentialist", the "anarchist" and the "constructionist" or synthetic. Thus,
"culture" has no place in essentialist ontological perspectives, plays a
circumstantial or background role for anarchists, and a central role for
constructionists. Various
entries can be utilised to describe sexual behaviour identities (adapting from
Messner's[30] discussion
of gender constructions): -- interactionist theoretical frameworks that emphasise the ways that
social agents "perform" or "do" sexual identities. These are most useful in
describing how groups of people actively create (or at times disrupt) the
boundaries that delineate seemingly categorical sexual interactions; -- structural theoretical frameworks that emphasise the ways that
sexuality is built into institutions through hierarchical structures. These are
most useful in explaining under what conditions social agents mobilise
variously to disrupt or to affirm sexual identities; -- cultural theoretical perspectives that examine how popular symbols
that are injected into circulation by the culture industry are variously taken
up by differently situated individuals. These are most useful in analysing how
the meanings of cultural symbols, in a given institutional context, might
trigger or be taken up by social agents and used as resources to reproduce,
disrupt, or contest sexological conceptions. Classical
sociological explanations of human sexuality cover a wide range of perspectives[31].
According to Weinberg, these might include so-called (1) structural-functional
theories[32], (2) conflict theories (Dahrendorf), (3) symbolic interactionism / social
constructionism[33], and (4) ethnomethodology and phenomenology.
An obvious addition would be (5)
post-structuralism. The following section applies these models to the problem
of developmental sexuality, providing examples of applications for each model,
and exploring usefulness for the presentation of cross-cultural material. 1.1.1 Structural-Functional Theories [up] [Contents] This
generation of approaches would explain sexual socialisation as the regulation
of "powerful libidinal drives, which have the potential, when unregulated, to
disrupt orderly social interaction" or "orders" that are being "advantageous
for collective survival". The norms related to this regulation as typical for
specific societies would have to be "compatible with other social arrangements
and beliefs" or die out in evolutionary processes. Sexuality represents a
threat to social equilibria, and its proper use or control facilitates the
erection of, or preserves existing, social institutions based on such
equilibria. Major
personae in developmental sexology can be located within this tradition (Freud
c.s. including Róheim; Whiting and Child; Ford and Beach, etc.). The concepts
of "permissiveness" and "restraint" (e.g. SCCS) tend to refer to
structural-functional ideas of developing erotic motives. An
ethnographic example: In
Guajiro (Venezuela) society there is an apparent relationship between severe
socialisation of female sexual behaviour and the demands made on a woman's
behaviour by the institution of marriage (Watson, 1972)[34].
The success of this severe sexual socialisation of the girl has a bearing on
the ability of her family to maintain its status in society and to contract
useful political alliances. Severe socialisation is functionally adapted to
these demands because it produces "negative fixation in the sexual system",
which in turn acts as "a psychic monitoring device" to discourage the unmarried
girl from experiencing sexually and thereby increases the likelihood that she
will remain sexually chaste, marry well and be potentially valuable to her lineage
for cementing a political alliance. This pattern is carried out especially
conscientiously by upper class Guajiro who have more at stake in the successful
marriage of their daughters. Structuralist
models require a baseline insight to the developmental role of biological
agency in social interactions. In contemporary sexology, these issues have been
researched to some extent (particularly by Udry and Halpern)[35],
but the linkage to sociological processes remains hypothetical, and unexamined
in a cross-cultural perspective. It appears that structuralist traditions in
sexology addressing cross-cultural perspectives have not systematically
incorporated biological principles in their models, and that biosexologists
have not systematically addressed cross-cultural patterns. Society, here, tends
to be interpreted as a univariate monolithical structure, and biology as a
likewise constant yet "cryptic" causal determinant. For these reasons, the
development of a "biocultural" ontological concept of sexual behaviour falls
beyond the scope of the present literature study. 1.1.2 Marxist ( / Conflict) Theory: The Sexual Economy [up] [Contents] According
to Marxism, sexual organisations are an exponent of the order of production.
The economically powerful age (older) strata of society "exploit" the weaker,
younger strata members. Cross-cultural approaches unravel how economic groups
define their identity and status in sexual matters at the expense of others.
Thus, older and younger strata (consequent generations over given time spans)
are identified as rulers and ruled, whose conflicting interests are redefined
in terms of role-expectations. This approach was used by Meyer[36]
and others, but, though various ethnographic examples can be referred to, few cross-culturally sophisticated attempts
have been undertaken. John Money certainly represents an avid protagonist of
this model, but his use of ethnologic (along with historical) data was
fragmentary. It
has been proposed[37]
that, generally, classical Marxism "lacks a clear psychology"[38],
and that authors may misunderstand "the full nature of sexuality" by
concentrating on "adult" sexuality (Zaretsky). Reich, attempting to fuse early
Freudian theory of libido with Marxist approaches [39],
was criticised for his "failure to apply the Marxian analysis of the family as
an economic unit to his observations of the family as a sexually repressive
structure for women and children"[40].
Marxist interpretations of contemporary sexual society address "the only
remaining site of control and autonomy": the body[41]. Building
on tentative apologies for Marxist anthropological sexology[42],
further explorations of the use of Marxist ideologies in sexual development
issues have to include a critical assessment of (a) Marxist views of child
"development" and pedagogy; (b) Marxist visions on sexuality, and (c) the
relation of Marxism to other developmental sexologist systems, such as
psychoanalysis and feminism[43]
(For instance, the capitalist order "family" can be interpreted as combining
the quartet of production, reproduction, sexuality, and socialisation, thus
demarcating the woman's[44],
and child's, "domesticated"
world). A Marxist analysis of sexual development requires an evolutionary
opposition of communist and capitalist sex, coupled to an opposition of
communist and capitalist operationalisations of the "child" persona. Another
entry contains the problem of children (not) being or (not) becoming Marxists,
or generally, politically aware beings, themselves, either within economic
perspectives[45] or others,
including the sexological discipline. The
application of "conflict" formulations of vertical / hierarchical sexual organisations
has proved fruitful in selected cases of the ethnographic record. Meyer
(p100) conceptualised orgasm as a behavioural tool mastered, in contrast to the
child, by the adult and utilised in defining sexual reality of the child by
means of this "superior orgasmic technology". Further illustrative examples
include the distribution and negotiation of sexual partners within
gerontocratic polygynic age-set societies (§5.4.4.1). Another situation is that
of "sugar daddy relationships" (§14.2.1.1). Further uses include
that within activist settings[46].
1.1.3 Social Constructionism [up] [Contents] 1.1.3.0
Basic Assumptions [up] [Contents]
Symbolic
interactionist perspectives (Mead, Heise,
Stryker) on sexual identity and behaviour require that sexuality is
represented by meaning, emerging from
interactions, organised through symbolism, and modified by reinterpretation of symbols. The "sexual
learning" is in the interaction, contributing to "role identities", as
distributed through language. According
to "scripting" theory, "[w]ithout the proper elements of a script that defines
the situation, names the actors, and plots the behavior, nothing sexual is
likely to happen. [...] Scripts are involved in learning the meaning of internal states, organizing
the sequences of specifically sexual acts, decoding novel situations, setting
the limits on sexual responses, and linking meanings
from nonsexual aspects of life to specifically sexual experience" (ital.add.). Sexual socialisation, thus,
requires the assignment, acceptation and application of various of such
scripts. Cross-cultural approaches would determine (a) how identical scripts
are assigned, accepted or applied across cultures; and (b) to what degree such
scripts are indeed identical or comparable. Apart
from incidental specific essays[47],
and a common utilisation by mainstream authors[48],
no cross-culturally sophisticated attempts to explore theoretical dimensions
have been undertaken. An
exquisite example is provided by a recent study by Ajzenstadt and Cavaglion[49]
on sex instruction manuals written in central Europe in the nineteenth century
Palestine and Israel in the twentieth century providing the basis for broader
discussions on religious and scientific discourse on child and adolescent
sexuality within the Jewish communities. By tracing the development of forms of
expert knowledge, the authors show how expert discourse on masturbation
gradually transformed it from a symbolic moral evil into a medical disease and
a psychological problem, prior to declaring it a legitimised behaviour. Sociologists
have re-examined such structuring concepts as "risk"[50]
in localising modern childhood. As Scott et al. (1998:p692) suggest, this
requires "[t]he construction of childhood
[…] to be understood at a number of different levels: the structural, the
discursive and the situated". Gagnon and Simon's script theory is widely adopted in discussion of control of
the sexual curriculum in childhood (e.g., DeLamater, 1981:p269-71)[51]
but is hardly studied in this age group[52].
Following DeLamater's simplification of script theory that children "are
unaware of the sexual significance" of behaviours later recognised as "sexual",
it would follow that control of children's sexuality relates to the distribution of awareness invested in a
shared curricular potential, thereby blending a power gradient with a gradient
in realism. The
assumption that ignorance is preserved by non-suggestion has been found
erroneous in any "sexual" system. Reiss (e.g., 1970:p80)[53]
together with many others explains the "ease" of sexual practice in the young despite
the cult of avoidance as practised among parents. Paradoxically, it may even be
said that around the beginning of the 20th century, sexual education was seen
as a means of controlling curiosity posing a threat to the information gradient
(curriculum). Early constructionists, it could be argued, minimised the child's
active participation in his "development". 1.1.3.1
Contemporary Specifications / Modifications of Script Theory [up] [Contents]
Contemporary
authors argue that it is essential to consider the ways in which individuals
"construct a sense of themselves as sexual beings"[54].
Gender, for instance, is not so much a construed, but a negotiated performance in which the child
represents an assertive and productive agent, however choosing from available
choices. Gender, as what I would call
"performed performance", is a "social contract", renegotiated and relocated
through "a cycle of practice"[55].
For constructionists, childhood "exists as a type of performance space
or 'cultural geography' in which various images and identities are enacted"[56].
Constructionists describe "how pubertal events (menarche, breast development,
shaving, voice change, weight gain) evoke cultural meanings about gender and
gendered bodies that adolescents then use to construct personal meaning and
sexual subjectivity"[57].
Research suggests that individual scripts are in fact personal modifications of
subcultural scripts. Exploring developmental Ghetto sexual identities, Hillman[58]
found that girls had to "negotiate the dominant [stereotypical black, "ghetto"]
sexual script and their own personal narrative to create personal and social
equilibrium". Using Edwards' theory on "script formulations", it could be
argued that "[d]iscourse does not simply reflect or express ready-made
cognitive schemas; rather, scripts are actively constructed in interactions
through which people 'work up' events as scripted (or as breaches of scripts),
and this 'script talk' is analysable in its own right" (Frith and Kitzinger,
2000:p216). Scripts, thus, do not create (sexuality), they get created. This specification of
"performative sexualities"
reinvents essentialist and monolithic notions such as sexual "learning",
"informing", "thinking", "knowing", "perceiving" and "understanding" (e.g.,
Goldman and Goldman), "theorising" (Freud)[59],
and so on. Ergo,
as Carpenter (1995)[60]
has verbalised, "[…] it is through the manipulation,
rejection and re-creation of their cultural world that young people
simultaneously search for and validate their voice and so situate themselves
culturally". 1.1.3.2
Scripts: Culture to Individual [up] [Contents]
Informative
to our problem of proximity gradations, Whittier and Simon's (2001)[61]
discussion of individuals' "personal sexual culture" issues the concept of
"intrapsychic scripting"
in sexual scripting theory, demonstrated by "the exhibition of several major
domains of meaning as they are contained in the subject's reports of their
sexuality". Simon had argued before[62]
for a classification including cultural
scenarios (instruction in collective meanings), interpersonal scripts (the application of specific cultural
scenarios by a specific individual in a specific social context), and intrapsychic scripts (the management of
desires as experienced by the individual). Interpersonal scripts are seen as
the ordering of representations of self and other that facilitate the
occurrence of a sexual act; intrapsychic scripts represent the ordering of
images and desires that elicit and sustain sexual arousal. Using this model,
the process of scripting through various stages is explored "as a function of
cultural expectations, with problems resulting from both the culture's and the
individual's reliance on scripts developed in adolescence [note Simon
and Gagnon's systematic disregard for earlier socialisation processes] and young adulthood
impeding the development of a healthy [!?]
adult sexuality". 1.1.3.3 Symbolic
Interactionism [up] [Contents]
Symbolic
interactionist theory[63]
has been applied to developmental sexology by a number of authors (e.g.,
Swedish author Helmius)[64].
Dutch sexologists Straver and Rademakers describe how adolescents "learn"
sexuality in a "step-wise" process involving anticipation, barrier taking,
decision making, the "discovery" of relational perspectives, the "appropriation
of relational insight", and the "awareness" of a "growing interactional
competence"[65].
Interactional competence is a gradually acquired function related to an
"operative self-concept", and the negotiation of operative and normative rules.
Within a socio-cultural scale (Straver, 1986:p28-70 comparing the U.S. and
Scandinavian adolescent case on the basis of Ribal's 1973 study) there are
differences in value ambiguity, the presence of positive valuation, anticipated
contextuality (e.g., "steady relationships") and the role of experience in the
formation of a close relationship. For girls, sexual behaviour trajectories
could be differentiated as "steadily pleasurable" (Scandinavia) or
"interrupted" (U.S.) by the interference of negativist principles in what could
have been a positivist development, Straver argues. For boys, differences were
noted in (1) the degree of curricular privatising of the reference sphere; (2)
curricular degree of broadening of meaning spectra; (3) the curricular use of
external rather than internal (e.g., sensory) criteria for self-evaluation
processes; and (4) the existence of a curricular sexual dissonance rendering
development nonparallel, less workable, and less satisfying. [Arguing
that American curricular inegalitarianism undermines the effectuation of a
"working consensus", it appears that Straver normalises Scandinavian sexual
trajectories as "positive", pleasurable and effective, and denormalises the
U.S. case by the use of negative qualifications, and the pathologising of
sexual dissonance, rendering "development" (1) "restricted"; (2) "halted"; and
(3) "blocked" due to "conflict" and "tension"; thus (4) "structurally"
problematic (ibid.). Straver also
recognises a "distinct" male Scandinavian "B" pattern opposing a "typical" "A",
which entails much of the "structurally" negative qualities ascribed to the
U.S. male pattern, but nonetheless would be "clearly separable" from it. There
is no statistical testing of the perspectives offered, as Ribal's study was
based on a loose, nonnumeric juxtaposition, or inter-subject colloquium. While
this is a rather interesting format, it allows a large space for
interpretation.] 1.1.3.4 Sexual Pedagogy and
Civilisation [up] [Contents]
This
debate appears to be a predominantly German/ Flemish one. Within figurational
sociology, Elias[66] had argued
how, over the past centuries, "sexual impulses" became "[...] slowly but progressively
suppressed [away] from the public life of society. [...] And this restraint,
like all others, is enforced less and less by direct physical force. It is
cultivated in the individual from an early age as habitual self-restraint by
the structure of social life, by the pressure of social institutions in
general, and by certain executive organs of society (above all, the family) in
particular. Thereby the social commands and prohibitions become increasingly a
part of the self, a strictly regulated superego" (Elias, as quoted by Van
Krieken, 2000) [67]. Thus,
it would be "[...] the web of social relations in which the individual lives during his more impressionable phase, during childhood and youth, which imprints itself upon his unfolding personality where it has its counterpart in the relationship between his controlling agencies, super-ego and ego, and his libidinal impulses. The resulting balance between controlling agencies and drives on a variety of levels determines how an individual person steers himself in his relations with others; it determines that which we call, according to taste, habits, complexes or personality structure" (Elias, as quoted by Van Krieken, nd) [68]. In
the late 1980s, Duerr[69]
began to question Elias's assertion that there is a tendency in the West to
curb feelings and amend drives to meet social expectations (Wouters, 1994)[70].
Elias in turn argued that there is no absolute beginning point of the long-term
process of the development of socially generated self-constraints in humans
(Bogner, 1992)[71]. More
directly addressing sexual pedagogy, Jos van Ussel[72]
had in the late 1960s argued that "the socio-economic situation of the bourgeoisie has created a more and more anti-sexual moral system since the basic values of the bourgeoisie make a pro-sexual position impossible. In the 19th century, an involuntary or unconscious anti-sexual syndrome was evident, which was a conjunctive and residual phenomenon. This syndrome had its origin in Christianity and was not specific to the 19th century" [73]. Van
Ussel's 1967 thesis was introduced by him as an elaboration on Elias, a point
missed by Vandekerckhove's (1980)[74]
later analysis of "somatic cultures" (Vincke ,
1983:p228-9)[75]. In this
thesis, Vandekerckhove analyses the social embeddedness of sexual education
(p164-215) with a specific reference to Van Ussel and Schnabel[76]. As
it appears, outside Van Ussel, sexual enculturation is a neglected issue in the
whole discussion; that is, how must one conceive the "civilisation" of children
in "civilised" society? On the whole, the "adult-child relation has not been
extensively theorized as a structuring principle in bourgeois society",
according to Stephens[77].
This author argued that children are considered in terms of the problems which
their relatively uncontrolled and 'uncivilized' movements pose to adult
society, while adult society's relation to childhood is considered in terms of
the strategies and devices the adult society has developed to restrict
children's movement. [For an Elias vs Foucault, see Smith[78].]
1.1.4 Ethnomethodology and Phenomenology [up] [Contents] This
approach identifies the ways how people actively construct reality and then act
on the basis of these social constructions. Ethnomethodologists at this point
proceed to unravel the actual methods that native people use to construct the
meaning of sexual socialisation in their everyday lives. Contrary to what is
designated as the "orthodox consensus", an ethnomethodological perspective
(Garfinkel, 1967) would aim to explore how sexual behaviour (and thus, the
sexual behaviour curriculum) is construed by the common man (child)
particularly by means of linguistic interactions, instead of what it
constitutes within the grand scheme of macrosocial cause and effect. It
explores the socially embedded, tacit assumptions that make it possible for
individuals to understand, control and manipulate mundane events; "sexuality",
ergo, is not merely a biological given, it is an accomplishment by social
actors in the course of everyday life. Ethnomethodological research on sexual
behaviour socialisation processes, however, seems to be more ethically
compromised as any kind of investigation, particularly because of its reliance
on close inquiry and the use of dissonant situations. 1.1.5 Post-Structuralism: La Croisade des Enfants [up] [Contents] According
to post-modern, perhaps inevitably poststructuralist, sexology, sexual/erotic subjectivities are constituted through the
(perhaps chronologically inconsistent, perhaps contradictory) adoption of
"subject positions", within discourses,
"discourse" referring to a "linked [set] of meanings and interpretations, a
field of terms and explanatory hypotheses established both in written texts and
localized in conversations and self-understanding" (as in Leahy)[79]. In his History of Sexuality Foucault[80]
argued that the rise of medical and psychiatric science has created a discourse
of sexuality as deep, instinctual and mysterious. This discourse became
accepted as the dominant explanation, and its assumptions began to seep into
the discourse of the everyday. In this way the human subjects' experience of
their own sexuality is shaped and controlled by the discourses that purport to
explain it. The search for knowledge does not simply uncover pre-existing
'objects'; it actively shapes and creates them. Specifically, children's
sexuality came under the reign of pedagogical discourses. Pedagogisation of
children's sex is one of four deployment strategies, or "great strategic
unities" together constituting the "production of sexuality" in the modern
period. Stoler[81], for
instance, describes how "[…] a cultivation of the European self (and
specifically a Dutch bourgeois identity) was affirmed in the proliferating
discourses around pedagogy, parenting, children's sexuality, servants, and
tropical hygiene […]" (p11). Foucault's aborted, intentional,
thematic schema (discussed in Elden, 2001a,b)[82]
included the never finished "La Croisade des Enfants" as the third of five works
that would delineate sexuality's four constituent subjects. His earlier
lectures Les Anormaux[83]
dealt with this discussion of The Masturbation Child to some extent. Beside
Foucault, poststructuralist principles have been applied to children's
sexuality in selected cases[84]. Foucault
has opened up a post-modern discussion of the history of 'development thinking'
as well as 'sexological thinking' from a dramaturchic point of view. He
describes the nascent citizenship of personae critical to the child's (mothers,
pedagogues, criminals) as related to changing (intensified) academic
spectatorship. Applying
cross-ethnographic data to this schema, such data would have to prove useful in
performing discourse analysis, that is, the identification of discursive positions
and strategies versus pedagogical and in-group curricula. Particularly, it
would have to provide an analysis of
relationships between discourses and social practice. Anthropological material only
diffusely discusses cultural discourses associated with sexual upbringing, and
rarely addresses strategic positioning and subjectivity of children within this
process. Foucault has contributed little to the ontogeny (rather than
phylogeny) of discourse. Being applied to
Western settings only recently, a full cross-cultural demonstration using a
post-structuralist framework is beyond currently available data. However, such
data can be used for a preliminary
and hypothetical outline of practices as resulting from culture-identifying
discourses. 1.2
Academic Traditions in Approaching Sexual Socialisation: An Agenda Classification [up] [Contents]
Below
are identified a number of arguments organised on the basis of their operational agenda rather than their
scientific location. Within its limited format, depth and scale, the schema
provides for an exploration of the manners anthropological / cross-ethnic data
may be employed to fit variable agendas, providing diverse frameworks. These
agendas include psychoanalytic / "psychocultural", psychohistorical, pedagogical, medical and demographic,
ethological, "zoologist",
folklorist, "sexologist" and assorted "activist" agendas. By no means these
agendas should be conceived of consisting of, or having been used as,
unilateral employments. 1.2.1 The Psychoanalytic Agenda [up] [Contents] Psychoanalytic
anthropology and historiography proper have originally been informed by the
need for approval or disapproval of Freudian claims regarding the so-called
"psychosexual" space of the socialisation curriculum. As Freud postulated,
"[i]n general, our most reliable proof of infantile sexuality, if we do not
wish to refer to the sexuality of children among primitive peoples, is the
neurosis"[85]. Needless
to say Freud never "wished" to elaborate this reference. The use of
psychodynamic concepts in anthropology, by contrast, generally illustrates the
operationalisation of the Freudian reference as an explanans of gender configurations, ethnopsychiatric observations,
etc. Anthropological challenging of Freudian sexology is fragmentary, at least
for psychosexual development. This corresponds to the general appraisal of
"infantile sexuality" and its alleged sequelae being a largely hypothetical set
of doctrines, as generations of critics have issued. [A bibliography could be compiled on the role of ethnology
on psychosexual theory, resulting from a preliminary chapter not included in
the present report. For a quick sidestep to the "latency" debate, see here]. 1.2.1.1 The "Psychocultural" / Psychoanalytic
Anthropological Agenda [up] [Contents]
Geza Róheim (1891-1953), a Hungarian-American psychoanalyst was the first
ethnologist to utilise a psychoanalytic approach to interpreting culture. He (1934a,b;
1940, 1941, 1942, 1943)[86]
maintained that the structure of any given culture is determined by the
infantile neuroses typical of that area. The institutions of the culture serve
as defence mechanisms against infantile libidinal urges. This is a result of
man's retardation, i.e. of his being born at a comparatively undeveloped stage
biologically. Growing up consists of returning to the desired infancy situation
by finding substitutes for the original love objects. Róheim's psychocultural agenda mainly
addresses fundamental causality problems by starting from solid psychodynamic
grounds. In so doing, the author has not succeeded very well. Hence, Róheim's
considerate observations on childhood sexual behaviour (Atlas: Australian Aboriginals and Normanby
Island), and references to the cross-cultural case, are best studied in the
light of the general agenda (§1.2.1). 1.2.3 The Psychohistorical Agenda [up] [Contents] Founded
in the early seventies, what has become known as psychohistory
represents the claim of a close connection of social and political structures,
with socialisation practices. In 1998, DeMause
wrote that his conclusion from a lifetime of psychohistorical study of
childhood and society is "that the history of humanity is founded upon the
abuse of children"; most of his statements are (literally) equal to those a
quarter of a century ago. DeMause's conceptualisation of childhood as a
"nightmare", from which, so much is obvious, he has just recently woken up, was conveniently attributed to the
collective "we" of academic historiography, to the dissatisfaction of many
historians. The "abuse" paradigm of psychohistorians to early sexual behaviour
socialisation is expectedly entirely unilateral and to some extent absurd;
DeMause himself never commented on positive sexual experiences in children for
he simply denies it was part of history (or either western or non-western
world). The comparable infrequence of data that might challenge these views may
be based on the neglect of sources to mention the phenomenon of childhood
sexuality purely because it failed to constitute of a negatively formulated
concern. Notable academic exceptions include the historian Jos van Ussel [see §1.1.3.4], more or less
introducing Holland into its "sexual revolution". Again, historians' insights to the history of early
sexual experiences are very limited as this issue was not studied objectively
even until the later 20th century. The psychohistorical pursuit, therefore,
seems to be primarily informed by the (selective) application of orthodox
psychodynamic dogma to a contemporalist moral order reminiscent of that of
feminism. Inherently, psychohistory is more activist and antagonist than it is
reflective. DeMause's interpretation of age-graded homosexualities, and of
genital soothing customs (vide ibi), is illustrative of this ethic code[87]. 1.2.4 The Pedagogical Agenda [up] [Contents] The
sexological elements in child rearing have been the specific focus of
cross-cultural reflection roughly since the 1950s (U.S.), and sporadically in
more recent studies of immigrant families (U.S., and to some extent, Europe).
This latter excursion may parallel the nascent study of childhoods in
nontraditional families (bimaternal, bipaternal, single-parent, foster care),
cross-continental adoption families, etc. As reviewed, only a selected number
of authors have studied or reviewed cross-cultural perspectives on sexual behaviour
socialisation, which contrasts poorly with the paucity of child rearing studies
including sexology at all (consider linguistic, motoric, lexic, intellectual
development). 1.2.5 The Medical[88] and Demographic Agendas [up] [Contents] Medical
sexology, or rather the interest of sexologists in anthropological and
historical data, is informed by an awareness of the interactions of sexual
cultures and the prevention, management, meaning and future of sexually
transmittable diseases, with a prominent place for HIV since the middle 1980s,
and female reproductive trajectories. Closely related is the demographer's
interest in family planning perspectives. Notably, the observations from many large
demographic studies are comparatively limited in explaining psychological depths of sexual
experiences, as they have traditionally
tended to concentrate on incidence rather than lived experience. Most of the
studies adopt or advocate specific interventionalist concepts of
multi-hierarchical (multigenerational, multi-institutional) "sexual
information" systems. However much has changed since the 1960s, and valuable
qualitative accounts do exist, studies operating solely from a biomedical
agenda can rarely be used in the description of preadolescent life, notwithstanding a definite tendency for
researchers to question and address younger (and indeed prepubescent)
populations. This selective approach, of course, may or may not parallel local
or national interventionalist curricula. 1.2.6 The Ethological Agenda [up] [Contents]
The
human ethology approach has sporadically been utilised in sexology[89]
to describe such phenomena as mock "genital presenting behaviour" in children
(Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Schievenhövel), childhood coitus (arguable, Langfeldt), and
may be used to explore maternal "genital parenting" behaviour, genital
selfmanipulation, observance of visual avoidance, etc. (various chapters in
this project). However, it seems (and has been) ineffective to address the
wider social context in which these occur. More urgently, ethology has proved
little instrumentality in the establishment of an inclusive theory of sexual
behaviour, or its development. 1.2.7 The "Zoologist" Agendas[90] [up] [Contents] Celebrated
Desmond Morris[91] argued that
"no real", "no functional" sexual activity can be seen before puberty, "apart
from a large number of so-called sexual games". Morris[92]
later seemed to acknowledge "symbolic love play", only in the broadest "instead
of the limited sexual sense". Similarly arguing on the developmental sexual
"human animal", zoologist Kinsey reached conclusions quite at odds with this
perspective[93]. Others,
including Money and Harlow, used animal models in discussing human and cultural
errors and errata. Money's recurrent, collateral use of zoological and
ethnological data in his idealist claims is remarkable. This use, at least in
the narrative of Money, seems limited but served a salient political
perspective. Born in New Zealand, Money (Money et al., 1970) claimed to have
taken his trip to Australia to specify his ideas on
childhood sexuality/coitality, which, if authentic, is a remarkable motivation,
especially for a non-anthropologist. According
to the comparative zoological claim, human societies tend to currricularise,
spatialise, psychologise and politicise developmental eroticism and
reproductive capacity, thereby delaying both dimensions of experience and their
necessary precursors, replacing this simple curriculum by a multi-axial pathway
issuing the same (and alternative) behaviour via a delineation of hypothetical
possibilities, entrenched as they are in their developmental linguistic
structure. The operational application of this concept, within this structure,
is predictably variable. Specifically, society selectively provides legitimisation
fora, or at least an explanatory curriculum, for this variability, and for the
nonreproductive "aims" of behaviour that apparently equals the mimesis
(fragments of) the reproductive routine, whether in normalised or nonnormalised
formats. Social recognition of developmental pathways, then, theoretically
allows a congruent degree of variability, the theory depending on current
genetic ideologies. 1.2.8 The Literary/ Folklorist Agenda [up] [Contents] Rarely
explored, nonacademic writings on human development, especially "ego documents"
(diaries, autobiographies, prose, school essays) and works of literary
significance may provide a valuable contribution to human sexual cultures. No
studies to date use these sources as an entry to sex research. More than an
alternative methodology, sexual representations in human literary or other
cultures of art may describe hypothetical situations rather than factual ones,
and as such provides a compelling alternative exploration of the boundaries of
cultural organisation. However, writers, academics not excluded, tend to be
individualists, and also aim to produce what shall be consumed. This renders
the study of actual consumption of these materials inherently problematic.
Autobiographies are rarely if ever used in a cross-cultural methodology. 1.2.9 The "Sexologist" (Homosexologist) Agenda [up] [Contents] It
can be inferred that few studies addressing the sexual behaviour curriculum
originate from a purely sexological (erotological) motive, that is, to describe
sexual and sexologically informed practices and ideologies. I would suggest
this study is intended, partially, as an exception to this rule. Some
contributions to the developmental question are found within the
ethnohistorical study of male and female homoeroticism, but not in any
systematic scope and only to some degree as organised around ontological
hotbeds (berdaches, ritualised initiations), stressing gender identity and
sexual orientation (®1.2.10.3).
For the developmental case, it appears that there has been a
considerable piling of ethnographic material, but few specific ethnological
efforts. 1.2.10 Activist / Interpretationist Agendas [up] [Contents] Activist
agendas have had a definite impact on theoretical models addressing the
established of gender and erotic gender orientation mediated "identities" and
hierarchies. Combined, including the subspecies of "gender activisms", provide
interesting examples in the advocacy, application and modification of
theoretical models. Activist agendas have been categorised as addressing the "emerging"
local, female, (potential) minority, and world citizen. 1.2.10.1 The
Liberalist / Political Agenda,
Especially in a Globalist Perspective [up] [Contents]
The
idea of "sexual rights" of children is not new[94],
and seemed to have had its Days of Glory in the seventies and early 1980s.
Childhood sexual rights has to be seen within the emergence of child protection
legislation in general, obligatory "sex ed" programs, and the need for an
organised "children's right movement", which has been dated back to 1852
(Evans, 1993)[95]. Evans
states: "Inevitably legal judgements on age of maturity, consent and parental
and state responsibilities, no matter how painstakingly arrived at, can be
little more than token gestures, bound to vary between and even within modern
societies". Evans distinguishes two paradigms of protection: "one of sexual
being from harm because of their immaturity and ignorance; the other of the
non-sexual from the perversity of sexual indoctrination" (p216). Thus, while
children are scripted into sexuality
(p217), and trained in abuse scripts
(p223), children are left with the unilateral right to say "no", and to "tell"
(p224) when approached sexually. Into paradigms, Lee (1980; cf. 1982)[96]
argues: "If the property paradigm of
childhood and children's sexuality correlated with the other paradigms of a
pre-Copernican, pre-industrial, hierarchically rigid world, and the protection
paradigm with an industrializing, socially mobile world constantly expanding
the frontiers of Progress, it may be that the new personal paradigm will fit
well with a post-industrial world, a Conserver Society where Growth is not
gospel. Grown-up may become a
pejorative label of a licence to vote, to travel and choose one's residence and
to have sex. We may simply allow everyone to grow up" (p68). Invariably,
age and development factors are decidedly underrepresented in universalist
proclamations and of "sexual" and sexological rights. Rudolf Goldscheid's early
reference to "sexual rights"[97]
presented to the 4th congress of the World League for Sexual Reform (WLSR) in
Vienna 1930, does not seem to have specifically addressed development issues
[1933]. When the 13th World Congress of
Sexology (Valencia, Spain, June 1997) issued The Valencia Declaration on Sexual Rights, childhood was not
addressed specifically, although it was agreed that "all children should be
desired [?] and loved"[98].
In an apparent revision of priorities, the World Association for Sexology's Declaration
of Sexual Rights, adopted 26 August 1999, issues the "right to
comprehensive sexuality education. This is a lifelong process from birth
throughout the lifecycle and should involve all [?] social institutions"[99].
In June 1983[100], this was
not yet part of the WAS' program. It
appears that most of the "Rights" paradigm operates from a protectionist
(anti-interventionalist) basis (see for instance the IPPF "Charter on Sexual
and Reproductive Rights"[101]).
Combating "abuse" is a very obvious project: 1999 and
2000 ECPAT International Annual Reports[102]
and other major communications (1997-2001)[103]
do not elaborate on the establishment of "exploitation" categorisation from any
ethnographic / ethnological understanding, nor do they offer an integral perspective
on sexual development. The 1996 Declaration and Action for Agenda of the
World Congress Against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children suggests
that "The child [should not be] treated as a sexual object [in, for instances,
"early" marriages] and as a commercial object". It is argued that in such
marriages, "The child [theoretically, under 18] does not have the opportunity
to exercise her right to choose. For this reason, early marriages are also
referred to as forced marriages". In 1975
the WHO[104] issued
coverage in the training curriculum of health professionals of such items as
"children's question", "latency period" sexual curiosity, and pubertal
experimentation under the heading of "main sexual problems". In an attempt to
further "sexual health", WHO later (2001)[105]
argued that "[a] necessary component of a sexually healthy society is universal
access to age-appropriate, comprehensive sexuality education across the
lifespan", which should be at least school-based. As for "health rights", the
RHR/HRP[106] (1998:p80;
1999:p92; 2000:p88; cf. 2001:p122)[107] sought to generally "enable people to experience healthy sexual development and maturation and enhance the capacity for equitable and responsible relationships and sexual fulfil[l]ment". "Rights"
and "health" considerations fuse in the understanding of sexual politics and
sexual medicine. Two decades ago, John Money (1982)[108]
observed that "Children
are too young to liberate themselves militantly […]. In consequence, their
sexuality remains unliberated. Many adults justify continued imposition of the
sexual taboo in order to "protect" children from exposure to anything sexual.
The paradox of such protection is that it really exploits children in order to
maintain erroneous theory, neglecting their development of sexual health and
subjecting them to child abuse when they exhibit any significant manifestation
of healthy sexual development" (p5)[109]. The
cross-cultural argument has been used more or less routinely within unmistakably
political discussions of developmental sexualities (blatant examples including Guyon,
Reich, Money, O'Carroll, Brongersma). Certainly, it must be clear that the informal sexual "liberties" of children
vary extremely, whereas the formal
rights are nowhere acknowledged outside apparently modernist constructs of
education, consent, etc. The global "rights"/"health" movement has proved
unable to address concepts of "multiplicity" [110]
when addressing "sexuality", and is, inherently, likely to contribute to globalist
age / life phase categorialism. [Guyon's interpretation of "the
legitimacy of sexual acts" specifically operates from a cross-culturalist,
Orientalist foundation. See also his 1951 pamphlet "Human Rights and the Denial
of Sexual Freedom"[111]
briefly addressing "the refusal of sexual knowledge and sexual experience to
children and adolescents"]. 1.2.10.2 The
Feminist Agenda[112] [up] [Contents]
Not
so much a distinct theory, feminists use sexual scripting theories (e.g.,
"sexual objectification" theories) to facilitate the image of suppressed and
oppressed "femininity". Notwithstanding antipsychoanalytic sentiments, the
scripted woman is the child of the scripted girl, that is, a product of what is
considered "patriarch" values and positions. Feminists conduct "ethnographic"
impressions on school environments to explore girlhoods and the construction
and negotiation of gender that up to recent eras was invariably seen to have
compromised the natural emerging of "Woman". Thus, feminists have collaborated
in turning the school environment into a suitable workshop for "ethnographic"
explorations (interpretations) of gender dynamics, together with, increasingly,
interventionalist intentions. Specific
ethnological agendas have issued genital modifications as "mutilations" of such
womanhood, early marriage, the commodification of female teenhood, etc., themes
often addressed within overtly universalist crusades for Improvement of the Female
Condition. With the rise of communication technology, this "outreach" has
magnified considerably in recent decades and there will probably be a growing cross-cultural
extrapolation of values and "truths" along established antagonist lines (anti-"Islam"ism,
for instance). 1.2.10.3 The
Gay Theorist / Activist Agenda [up] [Contents]
Whereas
ethnography and historical materials are extensively used by authors on homosexuality
issues, the developmental problem is rarely addressed in its own light, or
perhaps not at an obviously activist level (Herdt). Authors have provided a
definite contribution to developmental sexology in providing autobiographical
material, exploring the developmental problem in defining "sexual
orientations", and detailing developmental phenomena otherwise unexamined
("first awareness of attraction", etc.). The concern for developmental issues
within the field of gay academia is largely directed at "liberating" the
"emerging" "gay adolescent" within the familial and school milieu. With
his Sambia case, Gilbert Herdt c.s. has substantially de-essentialised notions
of ontology as is concerned "sexual orientations" and associated trajectories. Activist
uses of these materials, however, have tended to reassemble ethnographic
examples to provide for geographies of "homosexualities" (for
an application, see §8.2.1) celebrating universality
and variability at once, often on descriptive but hardly on "ontographic" terms.
Given the wide possibilities globally for public politicisation of "homosexualities"
toward the end of the 20th century, ontology appear to have (1) seized
to occupy center stage in whatever "discussions" that remain or were thus generated;
and (2) shifted in political localisation, from exterior justifications to acclaimed,
autonomous pasts. In this sense, for Western academics ontologies may have
become yet another way of celebrating postmodern lifestyles. Ultimately, the
depsychiatrisation of "homosexuality" has not led to a complete disintegration
of clinical ontologist tendencies either. The "gay activist" case for ontology,
if any, thus continuous to inform "homosexuality" as a cultural project, and as
academic performance. Unexplored niches include the question of trajectories
of ontology, or the in-developmental reverberation of notions like "contributory
past" and politicised present. 1.2.10.4 The
Globalist / Antiglobalist Agenda [up] [Contents]
Antiglobalists
argue that the variety of sexual cultures is sacrificed for the hegemony of
dominant moralities (and of academic traditions). Gay situated activists,
particularly, have expressed this concern. Globalisation,
roughly speaking, introduces subjectivist concepts of female sexual behaviour
"identity" into objectivist sexual systems, resulting in adolescent-parent
conflict. Another issue is the globalist crusade against ultimate forms of
sexual objectification of children, including prostitution and graphic representations
(interestingly not excluding "virtual" ones). Question is whether such crusades
are indicative of altering agendas, or of latent sentiments being provoked, voiced,
and operationalised by an unprecedented scale of communicative possibilities,
as well as by increasingly salient political-economic interests. This may be
best illustrated by the decidedly ambivalent negotiation, historically
speaking, of concepts of the "traditional" in such arenas as indigenous childrearing
and sexualities. 1.2.11 Recapitulating: Agenda and Developmentalist Sexology [up] [Contents] Concluding, some of these perspectives are (a)
highly idealistic, even Utopian, or at least programmatic (Marxism);
(b) others may be based on predominantly unverified assumptions on human
"nature" (e.g., orthodox psychoanalysis);
and while (c) some have very narrow secondary
agendas, rendering entire ideological systems as (historically) biased
(psychohistory);
(d) others are simply too limited to describe basic social dimensions of
developmental sexuality. 1.3 Ethnocentrism and Developmentalism [up] [Contents]
The
above discussion of models does not accommodate perhaps more recalcitrant
issues in developmental sexology, such as ethnocentric
developmentalism, which is associated to categorialist
curricula. This defines
childhood and adolescence as phases in the course of "turning adult" (e.g.,
"turning erotic"), a cross-culturally diverse choice. Both the process and the
goals of this functional perspective are entitled to their cultural relativism.
This would put quests for "normative" baselines (Frayser, 1994b)[113]
into cultural perspective. The present material was collected partly in the
hope it contributes to avoidance of, as Walkerdine phrases the thing, "fetishizating
western rationality as the universal pinnacle of development"[114].
This is particularly true in addressing "phases" as "monolithic cultural
categories" [115]. The study
requires a challenge of sexualities as well as sexologies, while by no means
pretending these are separable or to be separated in any substantial or
monopolist manner. As Thorne
(1987)[116] has
argued, the re-issuing of children's agency is a complex and task, and it
should (can) not be hastened. Options are further explored in Appendix IV. 1.4 Recapitulation: Fitting Ethnographic and
Cross-Historical Data into Sociological Models [up] [Contents]
The integration of ethnographical
data in contemporary social sexology, though emphasised[117],
seems to have been useful for descriptive overviews and sociological theories
on homosexuality (Murray, Herdt, etc.), but marginal in terms of a
psychological developmental theory. On the one hand, this statement may seem
debatable considering the multiplicity of work on "adolescent" sexualities;
however, cross-cultural traditions foster a neglect of developmental issues
that has compromised attention to childhood, theoretically a most important
site of "development". In the social view of Reiss, for instance, pre-adulthood
occupies a marginal position, critical issues being identified to include the
triad of marital jealousy, "gender power roles" and ideologies of normality.
That is, these theories might help explain
developmental sexualities, but tend to avoid addressing them. As becomes apparent in the literature review in Appendix 1,
the (numeric) cross-cultural method did not generate a precise sociological
description of sexual development. It did hint at sociological models created
around larger structural levels, but data to support such models are still
fragmentary. Judging from Broude's
(1981:p633)[118] article,
which title is tale-telling, the main theoretical position taken by
cross-culturalists was an essentialist structuralist one, predominantly
motivated by or geared toward psychodynamic perspectives. The
decline in contributions to this approach is probably related to the emergence
of novel principles in "closing in" on developing sexuality. Contemporary
sociologists have used combined constructionist and post-structuralist
approaches to issues of developmental gender and sexuality (e.g., Walkerdine,
Reay). This would allow a combination of Messner's "interactionist theoretical" and "cultural
theoretical" perspectives. It was also observed that interactionist
perspectives have recently begun to be modified so as to portray the child as
an active agent in the process, a more or less "self-scripting" autonomy within
changing cultural spaces merely offering the building blocks for a continuous
compilation task (cf. §1.1.3.1). Introduced
in a comparatively late stage of the project, it was decided to choose such a
perspective as an organising principle for presenting multi-cultural data even
if not collected or presented within this exact format. Having specifically
assessed the literature on this point, I believe that the current work offers a
first preliminary overview of the broad field opened up by recent theoretical
developments, being informed by a comprehensive scanning of the ethnographic
record. I also believe that most chapters could not have been written without
this advance (and continuing) scanning. Thus informed, it provided an appraisal
of cross-cultural variety at this point, a variety that may progressively be
limited due to globalist processes and economic reform. The
rationale for this approach is multipartite: -- The description of
sexuality as performative aids in establishing and advocating a sexologist's
"child's perspective"[119]
in which activities, as structurally mediated "tasks", would become central
elements; -- It meets the
paucity of psychometric and psychosocial material in ethnographic materials
using children and adolescents as key informants, and the (up to comparatively
recently) bias toward material and practical social anthropology; -- It provides for a
positivist, bottom-up theory building; as such it counterweights negativist
(e.g., "control", "abuse") entries and operationalisations, as well as
"referent" models based on inference and extrapolation. The
method was first "tried on" in a preliminary article on gender/sexuality within
school environments[120].
Progressively, it was appreciated that the "sexual-erotic" takes it place
within a multi-layered set of discourses that govern grand unifying principles
such as (a) genderedness,
(b) embodiment,
and (c) eroticisation proper. The social constructionism of the
first two of these three pillars could be most clearly demonstrated, the third
one being much more perfused with idealist-moralist (rather than
activist-pragmatic) agendas (see chapter 16). It was also suggested that some
aspects of these principles could alternatively be approached via a "clinical"
entry (e.g., §5.3.2.2), exceptional situations (medically
or socially) luxating "cultural" performances otherwise hidden from the public
space and eye. 1.5 Conclusion [up] [Contents]
Considering the previous arguments, I chose a social constructionist perspective that is to describe how, at the
"cultural" level, social environments introduce the individual to sexuality,
and operationalise it so that it might "function" within a
performative-teleological frame. Contrary to classical psychodynamic
theory, as Imbasciati[121]
argues, I will take the position that "[…] pleasure is not an explanans of psychic life, but an explanandum […]". I
will, however, not conclude that "[t]he attribution of sexuality to the
biological sphere, through the concept of instinct, is misleading, possibly
even wrong". Instead, the question of biological representation is reserved for
future probing. From
this perspective, recommendations can be made for further inquiry. In any case,
sociologist perspectives should require a theoretical position versus
pedagogical principles and organisations[122],
and a culturally specified, updated view on children's (endangered and
expanding) technological space[123].
Or, using Appadurai's[124]
categories, their curricular inclusion into ethnoscapes, mediascapes,
technoscapes, financescapes, and ideoscapes. Notes [up] [Contents]
[last
updated 011102] [1]
This paper is a presentation lateral of that offered in a
previous essay entitled Operational
Principles of Human Sexual Behaviour Curricularisation: A Theoretical Exploration and Abstract of
Cultural-Historical Elements. [2]
Burckhardt, J. L. ([1831]) Notes on the
Bedouins and Wahabys. London. Vol. I, p98, as quoted by Thomas, W. I.
(1899) Sex in Primitive Morality, Am J Sociol 4,6:774-87 [3]
From a letter written by "an experienced master in one of the most famous
English public schools" to Havelock Ellis, quoted in Auto-Erotism. See Ellis, H. ([1936]) Studies in the Psychology of Sex. Vol. I. New York: Random House [4]
The Prudential Company of America (1954) Your
Child- Pre-School and School Years, p70 [5]
Paul Weller, Wild Wood (Wild Wood, 1993) [6] Cohen, S. (1993) Le grand frission, Rev Franç Psychanal 57,2:613-24 [7]
E.g., Vandermeersch, P. (1990) A cultural sexuality or a sexual culture? In Van
de Vijver, F. J. R. & Hutschemaekers, G. J. M. (Eds.) The Investigation of Culture: Current Issues in Cultural Psychology.
Tilburg, the Netherlands: Tilburg University Press, p43-58 [8]
Maddock, J. W. (1983a) Sex in the family system, Marr & Fam Rev 6:9-20; Maddock, J. W. (1983b) Human sexuality
in the life cycle of the family, in Hansen, J. (Ed.) Sexual Issues in Family Therapy. London [etc.]: Aspen, p1-31 [9]
Herdt, G. (1999) Clinical Ethnography and Sexual Culture, Ann Rev Sex Res 10:100-19 [10]
Frayser, S. G. (2002) Discovering the value of cross-cultural research on human
sexuality, in Wiederman, M. W., Whitley, B. E. Jr. (Eds.) Handbook for Conducting Research on Human Sexuality. p425-53. Cf. Frayser, S. G. (1994a) Anthropology: Influence of
Culture on Sex, in Bullough, V. L. & Bullough, B. (Eds.) Human Sexuality: An Encyclopedia. New
York & London: Garland Publ. Inc. [11]
Brooks-Gunn, J. & Graber, J. A. (1999) What's sex got to do with it? The
development of sexual identities during adolescence, in Contrada, R. J. &
Ashmore, R. D. (Eds.) Self, Social
Identity, and Physical Health: Interdisciplinary Explorations. New York:
Oxford University Press, p155-82 [12]
Semiannual Newsletter of the Robert Penn
Warren Center for the Humanities 6,2 (Spring, 1998). Taken from http://www.vanderbilt.edu/rpw_center/examine.htm [13]
Hostetler, A. J. & Herdt, G. H. (1998) Culture, sexual lifeways, and
developmental subjectivities: rethinking sexual taxonomies, Soc Res 65,2:249-91 [14]
Chen, H. (1992) Chinatown No More: Taiwan
Immigrants in Contemporary New York. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University
Press, p101 [15]
E.g., Walkerdine, V. (1999) Childhood Sexuality and the
Subjectivity of the Researcher, in Maiers, W., Bayer, B. et al. (Eds.) Challenges to Theoretical Psychology. York:
Captus Press [16]
Schalet, A. T. (2000) Raging Hormones, Regulated Love: Adolescent Sexuality and
the Constitution of the Modern Individual in the United States and the
Netherlands, Body & Society
6,1:75-105; Schalet, A. T. (1994) Dramatiseren of normaliseren? De culturele constructie
van tiernerseksualiteit in de Verenigde Staten en Nederland, Amsterdam Sociol Tijdschr 21,2:113-47. See also Bozon, M. & Heilborn, M. L. (1996) Les
Caresses et les mots. Initiations amoureuses a Rio de Janeiro et a Paris, Terrain 27:37-58. Cf. id., As caricias e as palavras. Iniciacao sexual
no Rio de Janeiro e em Paris, Novos Estud
CEBRAP 59(2001):111-35 [17]
Sayers, J. (1998) Boy Crazy: Remembering
Adolescence, Therapies and Dreams. Florence, KY: Taylor &
Francis/Routledge [18]
Margold, Ch. W. (1926) The Need of a Sociological Approach to Problems of Sex
Conduct. I. Radical Practices Cannot Be Justified by Merely Biological Data, Am J Sociol 31,4:455-73. See also
31,5:634-56; Shuttleworth, F. K. (1959) A Biosocial and Developmental Theory of
Male and Female Sexuality, Marr & Fam
Living 21,2:163-70; Sprey, J. (1969) On the Institutionalization of
Sexuality, J Marr & Fam 31,3:432-40;
Ross, E. & Rapp, R. (1981) Sex and Society: A Research Note from Social
History and Anthropology, Comparat Stud
Society & Hist 23,1:51-72; Gindorf, R. & Haeberle, E. J. (Eds.,
1986) Sexualität als Sozialer Tatbestand
: Theoretische und Empirische Beiträge zu einer Soziologie der Sexualitäten.
Berlin: New York, NY: W. de Gruyter; Reiss, I. L. (1986a) Journey into Sexuality: A Sociological Voyage. New York:
Prentice-Hall. Cf. Reiss, I. L. (1986b) A Sociological Journey into Sexuality, J Marr & Fam 48,2:233-42; Reiss, I.
L. (1989) Society and sexuality: A sociological explanation, in McKinney, K.
& Sprecher, S. (Eds.) Human
Sexuality: The Societal and Interpersonal Context. Norwood, NJ: Ablex,
p3-29; Callero, P. L. & Howard, J. A. (1989) Biases of the scientific
discourse on human sexuality: Toward a sociology of sexuality, in McKinney, K.
& Sprecher, S. (Eds.) Human
Sexuality: The Societal and Interpersonal Context. Norwood, NJ: Ablex,
p425-37; Stein, A. (1989) Three Models of Sexuality: Drives, Identities and
Practices, Sociol Theory 7,1:1-13;
DeLamater, J. (1981) The social control of sexuality, Ann Rev Sociol 7:263-90. Cf. DeLamater, J. (1987) A sociological
perspective, in Geer, J. & O'Donohue, W. (Eds.) Theories of Human Sexuality. New York: Plenum, p237-56; DeLamater,
J. D. (1989) The social control of human sexuality, in McKinney, K. &
Sprecher, S. (Eds.) Human Sexuality: The
Societal and Interpersonal Context. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, p30-62; Vance, C.
S. (1991) Anthropology Rediscovers Sexuality: A Theoretical Comment, Soc Sci & Med 33,8:875-84 [19]
Stich, J. & du Bois-Reymond, M. (1999) Jugendsexualität wird ein Thema der
Soziologie, Diskurs 9,1:6-9 [20]
E.g., Strouse, J. S. & Fabes, R. A. (1987) A conceptualization of
transition to nonvirginity in adolescent females, J Adol Res 2,4:331-48; Udry, J. R. (1988) Biological
Predispositions and Social Control in Adolescent Sexual Behavior, Am Sociol Rev 53,5:709-22; Benda, B. B.
& DiBlasio, F. A. (1991) Comparison of four theories of adolescent sexual
exploration, Deviant Behav
12,3:235-57; Benda, B. B. & Kashner, T. M. (1994) Adolescent sexual
behavior: A path analysis, J Soc Serv Res
19,3-4: 49-69; Benda, B. B. & DiBlasio, F. A. (1994) An integration of
theory: Adolescent sexual contacts, J
Youth & Adol 23,3:403-20; Benda, B. B. & Corwyn, R. F. (1996)
Testing a Theoretical Model of Adolescent Sexual Behavior among Rural Families
in Poverty, Child & Adol Soc Work J
13,6:469-94; DiBlasio, F. A. & Benda, B. B. (1990) Adolescent sexual
behavior: Multivariate analysis of a social learning model, J Adol Res 5,4:449-66; DiBlasio, F. A.
& Benda, B. B. (1992) Gender differences in theories of adolescent sexual
activity, Sex Roles 27,5-6:221-39;
Hillman, E. R. (1993) Adolescent sexual behavior: A developmental social
learning model, DAI 53(11-B):5977-8; Rowe, D. C., Rodgers, J. L. & Meseck,
B. S. (1989) An "epidemic" model of sexual intercourse prevalences for Black
and White adolescents, Soc Biol
36,3-4:127-45; Rowe, D. C. & Rodgers, J. L. (1994) A Social Contagion Model
of Adolescent Sexual Behavior: Explaining Race Differences, Soc Biol 41,1-2:1-18; Rowe, D. C. &
Rodgers, J. L. (1991) An "epidemic" model of adolescent sexual intercourse:
Applications to national survey data, J
Biosoc Sci 23,2:211-9; Hovell, M. F. et al. (1994) A Behavioral-Ecological
Model of Adolescent Sexual Development: A Template for AIDS Prevention, J Sex Res 31,4:267-81;Sprecher, S.
(1998) Social Exchange Theories and Sexuality, J Sex Res 35,1:32-43; Hogben, M. & Byrne, D. (1998) Using
social learning theory to explain individual differences in human sexuality, J Sex Res 35,1:58-71; Lauritsen, J. L.
(1990) Adolescent Sexual Behavior and Early Childbearing: Empirical Tests of
Social Control and Strain Theories, DAI-A 50,7, Jan, 2257-A; Dorius, G. L.
(1995) Parental Support and Control and the Onset of Sexual Intercourse, DAI-A
55,12, June,4005-A; Oyor, S. C. J. & Pandey, A. (1999) Adolescent
Transition to Coitus and Premarital Childbearing in Sudan: A Biosocial Context,
J Biosoc Sci 31,3:361-74 [21]
Martin, N. G., Eaves, L. J. & Eysenck, H. J. (1977) Genetical,
Environmental and Personality Factors Influencing the Age of First Sexual
Intercourse in Twins, J Biosoc Sci
9,1:91-7; Smith, E. A., Udry, J. R. & Morris, N. M. (1985) Pubertal
development and friends: A biosocial explanation of adolescent sexual behavior,
J Health & Soc Behav 26,3:183-92;
Udry, J. R. (1988) Biological predispositions and social control in adolescent
sexual behavior, Am Sociol Rev
53,5:709-22; Smith, E. A. (1989) A biosocial model of adolescent sexual
behavior, in Adams, G. R. et al. (Eds.) Biology
of Adolescent Behavior and Development. Thousand Oaks, CA.: Sage
Publications, p143-67; Halpern, C. T., Udry, J. R. et al. (1994) Testosterone
and religiosity as predictors of sexual attitudes and activity among adolescent
males: A biosocial model, J Biosoc Sci
26,2:217-34; Rodgers, J. L., Rowe, D. C. & Buster, M. (1999) Nature,
Nurture and First Sexual Intercourse in the USA: Fitting Behavioral Genetic
Models to NLSY Kinship Data, J Biosoc Sci
31,1:29-41 [22]
DeLamater, J. D. & Hyde, J. Sh. (1998) Essentialism vs. social
constructionism in the study of human sexuality, J Sex Res 35,1:10-8 [23]
In a limited study on 17 HRAF cultures, it was found that sexual permissiveness
was uncorrelated with either sex-role rigidity or violence (yet sex-role
rigidity was highly correlated with violence). Results were incompatible with
theories of sex and violence that stress a single physiological or instinctual
factor, and support two-factor theories which gave more emphasis to social
learning principles than to physiological determinants. McConahay, Sh. A. &
McConahay, J. B. (1977) Sexual permissiveness, sex-role rigidity, and violence
across cultures, J Soc Iss
33,2:134-43 [24]
Woodson, J. C. (2002) Including "learned sexuality" in the organization of
sexual behavior, Neurosci & Biobehav Rev 26,1: 69-80 [25]
Op.cit. [26]
Horowitz, G. (1987) The Foucaultian Impasse: No Sex, No Self, No Revolution, Political Theory 15,1:61-80 [27]
Stein, A. (1997) Sex after "Sexuality": From Sexology to Post-Structuralism, in
Owen, D. (Ed.) Sociology after
Postmodernism. London: Sage, p158-72 [28]
Sanday, P. R. (1996) A Discourse-Centered
Approach to Human Sexuality. Keynote address given at the Second Annual
Rutgers Anthropology Graduate Student Conference, "Contemplating
Sex," March 23, l996. [Conference Proceedings published in Crosscurrents:
The Journal of Graduate Research in Anthropology, Vol. VIII, Autumn l996,
p147-58 [unpaged] [29]
Carr, C. L. (1999) Cognitive scripting and sexual identification: essentialism,
anarchism, and constructionism, Symbolic
Interaction 22,1:1-24 [30]
Messner, M. A. (2000) Barbie girls versus sea monsters: Children constructing
gender, Gender & Society 14,6:
765-84, at p780-1 [31]
E.g., Weinberg, Th. S. (1994) Sociological theories of sexuality, in Bullough,
V. L. & Bullough, B. (Eds.) Human
Sexuality: An Encyclopedia. New York & London: Garland Publ.. Inc. [32]
Davis, K. (1966) Sexual behavior, in Merton R. K. & Nisbet, R. (Eds.) Contemporary Social Problems. 2nd ed.
New York: Harcourt Brace & World [33]
Gagnon, J. H. & Simon, W. (1973) Sexual
Conduct: The Sources of Human Sexuality. Chicago: Aldine; Gagnon, J. H.
(1977) Human Sexualities. Glenview,
Ill.: Scott, Foresman; Gagnon, J. H. (1989) Sexuality across the life course in
the United States, in Turner, Ch. F., Miller, H. G. & Moses, L. E. (Eds.) AIDS, Sexual Behavior and Intravenous Drug
Use. Washington, DC: National Academic Press, p500-36; Simon, W. &
Gagnon, J. (1998) Psychosexual development, Society 35,2:60-8 [34]
Watson, L. C. (1972) Sexual Socialization in Guajiro Society, Ethnology 11,2:150-6 [35]
Cf. Hutchinson, K. A. (1995) Androgens and Sexuality, Am J Med 98,1, Suppl. 1:111S-115S [36]
Meyer, J. (1996) Sexuality and power: Perspectives for the less powerful, Theory & Psychol 6,1:93-119 [37]
Rotkin, K. & Rotkin, M. (1975) Freud: Rejected, Redeemed and Rejected, Socialist Revolution 5,2:105-19 [38]
For a disappointing application on gender role formation, see Cummings, S.
& Taebel, D. (1980) Sexual Inequality and the Reproduction of
Consciousness: An Analysis of Sex-Role Stereotyping among Children, Sex Roles 6,4:631-44 [39]
Angelergues, R. (1976) Reich and the Freudian-Marxist illusion, Evolution Psychiatrique 41,4:733-46 [40]
Press, H. (1971) The Marxism and Anti-Marxism of Wilhelm Reich, Telos 9:65-82. See also Sinelnikov, C.
(1972) Early "Marxist" Critiques of Reich, Telos
13:131-7 [41]
Baxandall, R. (1995) Marxism and Sexuality: The Body as Battleground, in
Callari, A., Cullenberg, S. & Biewener, C. (Eds.) Marxism in the Postmodern Age: Confronting the New World Order. New
York, NY: Guilford Press, p235-45 [42]
Adam, B. D. (1980) What Has Marxism to Do
with Sex Research? Paper for the Society for the Study of Social Problems
(SSSP) [43]
MacKinnon, C. A. (1982) Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: An Agenda for
Theory, Signs 7,3:515-44 [44]
Gimenez, M. E. (1978) Structuralist Marxism on "The Woman Question", Science & Society 42,3:301-23 [45]
Cummings, S. & Taebel, D. (1978) The Economic Socialization of Children: A
Neo-Marxist Analysis, Social Problems
26,2:198-210 [46]
Anon. (1983) Free childhood- free
sexuality: a Marxist analysis [part 1,2,3], Minor
Probl 1(6,7); 2(4); 3(5) [47]
White, J. W., Bondurant, B. & Travis, Ch. B. (2000) Social constructions of
sexuality: Unpacking hidden meanings, in Travis, Ch. B. & White, J. W.
(Eds.) Sexuality, Society, and Feminism.
Psychology of Women; 4, p11-33; Davis-Stephenson, C. L. (1990) The construction
of childhood sexuality: a symbolic interactionalist perspective, DAI-B 51/04,
oct., p2057. Based on a 1989 Dissertation, Fuller Theological Seminary, School
of Psychology; Plummer, K. (1990) Understanding childhood sexualities, J Homosex 20,1/2:231-49. Plummer's
primary agenda, however, seems to be the deconstruction of paedophilia. Cf.
Plummer, K. (1979) Images of paedophilia, in Cook, M. and Wilson, G. (Eds.) Love and Attraction, Oxford: Pergamon,
p537-40; Plummer, K. (1981) Pedophilia: Constructing a Sociological Baseline,
in Cook, M. & Howells, K. (Eds.)
Adult Sexual Interest in Children. London: Academic Press, p221-50. Cf.
Reid, P. & Bing, V. M. (2000) Sexual roles of girls and women: An
ethnocultural lifespan perspective, in Travis, Ch. B. & White, J. W. (Eds.)
Sexuality, Society, and Feminism.
Psychology of Women 4. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association,
p141-66 [48]
E.g., Jackson, S. (1980) Girls and sexual
knowledge, in Spender D. & Sarah, E. (Eds.) Learning to Lose. London: The Women's Press, p131-45; Jackson, S.
(1982) Childhood and Sexuality. Oxford:
Basil Blackwell. See also Lees, S. (1986) Losing
Out: Sexuality and Adolescent Girls. Hutchinson: London. Cf. Lees, S.
(1993) Sugar and Spice; Sexuality and
Adolescent Girls. Penguin: London [49]
Ajzenstadt, M. & Cavaglion, G. (2002) The sexual body of the young Jew as
an arena of ideological struggle, 1821-1948, Symbolic Interaction 25,1:93-116 [50]
Scott, S., Jackson, S. & Backett-Milburn, K. (1998) Swings and Roundabouts:
Risk Anxiety and the Everyday Worlds of Children, Sociology 32,4:689-705. Cf. Scott,
S., Jackson, S., Backett-Milburn, K. & Harden, J. (1998) Risk Anxiety and the Social Construction of
Childhood. Paper for the International Sociological Association; Jackson, S. & Scott, S. (1999) Risk anxiety
and the social construction of childhood, in Lupton, D. (Ed.) Risk and Sociocultural Theory: New
Directions and Perspectives. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge,
p86-107; Jackson, S. (1990) Demons and innocents: Western ideas on children's
sexuality in historical perspective in Perry, M. E. (Ed.) Handbook of Sexology. Vol. 7.
Amsterdam: Elsevier p23-49; Jackson,
S. & Scott, S. (2000) Childhood, in Payne, G. (Ed.) Social Divisions.
New York: Saint Martin's, p152-84. See also
Kendall, G., Collins, A. & Michael, M. (1997) Constructing risk:
psychology, medicine and child welfare, J
Applied Social Behav 4,1:15-27 [51]
DeLamater, J. (1981) The Social Control of Sexuality, Ann Rev Sociol 7:263-90 [52]
See for instance Ende-de Monchy, C. M. van den (1984) Onderzoek naar het Seksuele Scenario van Kinderen van 6 tot 10 Jaar.
Zeist [Holland]: NISSO; Frith, H. &
Kitzinger, C. (2001) Reformulating Sexual Script Theory: Developing a
Discursive Psychology of Sexual Negotiation, Theory & Psychol 11,2:209–32. Examples of studies on
adolescents include Krac, A. & Williams, C. J. (1979) Sexual Scripts and Female Masturbation: A
Test of Gagnon and Simon's Theory of Sexual Socialization. Paper for the
Society for the Study of Social Problems; Hillman, Ph L. (2000) Negotiating the
Dominant Sexual Script: Middle-Class Black Girls Tell Their Story, DAI-A 60,
7:2698-A; Steele, J. R. (2000) Adolescent sexuality: Negotiating the influences
of family, friends, school and the mass media, DAI 60(7-A):2275; Carpenter, L.
M. (1998) From girls into women: Scripts for sexuality and romance in Seventeen
magazine, 1974-1994, J Sex Res
35,2:158-68; Gilmore, S., DeLamater, J. & Wagstaff, D. (1996) Sexual
decision making by inner city black adolescent males: A focus group study, J Sex Res 33,4:363-71; Villanueva, M. I.
M. (1997) The Social Construction of
Sexuality: Personal Meanings, Perceptions of Sexual Experience, and Females'
Sexuality in Puerto Rico. Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. For another application,
see Daverveld, M. J. C. (1991) Scripts
van Kinderseksualiteit: Een Exploratief Onderzoek naar Scripts van
Kinderseksualiteit bij Leerkrachten. Maastricht / Utrecht [Holland]:
Rijksuniversiteit Limburg / NISSO [53]
Reiss, I. L. (1970) Premarital Sex as Deviant Behavior: An Application of
Current Approaches to Deviance, Am Sociol
Rev 35,1:78-87 [54]
Buzwell, S. & Rosenthal, D. (1996) Constructing a sexual self: Adolescents'
sexual self-perceptions and sexual risk-taking, J Res Adolesc 6,4:489-513 [55]
Jordan, E. & Cowan, A. (1995) Warrior
Narratives in the Kindergarten Classroom Renegotiating the Social Contract? Gender & Society 9,6:727-43, at p740 [56]
Woodson, S. E. (1999) Mapping the Cultural Geography of Childhood or,
Performing Monstrous Children, J Am Culture 22,4:31-43 [57]
Martin, K. A. (1995) Puberty, sexuality, and the self: Gender differences at
adolescence, DAI-A 55(9-A):3006 [58]
Hillman, Ph. L. (2000) Negotiating the Dominant Sexual Script: Middle-Class
Black Girls Tell Their Story, DAI-A 60, 7, Jan,2698-A [59]
Goldman, R. & Goldman, J. (1981) Children's
Sexual Thinking: A Comparative Study of Children Aged 5-15 Years in Australia,
the United States of America, England, and Sweden. London: Routledge: &
Kegan Paul; Goldman, R. & Goldman, J. (1981) Children's concepts of why
people get married, Austr J Sex, Marr
& Fam 2,3: 105-18; Goldman, R. & Goldman, J. (1981) What children
want to know about sex, Austr Sci
Teachers J 27:61-9; Goldman, R. & Goldman, J. (1981) Children's
perceptions of clothes and nakedness, Genet
Psychol Monogr 104:163-85; Goldman, R. & Goldman, J. (1981) Sources of
sex information for Australian, English, North American and Swedish children, J Psychol 109:97-108; Goldman, J. (1990)
The importance of an adequate sexual vocabulary for children, Austral J Marr & Fam 11,3:136-48 [60]
Carpenter, C. H. (1995) In Our Own Image: The Child, Canadian
Culture and Our Future. Paper for the 9th Annual Robarts Lecture, March 29 [61]
Whittier, D. & Simon, W. (2001) The fuzzy matrix of "my type" in
intrapsychic sexual scripting, Sexualities
4,2:139-65 [62]
Simon, W. & Gagnon, J. H. (1984) Sexual Scripts, Society 22,1(153):53-60;
Simon, W. & Gagnon, J. H. (1986) Sexual scripts: Permanence and change, Arch Sex Behav 15,2:97-120; Simon, W.
(1996) Postmodern Sexualities. New
York: Routledge [63]
Cf. Gecas, V. & Libby, R. (1976) Sexual behavior as symbolic interaction, J Sex Res 12,1:33-49 [64]
Helmius, G. (2000) Manus för Mognad. Om Kärlek, Sexualitet och Socialisation
i Ungdomsåren [Scripts for Maturity. On Love, Sexuality and Socialisation
in Adolescence]. Revised from author's doctoral dissertation. Sala: Mimers
Brunn [For a further bibliography, see http://www.soc.uu.se/staff/gisela_h.html#publ] [65]
Straver, C. J. (1976) Jugendsexualität:
Versuch zur Gestaltung einer Theorie. Paper für die Tagung der Sektion
Familien- und Jugendsoziologie der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Soziologie,
München, May 28-29; Straver, C. J. (1977) Jugendsexualität: Versuch zur
Gestaltung einer Theorie, Soziologenkorrespondenz
4:121-50; Straver, C. J. & De Boer, J. (1977) Toenaderingsgedrag van Jongens en Meisjes. Deel 1: Onderzoeksgegevens,
Theorie en Conclusies. Zeist [Holland]: NISSO; Straver, C. J. (1980) Jong Zijn en Contact Zoeken; Problemen en
Processen rond Toenaderingssituaties. Deventer [Holland]: Van Loghum
Slaterus; Straver, C. J. (1983) Erotic overtures and sexual contacts;
competence, rules, attitudes and problems, in Everard, W., Hindley, C. B. Bot,
A. & Van der Werff ten Bosch J. J. (Eds.) Development in Adolescence: Psychological, Social and Biological
Aspects. Boston, MA: Martinus
Nijhoff, p149-66; Straver, C. J. (1985) Toenaderingsgedrag van jongens
en meisjes. Een verwaarloosd thema in SI onderzoek, in Arts, W. A. et al.
(Eds.) Betekenis en Interactie.
Deventer [Holland]: Van Loghum Slaterus; Straver, C. J. (1985) Soziale und
sexuelle Interaktionen bei Jugendlichen: ein handlungstheoretischer und
empirischer Ansatz, Sonderndruck aus Schriftenreihe
Sozialwissenschaftliche Sexualforschung 1:179-96; Straver, C. (1986) De
trapsgewijze interactie-carrière, in Rademakers, J. & Straver, C., Van Fascinatie naar Relatie: Het Leren
Omgaan met Relaties en Sexualiteit in de Jeugdperiode; Een
Ontwikkelingsdynamische Studie. Zeist [Holland]: NISSO, p1-128; Straver, C.
J. & Rademakers, J. (1996) De seksuele ontwikkeling van jongeren in de
huidige samenleving: een overzicht van gegevens en enkele consequenties voor de
voorlichting, Nederlands Tijdschr
Opvoeding, Vorming & Onderwijs [Dutch] 12,2:76-99. For more on
Straver's approach, see Regt, W. De (1980) Toenaderingsgedrag van adolescenten
en de daarop gerichte seksuele relationele vorming, Tijdschr Seksuol [Belgium / Holland] 5,1-2:21-33. More on this
theme is found in Stapel, D., Fock, O. & Van der Zwaan., M. (1987) Tussen Blik en Eerste Zoen.
Toenaderingsgedrag bij Adolescenten. Amsterdam [66]
Elias, N. (1939) Über den Prozess der Zivilisation: Soziogenetische und
Psychogenetische Untersuchungen. Basel: Haus zum Falken [67]
Van Krieken, R. (2000) Norbert Elias and Process Sociology, forthcoming in
Ritzer, G. & Smart, B. (Eds.) The Handbook of Social Theory. London:
Sage, p353-67 [68]
Van Krieken, R. (nd) Beyond the 'Problem of Order': Elias, Habit and Modern
Sociology, or, Hobbes was Right. Online paper, earlier version given at the
1996 Conference of the Australian Sociological Association in Hobart, Tasmania,
4- 7th December 1996.[ http://www.usyd.edu.au/su/social/elias/confpap/order.html] [69]
Duerr, H. P. (1988) Nacktheit und Scham. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Vol.
1 of Der Mythos vom Zivilizationprocess. 2nd ed. [70]
Wouters, C. (1994) Duerr und Elias. Scham und Gewalt in Zivilisationsprozessen,
Zeitschr f Sexualforsch 7,3:203-16. "Duerr allows that levels of shame
and embarrassment have changed over the course of history, but argues against
Elias that such changes are not a genuine part of evolution. Duerr further
argues that social pressure to conform was/is far stricter in face-to-face,
traditional societies than in industrialized societies. Duerr's arguments are
rebutted using Elias's text and observations on the paradoxes of social
control". [71]
Bogner, A. (1992) The Theory of the Civilizing Process-An Idiographic Theory of
Modernization? Theory, Culture & Society 9,2:23-53 [72]
For a discussions of Van Ussel vs Elias, see Schnabel, P. (1973) Seksualiteit
in de welvaartsstaat, Sociologische Gids [Dutch] 20,3:189-206 [73]
Van Ussel, J. (1969) Socio-Economische Grondslagen van de Seksuele Moraal
[Socio-Economic Factors and Sexual Morality], Tijdschr Sociale Wetensch
[Belgium] 14,2:155-206. Based on author's two-volume thesis [74]
Vandekerckhove, L. (1980) Gemaakt van Asse: Een Sociologische Studie van de
Westerse Somatische Kultuur. Katholieke Universiteit te Leuven, Fakulteit
der Sociale Wetenschappen, Departement Sociologie [75]
Vincke, J. (1983) De normering van de lichamelijkheid: een kanttekening bij
Vandekerckhove's 'Gemaakt van as', Tijdschr Sociale Wetensch [Belgium]
28,3:226-32 [76]
Op.cit. [77]
Stephens, M. Ch. (1994) The Shiftiness of Childhood. PhD Dissertation,
Bowling Green State University [DAI 1996, 56, 8, Feb 1996, 3333-A] [78]
Smith, D. (1999) The Civilizing Process and the History of Sexuality: Comparing
Norbert Elias and Michel Foucault, Theory & Society 28,1:79-100 [79]
Leahy, T. (1991) Negotiating Stigma: Approaches to Intergenerational Sex. PhD thesis
presented to the University of New South Wales. Online ed., Books-Reborn; Leahy,
T. (1992) Positively experienced man-boy sex: the discourse of seduction and
the social construction of masculinity, Austr
& N Z J Sociol 28,1:71-88. Leahy utilises post-structuralist principles
to locate "subcultural" and individual negotiations of meaning within dominant
discourses of "intergenerational" sexual interactions (§14.4). [80] Foucault, M. (1976) Histoire de la
Sexualité. Vol. 1. 1980
English ed., New York: Vintage Books. Cf. Karmanoila, A., Knecht, C. & Parrat-Dayan, S. (1992/3) Le discours sur
la sexualité infantile. Évolution du XIXe siècle à nos jours, Bull Psychol 46(409):121-9 [81]
Stoler, A. L.(1995) Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault's History of Sexuality and
the Colonial Order of Things. Durham, NC: Duke University Press [82]
Elden, S. (2001a) The History of Sexuality and the Constitution of the State.
Paper prepared for delivery at the 2001 Annual Meeting of the American
Political Science Association, San Francisco, August 30-September 2 [http://pro.harvard.edu/papers/002/002037EldenStuar.pdf];
Elden, S. (2001b) The constitution of the normal: monsters and masturbation at
the Collège de France, boundary 2, 28,1:91-105 [http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/boundary/v028/28.1elden.pdf] [83]
Foucault, M. (Ewald, F. et al., eds., 1999) Les Anormaux; Cours au Collège
de France (1974-1975). [Paris]: Gallimard / Seuil [84]
Beside Stoler, see Tien, L. (1994) Children's Sexuality and the New Information
Technology: A Foucaultian Approach, Soc
& Leg Stud 3,1:121-47 [85]
Sigmund Freud, cited by Sadger (Febr. 5th, 1913) Minutes of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, 188, p158-61 [86]
Róheim, G. (1934) The Riddle of the
Sphinx. London, Hogarth, chapter 3; Róheim, G. (1934) The evolution of
culture, Int J Psycho-Anal 15:387-418; Róheim, G. (1940) Society and the
individual, Psychoanal Quart
9:526-45; Róheim, G. (1941) The psycho-analytic interpretation of culture, Int J Psycho-Anal 22:147-69 / Int Zeitschr f Psychoanal & Imago
26:9-31; Róheim, G. (1942) The origin and function of culture: I. Delayed
infancy, Psychoanal Rev 29:131-64;
Róheim, G. (1943) The Origin and Function
of Culture. New York: Nervous and Mental Disease Monographs 69, esp. p3-39 [87]
Cf. Enculturation Curricula, Abuse Categorisation and the
Globalist/Culturalist Project: The
Genital Reference. Unpublished¨
paper by the author [88]
A compartment of less relevance to the cross-cultural case include paediatric
associations of psychoneuroendocrinological deficit and sexual behaviour
symptomatology. For a review, see author's manuscript "Paradoxia Sexualis". [89]
Feierman, J. R. (1994) Ethology and sexology, in Bullough, V. L. &
Bullough, B. (Eds.) Human Sexuality: An
Encyclopedia. New York & London: Garland Publ. Inc. From online ed. [90]
See also preparatory review material on aminal sexual behaviour development. [91]
Morris, D. (1967) The Naked Ape. 1986
ill. Dutch ed. Bruna & Zn., p59-60 [92]
Morris, D. (1977) Manwatching. 1987
Dutch ed. Amsterdam/Brussel: Elsevier, p270 [93]
Kinsey's [et al.] use of ethnologia was
biased to demonstrate the precocious (notably 1953:p108n8) and thus counterbalance (oppose) Western
discourse. Levine (, A. J. (1994) 'Errorgenous' Zones? Kinsey's Sexual
Ideology, The World & I Online,
9, p426) notes: "Kinsey repeatedly implied that the sexual customs of the West
were unique, or nearly so, and based wholly on arbitrary assumptions. His vague
references to anthropological data were highly selective. In his eyes, "the
reactions of our social organization to the various types of behavior are the
things that need study". Kinsey declared that mores originated neither in
accumulated experience nor in scientific examination and objectively gathered
data. The sociologist and the anthropologist find the origins of such customs
in ignorance and superstition, and in the attempts of every group to set itself
apart from its neighbors". [94]
Lee, J. A. (1980) The politics of child sexuality, in Samson, J. M. (Ed) Enfance et Sexualité. Montréal [etc.]:
Éditions Études Vivantes, p56-70; cf. Lee, J. A. (1982) Three paradigms of
childhood, Can Rev Sociol & Anthropol
19,4:591-608; Adams (1980) Sexual freedom for children versus adult sexual
abuse of children: description of a community action program, in Samson, J. M.
(Ed) Enfance et Sexualité. Montréal [etc.]: Éditions Études Vivantes, p676-81 ;
Millett, K. (1984) Beyond politics? Children and
sexuality, in Vance, C. S. (Ed.) Pleasure
and Danger. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, p217-24; Wells (1977) Le Droit de Votre Enfant à la Sexualité;
Youth Liberation (1979) Children and sexuality: a youth libertaion view, Gay Insurgent 4-5:22-4; Youth Liberation
(1981) Children and sex, in Tsang, D. (Ed.) The
Age Taboo. London: Gay Men's Press, p46-52; Blasius, M. & Millett, K.
(1980) Sexual Revolution and the Liberation of Children, Semiotexte special #2. Reprinted in Tsang, D. (Ed., 1981) The Age Taboo. London: Gay Men's Press,
p80-3, and Paidika 2,4[8](1992):83-5;
Aigner & Canterwall (1984) Barnas
Kjaerlighetliv; Archard, D. (1993) Children:
Rights and Childhood. London [etc.]: Routledge; Brongersma, E. (1977) On
loving relations human and humane, Childhood
Rights 1:1; Calderone, M. (1977) Sexual rights, SIECUS Report;
Constantine, L. L. (1979) Sexual rights of children: implications of a radical
theory, in Cook, M. & Wilson, G. D. (Eds.) Love and Attraction. Oxford [etc.]: Pergamon, p503-8; Constantine,
L. L. (1979) The sexual rights of children: implications of a radical
perspective, in Constantine, L. & Martinson, F. (Eds., 1981) Children and Sex: New Findings, New
Perspectives. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., p255-63; Farson, R. (1974) Birthrights. New York: Macmillan; Foster
& Freed (1972) A bill of rights for children, Fam Law Quart 6:343-75; Guyon, R. (1948/50) The child and sexual
activity [2 parts], Int J Sexol
2,1:26-34/3,4:237-47/4,1:51; Holt, J. C. (1974) Escape from Childhood. New
York: E. P. Dutton, p270-6; Kirkendall (1980) The sexual rights of children and
youth, AEP Journal 5,4:38-9;
Kirkendall & Moglia (1979) The Sexual
Rights of Children and Youth. Paper presented at the 5th International
Symposium on Sex Education, Tel Aviv; Ives (1986) Children's sexual rights, in
Franklin, B. (Ed.) The Rights of Children.
Oxford [etc.]: Blackwell, p144-62; Knudsen (1987) Sex in childhood: aversion,
abuse or right, J Sex Educ & Ther
13,1:16-24; Martinson, F. (1990) Current legal status of erotic and sexual
rights of children, in Perry, M. E. (Ed.)
Handbook of Sexology. Vol. 7. Amsterdam: Elsevier, p113-24; Ramer, L. V.
(1973) Your Sexual Bill of Rights.
New York: Expositions Press; A New Bill of
Sexual Rights and Responsibilities, The Humanist,
January/February, 1976 [http://www.americanhumanist.org/about/sexual-rights.html];
Haroian, L. ([2000]) Child Sexual Development, Electronic J Hum Sex 3, Feb. 1
[http://www.ejhs.org/volume3/Haroian/body.htm];
Roberts, E. J. (Ed., 1980) Childhood Sexual Learning: The Unwritten
Curriculum. Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger Pub. Co. A convention on children,
sex and human rights was held at the Faculty of Laws, Queen Mary and Westfield
College, University of London on April 3rd, 1998. [95]
Evans, D. T. (1993) Sexual Citizenship.
New York: Routledge, esp. p209-39 [96]
Op.cit. [98]
World Association for Sexology (2000), Scand
J Sexol 3,1:27-8. Check here: http://www.hisbdsm.com/freedom/sexual_rights_kinsey.htm [99]
Check here: http://www.siecus.org/inter/inte0006.html
or here: http://www.sexarchive.info/GESUND/ARCHIV/DECL13E.HTM [101]
http://www.ippf.org/pdf/charter1.pdf.
For another example, see East, P. &
Adams, J. (2002) Sexual
Assertiveness and Adolescents' Sexual Rights, Perspectives on
Sexual & Reproductive Health 34,4:212-3 [www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/3421202.pdf] [103]
See for instance 5 consecutive reports on the implementation of the agenda for
action adopted at the world congress against commercial sexual exploitation of
children, Stockholm, Sweden [http://www.ecpat.net/eng/Ecpat_inter/projects/monitoring/monitoring.asp] [104]
WHO (1975) Education and Treatment in Human Sexuality: The Training of
Health Professionals. Report of a WHO Meeting. Technical Report Series Nr.
572 [http://www.sexarchive.info/GESUND/ARCHIV/WHOR.HTM] [105]
Pan American Health Organization, World Health Organization & World
Association for Sexology (2001) Promotion of Sexual Health: Recommendations
for Action. Proceedings of a Regional Consultation, Antigua Guatemala,
Guatemala, May 19-22, 2000 [http://www.sexarchive.info/GESUND/ARCHIV/FIRST.HTM] [106]
The WHO Department of Reproductive Health and Research (RHR) was created in
November 1998 by joining the UNDP/UNFPA/WHO/World Bank Special Programme of
Research, Development and Research Training in Human Reproduction (HRP) and the
former WHO Division of Reproductive Health (Technical Support) (RHT). [107]
Department of Reproductive Health and Research (RHR), Jejeebhoy,
S. J., Shah, I. H. & Yount, K. M. (1999) Sexual and reproductive health of adolescents, Annual Technical Report, p91-104, at p92 [http://www.who.int/reproductive-health/publications/HRP_ATRs/1999/pdf/adolescents91-104.pdf];
Jejeebhoy, S., Shah, I. H. & Bott, S. R. (1998) Sexual development, maturation and growth, Annual Technical Report, p69-79, at p80 [http://www.who.int/reproductive-health/publications/HRP_ATRs/1998/sexual.pdf];
Jejeebhoy, S.J., Shah, I. H., Bathija, H. & Warriner,
I. (2000) Adolescent reproductive
health, Annual Technical Report, p87-98, at p88 [http://www.who.int/reproductive-health/publications/RHR_01_11_annual_technical_report_2000/ATR2000-fulldocu.pdf];
Jejeebhoy, S., Bathija, H., Shah, I. H. & Warriner,
I. K. (2001) Promoting sexual and reproductive health of adolescents, Annual Technical Report, p121-33 [http://www.who.int/reproductive-health/publications/RHR_02_05/Section_5.PDF] [108]
Money, J. (1982) Sex: How young is too young? Br J Sexual Med 9,oct:5-6 [109]
This is not just an impulsive statement. Money ([1983]): "[P]rohibition,
prevention, and punishment in children [of species-typical
erotosexual rehearsal play] amounts to what is, indeed, a form of child abuse"
(p19). See Money, J. (1983) Sexosophy & sexology, philosophy & science:
2 halves, 1 whole [Part I], Br J Sexual
Med 10, April:16, 18-9 [110]
Cf. Corrêa, S. (nd/1997) From Reproductive Health to Sexual Rights:
Achievements and Future Challenges. Paper at http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/Organizations/healthnet/reprorights/docs/correa.html
/ Reproductive Health Matters 10 [113]
Frayser, S. G. (1994b) Defining normal childhood sexuality: An anthropological
approach, Ann Rev Sex Res 5:173217 [114]
Walkerdine, V. (1993) Beyond developmentalism? Theory & Psychol 3,4:451-69 [115]
Burman, E. (1995) "What is it?" Masculinity and femininity in cultural
representations of childhood, in Wilkinson, S. & Kitzinger, C. (Eds.) Feminism and Discourse: Psychological
Perspectives. London: Sage, p49-67 [116]
Thorne, B. (1987) Re-Visioning
Women and Social Change: Where are the Children? Gender & Society 1,1:85-109 [117]
Okami, P. & Pendleton, L. (1994) Theorizing Sexuality: Seeds of a
Transdisciplinary Paradigm Shift, Current
Anthropol 35,1:85-91 [118]
Broude, G. (1981) The cultural management of sexuality, in Munroe, R. L.,
Munroe, R. & Whiting, B. (Eds.) Handbook
of Cross-Cultural Human Development. New York: Garland STPM, p633-73 [119]
Rademakers, J., Laan, M. & Straver, C. J. (2000) Studying children's
sexuality from the child's perspective, J
Psychol & Hum Sex 12,1-2:49-60 [120] Included in the present volume as Appendix III. [121]
Imbasciati, A. (nd) Why Sex and Pleasure?
Milan Psychoanalysis
Centre. Online article, available at http://www.alfapi.com/imbasciati/WHY_SEX.htm [122]
E.g., Malone, Ch. P. (1999) Ordering childhood: Figures of childhood,
pedagogical address, love of the world and the mis-education of desire, DAI-A
59(8-A):2899 [123]
Walkerdine, V., Dudfield, A. &
Studdert, D. (Oct., 1999) Sex and
Violence: Regulating Childhood at the Turn of the Millenium, Paper
presented at the conference Research in
Childhood. Sociology, Culture and History, University of Southern Denmark; Walkerdine,
V. (2001) Safety and danger: Childhood, sexuality, and space at the end of the
millennium, in Hultqvist, K. & Dahlberg, G. (Eds.) Governing the Child in the New Millennium. New York, NY:
RoutledgeFalmer, p15-34 [124]
Appadurai, A. (1996) Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press. As cited by Gatter, Ph. (Febr., 2001) Global Theories and Sexuality. Online
paper. |