RN23 - Sexuality
A safe space for sharing original, challenging perspectives on sexuality.
In contrast to the long history of medical and psychological interest in sexuality, the sociological understanding of sexuality is a relatively new phenomenon, spanning a history of some 40 years. However during this time the sociology of sexuality, through both empirical research and theoretical writing, has become an important feature of academic work at both a national and international level. This work has enabled sociology to develop critical alternatives to the essentialism present in mainstream research on sexualities. Similarly, significant links have been made between sexuality and other salient social identities, for example gender, race, class and nationality. Whilst acknowledging the importance of biology, contemporary sociologists of sexuality prioritize the relationship between the individual and society to show the ways in which sexual desires, practices, identities, and attitudes are conceptualized, categorized, deployed, and ultimately regulated through the social institutions and practices of different societies. These areas, together with issues relating to the theorisation of sexuality alongside methodological developments, form important foci for this research network.
In its consolidation as an academic space for scholars working in this area to discuss current research in this area, the network has become in these years a safe space for sharing original, challenging perspectives on sexuality, and – not least – a warm space for pleasurable human relations.
Facebook: https://de-de.facebook.com/esarn23/
RN23 Midterm 2019 Sociological explorations of sexuality in Europe: bodies, practices, and resistance in troubled times
Institute of Sociology, Jagiellonian University, Cracow, Poland UJ
This Midterm Conference of the ESA Sexuality Research Network wants to bring the different strands of sociological and interdisciplinary research on sexuality together, and establish dialogue between the research communities that have developed around them in Europe. In these challenging times for critical research, we need to preserve and develop spaces to put the sociological imagination at work - as critique of mainstream essentialist knowledge production on sexuality and sexual health and as critique of the hierarchies of knowledge in the competitive neoliberal academia.
The goal of this Midterm Conference is to provide a space for exploring bodies, practices, and forms of resistance, and for decolonizing sexuality studies, in an effort to detect centre-periphery dynamics in research agendas, language, concepts, and methods. We would like to discuss how these dynamics are related to increasing transnational mobility and precarization of research work, and to the relations between academia and social movements as sites of knowledge production.
Aiming at geographical, theoretical, methodological and thematic diversity, we invite interested scholars to submit proposals exploring centres and margins in:
Bodies and practices - (un)gendering bodies and positionalities, transexuality, transgender, non-binary - a/sexual and intimate practices - queer and heteronormative tendencies in kinship, families and networks of care - consensual/ethical non-monogamies and affective networks
Intersections and mobilities - intersections of sexuality with disability studies, crip perspectives and fat studies - intersections of sexuality with race studies - migrations, mobility and boundary struggles
Spaces and economies - sexuality and geography/locality/geo-temporality - sexuality, class dynamics and shifting hegemonies - sexual markets and sex work(s) - neoliberal academia and the challenges to sexuality research
Governing and resisting - sexual governmentality in Europe and its challenges between backlash and prefigurative politics - sexual/intimate citizenship and how the law affects the choice over bodies and relationships - claims from movements and grassroot associations pro- or against sexual rights (LGBT, abortion, medical assisted reproduction, gender education, sex workers rights groups…) - sexual health and the medicalization of sexuality - sexual/gender education and queer pedagogies - media and cultural representations and misrecognitions
See the website: www.esa-rn23-sexuality.confer.uj.edu.pl
Important dates:
30th August 2018 - deadline for submission of abstracts and bio notes
15 October 2018 - information about selection outcomes
20th October - 1st December 2018 online registration open
RN23 Biennial Report for 2015-2017