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The Social Construction of Sexuality (Contemporary Societies) By Steven Seidman ( W. W. Norton & Company )
Release Date: 2003-08-01
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Product Description
Though attitudes toward sexuality have changed greatly over the past two centuries, it is still taken for granted that a distinction can be made between natural and unnatural manifestations of sexuality. In The Social Construction of Sexuality, Steven Seidman questions such assumptions and investigates the political and social consequences of privileging certain sexual practices and identities while stigmatizing others. Addressing a range of topics from gay and lesbian identities to sex work, he delves into issues of social control that inform popular beliefs and moral standards. The Social Construction of Sexuality widens the public discussion of the morality and politics of sexuality. With this insightful exploration of society's effect on our sexual choices, Seidman once again makes a significant contribution to the sociological study of sexuality. The Social Construction of Sexuality is part of the Contemporary Societies series, Series Editor, Jeffrey Alexander. This series marks the coming of age of a generation and a discipline. It has been half a century since the world's leading sociologists engaged in a collective effort to make their cutting-edge thinking and research so concise and so widely accessible. What has changed in the meantime? Just about everything! Theoretical hegemony has given way to plurality. Disengagement has given way to relevance, and a provincial focus on America has opened up to the currents of globalization. Running through all these transformations has been the cultural turn, the recognition that meaning dynamics-codes, narratives, metaphors, values, and beliefs-remain central features of even the most contemporary societies. In this series, the world's leading sociologists show how these developments have transformed their specialties. They do so by engaging a genre that has almost disappeared from the social sciences today-the essay. Well-written, clear-minded, and elegant, these brief compositions are major creative endeavors in their own right, even as they bring the ideas of the world's most advanced thinkers into the world of the lay reader.
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 Seidman and Theory ( wolfpupmaui )
This book was assigned to me during a Human Sexuality class, and I must say that it was a great introduction to social constructionist theories of sexuality. It reads rather well, and gives insightful interviews and discussions about how sexuality is perceived in our society. I'd highly recommend it if your new to sexual theory/women's studies.
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 Nice Intro to Theory, Light on Empirical Curiosities ( cknoettg )
The Social Construction of Sexuality is an excellent INTRODUCTION to sociological theorizing on sexuality. The book is a teaser, in a sense, because it leaves the reader eager to read past theorists for themselves or explore individual topics in greater detail. Ideal for UNDERgraduate sociology courses. A succinct, well explicated, quick read.
My main problem with the book is that it is so heavy on theory that interesting empirical niceties have been ignored. If using this text for a "Social Construction of Sexuality" course, I would reccomend an anthology or reader with empirical findings to supplement the pure theory found in the book.
Another criticism of the book is that it follows the lead of too many recent "social constructionists" in explaining how categories of knowledge are socially conceived. I prefer a different strain of empirical social constructionist work - a type best executed in Frankenberg's "The Social Construction of Whiteness." In the original work by Berger & Luckmann, as well as the Frankenberg book, an attempt is made to trace the social construction of categories of meaning throughout the life cycle of the individual or group. In Seidman's work, he resorts to broad historical generalities which amount to male-good, female-bad, and homosexual-bad, hetrosexual-good.
The book is worth the read, but I don't think a reader will walk away convinced that a social constructionist approach is the best one to use when approaching sexuality. Use the book as a quick way to survey the sociological literature on the subject, and move on.
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