Sexuality: Knowledge and individuality

Abstract

This article results from a literature review carried out in the context of a doctoral research in sociology, whose aim was to identify changes and continuities in the ways of living and representing sexuality, in the last decades, in Portugal. In particular, we have sought to explore two fundamental ways of conceptualizing sexuality: first, sexuality as a legitimate field of research, and then, sexuality a sociological object, in particular. This exercise results in the idea that, as a dimension of social life, sexuality reflects wider social changes, being, in contemporary societies, a stage of important identity achievements and a place, par excellence, of a new order of individualization and pleasure.