Sexual Fields: Toward a Sociology of Collective Sexual Life

Abstract

In the last decade, a coterie of sociologists has proposed a Bourdieu-inspired field approach for understanding collective sexual life -- bars, clubs, restaurants, resorts, parties, social events, parks, meeting places, geographic areas, online sites, and so on -- where individuals search for and evaluate potential partners. Here, the key sociological question focuses on the extent to which desirability is produced and organized by macro-level fields. Edited by Adam Green, Sexual Fields collects the extensive theorizing and somewhat circumscribed empirical investigations of key scholars working within this theoretical tradition. Specifically, this scholarship seeks to flesh out and refine a sexual fields framework, which posits, not surprisingly, a macro-level account of what makes people sexually attractive to one another. In this story, desirability is structured, a product of field effects, as opposed to reflecting aggregations of individual-level preferences, which is the position of market-based approaches, the nonsociological villains lurking in the background. This volume will be of interest not only to sexuality researchers interested in field perspectives, but also to scholars working from other theoretical traditions, particularly scripting and choice perspectives, who will be able to see familiar patterns of sexual desire recast in an alternative theoretical light. I expect adherents and outsiders alike will find this edited volume to be useful for evaluating the utility of this approach. The sexual fields approach, as summarized by Green in the Introduction and Chapter One, seeks to account for the existence of different sexual fields, on the one hand, and to argue that patterns of desirability within them are products of field effects, on ...