Sociology of sexuality, a reprint of the book by Michel Bozon (Armand Colin, Coll ” 128 “, 2009, 2002)
Undeniably, it is produced, in the last decades, a profound transformation in the sexual behaviors, in parallel to other transformations in the domain of the family and of the couple. The growth of social science research on sexuality is precisely linked to a question on the scope and meaning of these transformations. The work of Michel Bozon, Sociology of sexuality, which is currently undergoing its second edition, is the fruit of this perspective on sexuality, the latter being defined as a ” sphere-specific but non-self-governing of human behavior, which includes acts, relations, and meanings “, where the “non-sexual gives meaning to the sexual” (p7).
To do a sociology of sexuality, it is first to remember that there is sexuality as socially constructed. Any sexual contact only exists inside frames mental, historical and cultural environment that produce its possibility and its significance, which implies that “the limits even of the sexual are culturally and socially transformative” (p8). Michel Bozon noted elsewhere in the article, ” intimate Orientations and constructions of the self. Plurality and differences in expressions of sexuality “[1] “Recognizing the diversity of experiences in the field of sexuality is not to celebrate an alleged efflorescence and release of sexual identities, outside of any framework, context or” device “, which would reduce the weight of the social construction. Even the forms seem to be the most idiosyncratic and the most new sexual behaviours are the result of a social development, which enters inevitably into the universe of socio-cultural, and in classes of trajectories biographical “.
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[1] Bozon, Michel, ” the intimate Orientations and constructions of the self. Plurality and differences in expressions of sexuality “, in Contemporary Societies, n°41, 2001, p11-40