Sociology of Sex and Sexuality [Paperback]

A Sociology of Sex and Sexuality offers an historical sociological analysis of ideas about expressions of sexual desire, combining both primary and secondary historical and theoretical material with original research and popular imagery in the contemporary context.

While some reference is made to the sexual ideology of Classical Antiquity and of early Christianity, the major focus of the book is on the development of ideas about sex and sexuality in the context of modernity. It questions the widespread assumption that the anxieties and fears associated with old sexual mores have been overcome in the late twentieth century context, and asks whether the discourses of Queer sexual politics have successfully fractured the binary categories of heterosexuality and homosexuality.

A Sociology of Sex and Sexuality will be of interest to students in the fields of sociology, sexual history, gender studies and cultural studies.Series editor's preface
The specialness of sex
Sex and modernity
Enlightenment pleasures and bourgeois anxieties
The science of sex
Planning sex
Pleasurable sex
Liberalizing heterosexuality?
Subverting heterosexuality
Final thoughts and questions
Index.
Gail Hawkes was born in Melbourne, Australia, where she initially pursued a career in nursing. Her undergraduate and doctoral studies, undertaken over the last ten years at the Victoria University of Manchester, concentrated in the area of historical sociology. She is currently employed as Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the Manchester Metropolitan University.