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Key Words sexuality, identity, globalization, intersectionality, queer studies
Abstract We identify three trends in the recent sociology of sexuality. First, we examine how queer theory has influenced many sociologists whose empirical work observes sexuality in areas generally thought to be asexual. These sociologists also elaborate queer theory's challenge to sexual dichotomizing and trace the workings of power through sexual categories. Second, we look at how sociologists bring sexuality into conversation with the black feminist notion of "intersectionality" by examining the nature and effects of sexuality among multiple and intersecting systems of identity and oppression. A third trend in the sociology of sexuality has been to explore the relationships between sexuality and political economy in light of recent market transformations. In examining these trends, we observe the influence of globalization studies and the contributions of sociologists to understanding the role of sexuality in global processes. We conclude with the contributions sociologists of sexuality make toward understanding other social processes and with the ongoing need to study sexuality itself.
INTRODUCTION
Over the past decade, the sociology of sexualities has experienced growth that is at once queer and phenomenal. In its infancy and early childhood, the sociology of sexualities was mainly the province of scholars interested in "deviance" of one sort or another, and especially of the homosexual sort: the coping mechanisms of discredited and discreditable sexual beings (e.g., Leznoff & Westley 1956, Reiss 1961) and the "deviant sexual underworld of hustlers, prostitutes, prisons, tearooms, baths, and bars" (Seidman 1996, p. 7; see, e.g., Humphreys 1970). As it came of age with sexual liberation movements in the 1970s and 1980s and a budding interdisciplinary field of gay and lesbian studies, the sociology of sexualities became more interested in sexuality as a basis of community and political life. Ethnographers documented life in gay and lesbian communities (e.g., Krieger 1983, Levine 1979, Newton 1972), political sociologists pulled lessons from lesbian and gay movements (e.g., Adam 1987, Altman 1982, Ponse 1978, Taylor & Whittier 1992) and studied the form and impact of sexuality-based discrimination (e.g., Herek 1989, Jenness & Broad 1994, Schneider 1987), and survey researchers continued to demonstrate the prevalence of both antigay sentiment and non-normative sexual practices (e.g., Klassen et al. 1989, Laumann et al. 1994, Reiss &...