Researching sex and intimacy in
contemporary life:
An interdisciplinary symposium
July 18th 2014
School of Law, Politics and Sociology
University of Sussex
Abstracts &
Speaker biographies
Introduction
Dr Ben Fincham, University of Sussex
Ben Fincham has been involved with developing projects on 'mobilities', qualitative
approaches to studying work in unstable employment environments and the relationship
between work and mental health. He has worked on gendered aspects of suicide and death
as well as gender and research methods. He is currently writing a book for Palgrave
Macmillan entitled 'The Sociology of Fun'. He is also developing projects on sex and sexuality
in the Centre for Gender Studies.
Challenging Narratives, Intimate Lives: Sex Workers' Love Stories
Professor Andrea Cornwall, University of Sussex
Based on love stories told by members of the Indian sex workers’ collective VAMP (Veshya
Anyay Mukti Parishad, Sex Workers’ Freedom from Injustice Collective) and their lovers, this
paper draws on a project that sought to explore a dimension of sex workers’ lives that is
often neglected: their affective relationships. Women’s tales of lingering memories of first
love, of laying down conditions that men who want to be with them have to meet and of
lasting companionship, are coupled with the narratives of their lovers, who speak of the
depth of their love and care. Violence is no stranger in women's relationship histories, nor
other modes of coercion and control, and yet what they reveal profoundly challenges
pervasive normative narratives about sex work purveyed in the western media and by the
rescue industry. Money plays a part in these stories, as a means that sustains the status quo
as sex workers use their resources to keep their lovers' marriages afloat, children schooled,
families fed and that challenges conventional relations of power, where the client-turnedlover becomes the cherished dependent rather than the provider. Together, these stories of
love and life are a powerful antidote to reductionist representations of male predators and
female victims.
Andrea Cornwall is a political anthropologist, and is currently Head of the School of Global
Studies at the University of Sussex. Director of the Pathways international research
programme consortium, she has worked on questions of gender and sexuality, radical
democracy and human rights. Her recent publications include Feminisms, Empowerment and
Development: Changing Women's Lives (Cornwall and Edwards eds. Zed, 2013) and Women,
Sexuality and the Political Power of Pleasure (Jolly, Cornwall and Hawkins, eds. Zed, 2012)
An Examination of the Interaction between
Cyberqueer Techno-practice and Offline Gay Male Experience
in Contemporary China
Tianyang Zhou, University of Sussex
This study examines the interaction between cyberqueer techno-practice and offline gay
male experience in contemporary China. As such, it addresses the research questions how
gay men in contemporary China experience possibilities and constraints in their offline and
online life. This study uses complementary methods in order to capture this complexity
between online practices and offline experiences of gay men, in which the combination of an
online survey, semi-structured interviews, and simple observations serve to deepen and
enrich one another. The findings suggest that new media plays an increasingly vital role in
Chinese gay men’s everyday life, which makes a great contribution to self-representation,
community-making, as well as romantic and erotic practices. Meanwhile, the
interconnectedness between cyberqueer techno-practice and offline gay experience reveals
a more comprehensive picture of Chinese gay male culture.
As cyberspace was considered to be more flexible in that it transcends the real world, it
seemed to be the ultimate manifestation of queer theory. The term ‘cyberqueer’ refers to
the alliances between queer experiences and computer-mediated worlds, which stresses the
independence of the two concepts in both daily practices and academic research. With the
development of mobile telecommunications technologies, through using GPS technologies,
gay chat and dating mobile applications can show their users the guys closest to them who
are using it, which appears to be fast and convenient. Cyberqueer techno-practices play a
vital role in the gay men’s life in contemporary China but since much more research has
focused on offline gay experiences, far too little attention has been paid to the influence of
ICTs on Chinese gay man’s life in the Internet age.
Tianyang Zhou is a Doctoral candidate in Media and Cultural Studies, Media and Film
department, MFM.
2012-2013: MA in Globalization and Communications, Merit, University of Leicester.
2007-2011: BA (Hons) in Biotechnology, First Class, Beijing Normal University.
Editor and journalist for UK Chinese Journal in London.
Intersections between identity and practices of intimacy in asexual lives: freedom,
foreclosure and resolution
Dr Susie Scott and Dr Elizabeth McDonnell, University of Sussex
This paper will present preliminary findings from a qualitative study that explored issues
around identity and intimacy with a group of participants who in different ways identified
with the term ‘asexual’. Data was collected through biographical narrative interviews (n=50)
and 2 week semi -structured diaries (n=27). The ideas presented here are from the early
stages of analysis and based on the interview rather than the diary data. This paper will
consider the ways in which an ‘asexual identity’ (and the interactions around this), shape the
practices of intimacy available to individuals but also how in turn, experiences of, and
desires around intimacy and intimate relationships challenge, affirm and develop asexual
identities. Initial themes of foreclosure, freedom and working (successfully and
unsuccessfully) at pragmatic resolutions in romantic/special relationships will be discussed.
Susie Scott is a Reader in Sociology at the University of Sussex, with research interests in
self-identity and interaction, Goffman’s dramaturgical theory and Symbolic Interactionism.
She is the author of Shyness and Society (Palgrave 2007), Making Sense of Everyday Life
(Polity 2009) and Total Institutions and Reinvented Identities (Palgrave 2011), and is
currently completing her latest book Negotiating Identity (Polity 2015). She has also
published empirical research articles on topics including shyness and social interaction,
identities in mental health, total institutions and swimming pool behaviour.
Liz McDonnell has worked as a qualitative researcher for a number of years across a range of
areas e.g. health, family/parenting, education and disability. Her PhD explored fertility
decision making using narrative research methods. She also teaches data analysis using
NVivo 10
Enduring Love? The Sticky Stuff that Counts
Dr Jacqui Gabb, The Open University
The Enduring Love? study (ESRC RES-062-23-3056, 2011-2013) is exploring what it means
and feels like to be a couple in contemporary Britain. Shifting the emphasis away from media
hyperbole and unsubstantiated claims about what everyone is doing, and policy–
professional practice emphasis on the ‘stressors’ which may contribute to relationship
breakdown, we are focusing on the things that help people sustain their ‘enduring’
relationships. Drawing on survey (n=5494) and qualitative (n=50) data this paper will explore
which factors count in shaping relationship experience, and, in particular, the in/significance
of sex and sexuality. Survey findings indicate that gender, parenthood and sexuality are
significant factors in shaping couple relationship experience. For example, non-heterosexual
participants are the most positive about their relationship; in heterosexual relationships,
parenthood appears to have an adverse impact on sexual desire. However, differences in
sexual frequency and desire do not per se affect perceptions of relationship quality. To tease
apart these survey patterns, I draw on rich multiple methods data to explore how couples
variously work to fit themselves into the ideal or extend ‘the story’ to fit their lives. These
data provoke us to rethink the couple (dyadic) relationship and its slippage into and
conflation with cultural understandings of the heteronormative ‘couple norm’.
Interests centre on interdisciplinary psycho-social approaches for researching and theorizing
intimacy and family life, with particular emphasis on the contemporary dynamics of policy,
professional practice and personal relationships. Longstanding interest in the experiences
and meanings of gender and sexuality in same-sex parent families. Most recently, in
collaboration with Janet Fink, she has been investigating how adults experience, understand
and sustain long-term couple relationships (www.enduringlove.co.uk). This large scale ESRCfunded study Enduring Love? Couple Relationships in the 21st Century (RES-062-23-3056)
has received widespread national and international attention. Previous research projects
include Fragile Fathering: Negotiating Intimacy and Risk in Parenting Practice (British
Academy); Behind Closed Doors: Researching Intimacy and Sexuality in Families (ESRC);
Perverting Motherhood? Sexuality and Lesbian Parent Families (ESRC). She is co-editor of
the Open Space section in the Policy Press journal, Families, Relationships, Societies and CoDirector of the Families, Relationships and Communities (CCIG) Programme at The Open
University. She has published widely in the area of family and intimate relationships. Her
book Researching Intimacy in Families (2008, Palgrave Macmillan) won the BSA Philip
Abrams Memorial Prize 2009. Her forthcoming book, written in collaboration with Janet
Fink, is Couple Relationships in the 21st Century (2015, Palgrave Macmillan).
Jacqui.Gabb@open.ac.uk
‘Intimacy with sexual objects: women and sex toys’
Rachel Wood, University of Sussex
This paper will examine the ways in which a range of objects marketed and sold as
‘sex toys’ are mobilised in the construction of sexual intimacies with the self and
others. Drawing upon my qualitative doctoral research data on UK women’s
experiences of sex shopping, I argue that sexual commodities such as dildos,
vibrators and BDSM accessories enable and disable a range of possible sexual
identities, desires and practices for women.
Whilst the design and marketing of these commodities often constructs female
sexuality in heteronormative, heterosexist and phallocentric ways, women’s
everyday use of sex toys reveals practices of adaptation and critique, demonstrating
the complexity of meaning that can accrue to material objects as they become
integrated into everyday intimate repertoires. Sex toys, when used alone as part of
women’s auto-erotic practices, can be understood as part of a regulatory regime of
sexual self-improvement through consumption regularly promoted by postfeminist
sex advice in magazines such as Cosmopolitan. And yet women’s mundane
masturbation routines highlight narratives of ‘favourite’ vibrators and their
adaptation to suit sexual preference that appear in part to exceed this commoditised
understanding of sexuality.
Similarly, the marketing of sex toys to ‘spice up’ long term sexual partnerships
requires women to undertake emotional labour in order to maintain and nurture an
ideal relationship. Yet the ways in which these objects can become integrated into
sexual relationships as mediators for, or communicators and symbols of desire and
pleasure demonstrates the way in which sexual intimacies will always partially
exceed the logic of the marketplace. Conversely, depending on their framing and
use, sexual commodities can also be positioned as obstacles that block ‘authentic’
intimacy by intervening in the closeness between bodies. Sex toys, then, reveal the
complex ways in which all intimacies are partly constructed through drawing upon
our material surroundings, showing how limitations and possibilities for intimacy are
shaped by commodity culture.
Rachel Wood is currently writing up her PhD in Gender Studies at the University of Sussex
based in the department of Media Film and Music, where she is also employed as a tutorial
fellow. Her PhD research focuses on UK women's experiences of sex shops and the products
they sell. Her research on lingerie has previously been published in the Journal of Gender
Studies, and she is co-editing and contributing to a double special issue of Porn Studies on
porn consumers and audiences, due in early 2015.
‘Trying hard when neither of us wants to’: sex and intimacy following miscarriage
Dr Petra Boynton, UCL
While still considered a taboo topic by many, miscarriage is very common with an estimated
1:4 pregnancies ending in this way. Research on the impact of pregnancy loss is still very
much in development and generally focuses on physical and psychological reactions to
miscarriage, ignoring issues around sex and intimacy in relationships.
How people cope after miscarriage varies. For some it’s an experience that brings people
together – both in intimate relationships or with friends and family offering care. Others find
the miscarriage causes relationships problems and in some cases separation or divorce.
Problems may be magnified in cases where people are using assisted conception,
experiencing recurrent miscarriage, or encounter problems within healthcare systems that
exacerbate their loss.
Where people want to try again for another baby the pressure to get pregnant and have sex
with a background of loss, fear, grief and possible trauma can affect both the physical and
psychological aspects of sex. Discussions of how and when to resume sex or fertility
treatments can be confusing, particularly within healthcare where such discussions are
overlooked through conversations about managing the miscarriage.
In this presentation I would like to review what we do know and highlight what we don’t
about sex and intimacy following miscarriage. Particularly addressing the methodological
limitations of research on this topic and ideas for more varied approaches to researching
and discussing sex and intimacy against the backdrop of pregnancy loss. I will be drawing on
my recent research with the Miscarriage Association about partners’ experiences of
pregnancy loss and my wider work on pregnancy, parenthood, sex and relationships to
inform a general conversation about how best to answer intimacy questions about
relationships post-miscarriage in practical ways for diverse groups of people.
I’m a Senior Lecturer in International Health Care Research at UCL where I teach healthcare
staff from across the world how to find and use evidence. My research is community led
with a focus on the Global South and includes assessing advice giving in the media;
epidemiological research on sexual problems; and modernising sexual health, youth and
maternity services.
My current projects are From Bump To Grind
aimed at improving sex and relationships
advice for those trying to conceive, who are pregnant, or are parents. Partners Too
a
storytelling project with the Miscarriage Association with partners of women who have
experienced pregnancy loss. And No Star To Guide Me building resources for media advicegivers worldwide, based partly on my 12 years experience of being an Agony Aunt. I
currently write a weekly advice column in The Telegraph.
Web: www.drpetra.co.uk Email: info@drpetra.co.uk Twitter: @drpetra
https://www.facebook.com/groups/frombumptogrind
Negotiating intimacy, equality and sexuality in the transition to parenthood
Dr Charlotte Faircloth, University of Kent
Whilst both ‘parenting’ and ‘intimacy’ have been explored extensively in recent
sociological and anthropological work, their intersections in the context of family life
remain curiously absent. This paper presents findings from some on-going research
with parents in London, which investigates how the care of children, and particularly
the feeding of infants, affects the parental couple’s ‘intimate’ relationship.
British culture has recently witnessed a turn toward a new construction of the ‘good
father’ as a means of countering perceived inequalities in parenting. Fatherhood has
become politicised as some claim better work-life balance policies are needed to
make sure fathers can be more involved with parenting. Yet at the same time that
fathers are encouraged to be ‘involved’ in parenting, women are advised to
breastfeed their babies ‘exclusively for six months’, and are those who typically take
extended periods of time away from work (even in societies where shared parental
leave is offered, as is currently the case in the UK).
The research addresses the contradiction between styles of parenting which argue
for mother-child attachment and calls for gender equality and paternal engagement.
Who does the caring, why, and with what implications for gendered ‘identity-work’?
How, in particular for the focus of this symposium, does embodied care on the part
of the mother (with the child or children sharing the marital bed in the early stages
of breastfeeding) affect the intimate and sexual life of the couple, the emotional
trajectory of ‘love’ between partners themselves, and that with their children?
This paper will introduce a discussion of some of the challenges families may face in
maintaining their philosophical choices around parenting practices, exploring the
relationship between choice and accountability, as a novel theoretical area. In
particular, it examines relationships between sex, intimacy and equality, as it relates
to gendered and embodied parenting roles.
Dr Charlotte Faircloth is a Research Fellow, based at the University of Kent, working
on a Leverhulme Trust funded project entitled ‘Parenting: Gender, Intimacy and
Equality’. She completed her PhD at the Department of Social Anthropology at the
University of Cambridge, exploring women’s experiences of attachment parenting
and ‘full-term’ breastfeeding in London and Paris. She was Mildred Blaxter postdoctoral research fellow with the Foundation for the Sociology of Health and Illness,
during which she completed her book Militant Lactivism? Attachment parenting and
intensive motherhood in the UK and France, published by Berghahn Books. She is
interested in cultures of parenthood; notions of body, gender and equality in caregiving and its implication for other relationships; and more broadly in knowledge
claims around optimal forms of care. As well as editing several journal special issues,
she recently co-edited a volume entitled Parenting in Global Perspective: Negotiating
ideologies of kinship, self and politics, for Routledge, and is co-author of Parenting
Culture Studies published by Palgrave.
The problem of sex and intimacy in sex advice media
Dr Meg Barker, The Open University
Drawing upon a wider research project on mediated intimacy (Barker, Gill & Harvey,
forthcoming 2015), this paper focuses on the ways in which the combining of sex
and intimacy is the problem underlying sex advice media, particularly sex advice
books and newspaper problem pages.
Whilst rarely explicitly stated, the implicit assumptions driving the vast majority of
mainstream sex self-help books are that people must be sexual (the sexual
imperative) and that they must also be in a certain kind of long term intimate
partner relationship. This creates a tension as most books acknowledge that it is
difficult to sustain sex within such relationships, but the solutions offered in these
books must not stray outside certain normative sexual scripts and heteronormative
and mononormative relational restrictions. The issues are perhaps more explicit
when we turn to newspaper agony columns, in which by far the most common
problems covered related to infidelity, concerns around sexual identity, and
sustaining sex in long term intimate relationships.
This paper presents a ‘sex-critical’ framework for the analysis of sexual self-help and
problem pages, and similar texts (Downing, 2012), concluding that reflection on and expansion of - what constitutes both ‘sex’ and ‘intimacy’, may offer a more
fruitful route than that taken by mainstream sex advice.
Dr. Meg John Barker is a writer, academic, counsellor and activist specialising in sex
and relationships. Meg is a senior lecturer in psychology at the Open University and
has published many academic books and papers on topics including nonmonogamous relationships, sadomasochism, counselling, and mindfulness, as well as
co-editing the journal Psychology & Sexuality. They were the lead author of The
Bisexuality Report – which has informed UK policy and practice around bisexuality.
They are involved in running many public events on sexuality and relationships,
including Sense about Sex, Critical Sexology, and Gender & Sexuality Talks. Meg is
also a UKCP accredited therapist working with gender and sexually diverse clients.
Meg’s 2013 book Rewriting the Rules is a friendly guide to love, sex and
relationships, and they blog about these matters on www.rewriting-the-rules.com.
Twitter: megbarkerpsych.
Heterosexual single mothers’ accounts of sex, dating and intimacy
Dr Charlotte Morris, University of Sussex
This paper draws on finding from doctoral research which explored the intimate lives
and narratives of twenty-four single mothers in the South-East of England. The study
employed the concept of ‘intimacy scripts’ (developed from Simon and Gagnon,
1973) as a way of understanding the complex interplay between broad cultural
narratives and shared understandings of how intimate lives should be lived, specific
social contexts and ‘personal scripts’ of fantasies, desires and expectations. This
paper focusses on participants’ accounts of sex and dating, viewing these within the
context of broader cultural narratives about intimacy. Participants drew on a range
of cultural narratives in making sense of their experiences. These are reflected in
social theory with notions that relationships have become more open and
democratic, that being part of a couple is the ultimate achievement of individualised
lives and that sexual pleasure is a key aspect of relating (Giddens, 1992). Theorists
working within this detraditionalization framework also highlight the significance of
experimentation and impermanence in intimate lives. More pessimistic approaches
emphasise increased choice in terms of fragmentation and moral breakdown
(Bauman, 2003). There was also a heightened awareness of ‘the darker side of
intimacy’ (Plummer, 2003), the inherent risks and potential for deception,
exploitation and abuse. Participants’ accounts also reflected the continued value
accorded to love and romance in western culture, even where negative experiences
of romantic partnerships engendered disappointment. While for some becoming
single represented an opportunity to experiment, to create alternative intimacy
scripts, heteronormative ideals of coupledom and the traditional family were a
significant touchstone against which participants compared their experiences.
Charlotte Morris recently completed her doctorate in Gender Studies at the
University of Sussex and is currently working on articles for publication. Her thesis
was entitled ‘Unsettled scripts: Intimacy narratives of heterosexual single mothers’
and research interests include intimacy, family, motherhood, gender, feminism and
narrative research. She previously studied BA (Hons) English Literature and MA
Women’s Studies at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge. Charlotte also has
research interests in the field of Higher Education, including widening participation,
undergraduate and postgraduate learning, student parents, experiences of students
with disabilities and student wellbeing – having completed a number of research
projects in this field. She is currently employed as an Associate Tutor at the
University of Sussex and also works as a Student Support and Guidance Tutor at the
University of Brighton. She lives in Hove with her three children and four cats.
Getting at consent:
An innovative combination of sociological theory and methodology
Bryony Chater, University of Surrey
What is consent? What does consent do and how is it done? Researching consent to
sexual relations presents many challenges to researchers contending with the
illusiveness and elusiveness of the concept. The aim of this paper is to present an
innovative combination of sociological theory and methodology being applied in a
current research project to bring to the fore the concept of consent in the context of
long term couples’ intimate and sexual relationships. The qualitative research design
is intended to explicate the how and what of consent in research participants’ stories
of consent and how are they produced in the research context. The presentation
discusses how situated dimensions of social life will be approached through a
scripting framework, originating in the work of Simon and Gagnon, to explore how
cultural and social orders come to be constituted in the meaning making process of
accounting work. This framework is deployed alongside a less well known
ethnomethodological strategy, namely, Membership Categorization Analysis, to
enable the ordering of accounts to be illuminated by privileging participants’
knowledge over the researcher’s interpretations. The combination is intended to
produce analytic insights on the interrelations between cultural ideas of consent and
the ‘doing’ of consent in performances and emotion work in couple’s sexual
relationships. Preliminary data from the ongoing research project will be used to
illustrate how Membership Categorization Analysis can be framed by the scripting
perspective to research the complexity and intangibility of consent through this
innovative combination of theory and methodology.
Bryony completed a degree in Criminology at the University of Kingston and
proceeded to the University of Surrey where she completed a Masters in Social
Research Methods. Bryony is currently in the second year of a PhD in Sociology at
the University of Surrey and soon to embark upon the field work phase. The research
will explore constructions of consent in accounts of couple members negotiating
their sexual relationships. This qualitative project employs focus groups, interviews
and solicited diaries to generate data. The data analysis will draw upon interpretive
and ethnomethodological analytic tools to approach the facets of consent and
consensual sexual relationships.
Sexuality, Intimacy and Faith: What Difference Does Religious Belonging Make?
Dr Sarah-Jane Page, Aston University
Prevailing discourses associate religion with the problematisation of sexuality, and
many studies have demonstrated the difficulties lesbian and gay religious individuals
face in integrating their faith and sexual identity (Thumma 1991; Wilcox 2009; Yip
2005). But the study of intimate life and religion is less pronounced; much less is
known about the everyday negotiation and management of intimacy and sex in
relation to issues such as navigating partnerships, (non)parenthood, love, separation
and divorce, contraception, celibacy, pre-marital sex and sexual practices within the
context of faith. In addition, the experience of religious heterosexuals has been littletheorised. I was part of the 2009-2011 multi-method AHRC-ESRC project entitled
Religion, Youth and Sexuality which focused on 18 to 25 year olds of different sexual
identities, from six religious traditions (see Page et al. 2012; Yip and Page 2013). This
research helped highlight many dimensions to intimacy, sexuality and religion, but
was only focused on a small age cohort. This brief presentation will highlight future
research directions, including what is currently missing from the research agenda,
and plans for addressing this. The presentation will specifically focus on what
theorising from the perspective of intimate life can add to the broader research
terrain on religion and sexuality.
Dr Sarah-Jane Page is Lecturer in Sociology at Aston University, Birmingham, UK.
Sarah’s principal area of research is religion as it intersects with gender and
sexuality. Her ESRC-funded PhD focused on the experiences of Anglican clergy
mothers and male clergy spouses, the findings of which have been published in
journals such as Gender, Work and Organization, Feminist Review and Feminist
Theology. She has worked on numerous projects, including exploring public attitudes
towards homosexuality, as well as mapping the experiences of religious youth
negotiating sexuality (the Religion, Youth and Sexuality project, funded by the AHRCESRC). The main findings were published in the book, Religious and Sexual Identities:
A Multi-faith Exploration of Young Adults (with A.K.T. Yip, 2013, Ashgate). She has
undertaken a fellowship at the University of Ottawa, and has previously held
research posts at both the University of Nottingham and Durham University.
Stirring dangerous waters: dilemmas and opportunities critical participatory work
with young people
Audrey M. Dentith, Lynda Measor, & Michael P. O’Malley
Presented by Dr Lynda Measor, University of Brighton
This paper explores dilemmas of critical, participatory research related to sexuality
and intimacy with young people. It presents illustrating examples from field
researchers from three separate projects in the UK and US and highlights issues of
access, participation, dissemination and the misuse of findings. Authors stress the
need for new, more complex field strategies including more participatory research
models, attention to transgression of power through research and broader skills in
media dissemination. The work was grounded in the researchers’ commitments to
researching to ‘make a difference’ in the lives of young people. By promoting
participant engagement that might affect personal understanding and policy change.
The young people in each study face a range of deprivations and life difficulties. The
methods draw from perspectives that counter the resurgent logic of positivism that
are increasingly favoured in contemporary academic research by funding authorities
and that reflect the prevailing governing mentalities that thwart critical
emancipatory research in this era of post-neoliberalism.
Dr Lynda Measor is a Reader in Applied Social Sciences in the School of Applied
Social Sciences at the University of Brighton. She completed undergraduate and
postgraduate degrees at the University of Sussex and the London School of
Economics. Her research work is based on an interest in young people - and relates
to questions concerning the problems they encounter in the context of this late
modern world. She has published books on young people and their transfer to
secondary school, on young people and community safety, on young people's views
of sex education on gender and education and on teachers careers. She has held
research funding from the ESRC,AHRB and Dept of Education. The paper given at
this conference is based on research funded by the Department of Health and the
Department of Education and located in the Social Exclusion Unit. The project was
called LOTE (Living on the Edge) and considered issues of young people’s sexuality
and specifically teenage pregnancy in three English seaside towns. The funders
insisted on some participatory research methods in the project and the paper today
discusses issues that arose in implementing those methods. It includes a
comparative element with two pieces of American research which considered the
same issues.
Reanimating sexual stories
Prof Rachel Thomson and Ester McGeeney, University of Sussex
In this presentation we will report on our current methodological experiments with
reanimating social research data on young people’s sexual cultures. We will explore
theoretical frames for understanding the restaging of data using performance
techniques and explore what this may mean in terms of reanimation. Our
presentation will draw on a current ESRC knowledge exchange project and the
methodology for a planned project about the near history of teenage sexuality called
‘Inside Out: the remaking of teenage sexuality.’
Ester is a youth researcher and practitioner currently working on a knowledge
exchange project with the young people’s sexual health charity Brook. Ester’s
research interests include young people’s sexual relationships and
cultures, developing innovative research methods with children and young people
and exploring ways of using research to inform policy and practice.
Rachel Thomson is Director of the University of Sussex Centre for Innovation and
Research in Childhood and Youth (CIRCY) www.sussex.ac.uk/esw/circy. She is a
sociologist by discipline,and has worked at the Universityof Manchester, the
National Children’s Bureau; London South Bank University and the Open University.
Her research interests include the study of the life course and transitions, as well as
the interdisciplinary fields of gender and sexuality studies. She is a methodological
innovator and is especially interested in capturing lived experience, social processes
and the interplay of biographical and historical time.
'Insubstantial Intimacies: Modernity, Method and Effect'
Dr Paul Boyce, University of Sussex
In this paper I want to look at what might happen when we approach intimate
relationships from an anthropological standpoint that pays attention to how people
may not want to make those intimacies visible - or socially substantive. In as much as
ethnographically and culturally we may be keen, as researchers, to ground our work
in actual life-worlds, life-worlds themselves are characterised by ephemeral qualities
and perhaps even a will resist the substantiation of ones most important affective
connections. I approach this epistemological standpoint from the perspective of my
ethnographic work in West Bengal, India, conducted over a number of years with
people of same-sex sexuality and/or gender non-conforming experience. One aspect
of that work has involved looking at kinship in the context of such gendered and
sexual 'differences', especially as people’s experiences of relatedness could be seen
to respond to shifting expectations and effects of modernity. In this paper I am
interested in the topology of intimate and familial relations in this context, especially
in respect of the (re)shaping of same-sex desiring subjects and subjectivities in a
manner that might be seen to confound understandings of the difference between
the socially shown and the culturally invisible. Against this background the paper
seeks to raise questions pertinent to anthropological perspectives of the
substantiation of (queer) kinship in people’s everyday lives. I explore such questions
in respect of some troubling 'intimate assemblages' as experienced by friends and
co-researchers in West Bengal over-time, partly in response to changing politicaleconomies and activism pertaining to health (HIV). I explore the implications of this
standpoint for cross-cultural understandings of sexualness, kinship and embodiment,
partly from a methodological standpoint of 'failure'. I consider some implications for
trans-national actions concerning sexual rights.
I am a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology, University of Sussex. I work on
same-sex intimacies and sexualities and am especially interested in interdisciplinary
work, and work that crosses boundaries between academia, community work, and
international development. Ethnographically I have mostly worked in West Bengal,
India, but I have also worked on sexual rights and HIV prevention for a number of
agencies internationally.