Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T23:50:48.049Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Structural Foundations of the Gay World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Barry D. Adam
Barry D. Adam
Affiliation:
University of Windsor
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In recent years, there has been a growing realization that the contemporary social organization of homosexuality into lesbian and gay worlds is a socially and historically unique development and that the traditional academic construction of “the homosexual” has participated in this reifying process (Foucault 1978; Hocquenghem 1978; McIntosh 1981; Weeks 1981; Plummer 1981; Faderman 1981). This article seeks to contribute to this understanding by proposing a set of structural characteristics seen as preconditions to the existence of the gay world and by exploring theoretical leads, especially Marxist feminist initiatives, to make sense of these structures. The study of homosexuality has been so long dominated by psychiatry, biology, and theology that the usual tools of analysis provided by political economy (construed broadly) have not been employed to analyze it. This essay puts forward some structural linkages which set homosexuality within the context of the larger histories of gender, family, and production.

Type
Social Structure and the Construction of Culture
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 27 , Issue 4 , October 1985 , pp. 658 - 671
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1985

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

'Abd Allah, Mahmud Mohammad. 1917. “Siwan Customs.” Harvard African Studies, 1,7.Google Scholar
Adam, Barry D. 1978. The Survival of Domination: Inferiorization and Everyday Life. New York: Elsevier/Greenwood.Google Scholar
Adam, Barry D.. 1979. “A Social History of Gay Politics,” in Gay Men: The Sociology of Homosexuality, Levine, Martin P., ed. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Adam, Barry D. 1985. “Age, Sex, and Structure.” Journal of Homosexuality 11,314.Google Scholar
Adam, Barry D. Forthcoming [1986]. The Rise of a Gay and Lesbian Movement. Twayne Series on Social Movements. Boston: G. K. Hall.Google Scholar
Aries, Philippe. 1977. “The Family and the City.” Daedalus, 102:2,227.Google Scholar
Baritz, Loren. 1960. The Servants of Power. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bogoras, W. 1909. “The Chukchee.” Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History, 11. (New York: American Museum of Natural History.Google Scholar
Boswell, John. 1980. Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Braun, Rudolf. 1966. “The Impact of Cottage Industry on an Agricultural Popula tion,” in The Rise of Capitalism, Landes, David, ed. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Bray, Alan. 1982. Homosexuality in Renaissance England. London: Gay Men's Press.Google Scholar
Bristow, Edward. 1977. Vice and Vigilance. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan.Google Scholar
Bullough, Vern. 1976. Sexual Variance in Society and History. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Burnham, James. 1973. “Early References to Homosexual Communities in American Medical Writings.” Medical Aspects of Human Sexuality, 7:8,34.Google Scholar
Callender, Charles, AND Kochems, Lee. 1983. “The North American Berdache.” Current Anthropology, 23:4,443.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conrad, Peter, AND Schneider, Joseph. 1980. Deviance and Medicalization. St. Louis, Missouri: Mosby.Google Scholar
Cook, Blanche. 1978. “‘Women Alone Stir My Imagination,’” Signs, 4:4,718.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cott, Nancy. 1978. “Passionlessness.” Signs, 4:2,219.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coulson, Margaret; Magas, Branka; and Wainwright, Hilary. 1975. “The Housewife and Her Labour under Capitalism-A Critique.” New Left Review, 89,59.Google Scholar
Curtis, Bruce. 1980. “Capital, the State, and the Origins of the Working-Class Household,” in Hidden in the Household, Fox, Bonnie, ed., 101–34. Toronto: Women's Press.Google Scholar
Demos, John, AND Demos, Virginia. 1969. “Adolescence in Historical Perspective.” Journal of Marriage and the Family, 31:4,632.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Donzelot, Jacques. 1979. The Policing of Families, Robert Hurley, trans. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
Dover, K. J. 1978. Greek Homosexuality. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1970. “Sexual Inversion among the Azande.” American Anthropologist, 72:6,1430.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ewen, Stuart, AND Ewen, Elizabeth. 1982. Channels of Desire. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Faderman, Lillian. 1981. Surpassing the Love of Men. New York: Morrow.Google Scholar
Feilman, Anita, AND Fellman, Michael. 1981. “The Rule of Moderation in Late Nineteenth-Century American Sexual Ideology.” Journal of Sex Research, 17:3,238.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferguson, Ann. 1981. “Patriarchy, Sexual Identity, and the Sexual Revolution.” Signs, 7:1,11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fischer, Wolfram. 1973. “Rural Industrialization and Population Change.” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 15:2,158.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1978. The History of Sexuality. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
Fischer, Wolfram. 1979. Discipline and Punish. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Fischer, Wolfram. 1980. Power/Knowledge. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
Fischer, Wolfram. 1984. L'usage des plaisirs. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Gardiner, Jean. 1975. “Women's Domestic Labour.” New Left Review, 89,47.Google Scholar
Geertz, Clifford. 1960. The Religion of Java. New York: Free Press of Glencoe.Google Scholar
Gilbert, Arthur. 1975. “Doctor, Patient, and Onanist Diseases in the Nineteenth Century.” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 30:3,217.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gramsci, Antonio. 1971. The Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci. New York: International.Google Scholar
Hartmann, Heidi. 1976. “Capitalism, Patriarchy, and Job Segregation by Sex.” Signs, 3:2,137.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hartmann, Heidi. 1981. “The Family as the Locus of Gender, Class and Political Struggle.” Signs, 6:3,366.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herdt, Gilbert. 1984. Ritualized Homosexuality in Melanesia. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herzen, W. 1977. “Antithetical Sexual Sentiment and Section 175 of the Impe?al Penal Law, 1898,” in Bernstein on Homosexuality, Clifford, Angela, trans. Belfast: Athol Books.Google Scholar
Himmelweit, Susan, AND Mohun, Simon. 1977. “Domestic Labour and Capital.” Cambridge Journal of Economics, 1:1,15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hocquenghem, Guy. 1978. Homosexual Desire. London: Allison and Busby.Google Scholar
Horkheimer, Max. 1972. Critical Theory. New York: Seabury.Google Scholar
Kanter, Rosabeth. 1977. Men and Women of the Corporation. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Katz, Jonathan. 1976. “Passing Women,” in Gay American History. New York: Crowell.Google Scholar
Katz, Jonathan. 1983. The Gay'Lesbian Almanac. New York: Morrow.Google Scholar
Kennedy, Hubert. 1981. “The Third Sex' Theory of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs.” Journal of Homosexuality, 6(Winter),103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levine, David. 1977. Family Formation in an Age of Nascent Capitalism. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1969. The Elementary Structures of Kinship. Boston: Beacon.Google Scholar
Levy, Robert. 1971. “The Community Function of Tahitian Male Transvestitism.” Anthropological Quarterly, 44:1,12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McDonough, Roisin, AND Hanson, Rachel. 1978. “Patriarchy and Relations of Production,” in Feminism and Materialism, Kuhn, Annette and Wolpe, AnnMarie, eds., 11–41. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
McIntosh, Mary. 1981. “The Homosexual Role,” in The Making of the Modern Homosexual, Plummer, Kenneth, ed, 30–43. Totowa, New Jersey: Barnes and Noble.Google Scholar
Mohr, James. 1978. Abortion in America. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Neuman, R. P. 1975. “Masturbation, Madness, and the Modern Concepts of Childhood and Adolescence.” Journal of Social History, 8(Spring),1.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Parsons, Gail. 1977. “Equal Treatment for All.” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 32:1,55.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pearce, Frank, AND Roberts, Andrew. 1973. “The Social Regulation of Sexual Behaviour and the Development of Industial Capitalism in Britain,” in Contemporary Social Problems in Britain, Bailey, Roy and Young, Jock, eds. Westmead, England: Saxon House.Google Scholar
Kenneth, Plummer, ed. 1981. The Making of the Modern Homosexual. Totowa, New Jersey: Barnes and Noble.Google Scholar
Poster, Mark. 1978. Critical Theory of the Family. New York: Seabury.Google Scholar
Proust, Marcel. 1963. Excerpts from “Cities of the Plain” and “By Way of Sainte Beuve,” in Eros: An Anthology of Male Friendship, Sutherland, Alistair and Anderson, Patrick, eds. New York: Citadel.Google Scholar
Rapp, Rayna. 1978. “Family and Class in Contemporary America.” Science and Society, 42(Fall),278.Google Scholar
Rosenberg, Charles. 1973. “Sexuality, Class, and Role in 19th-Century America.” American Quarterly, 25:2,131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sahli, Nancy. 1979. “Smashing.” Chrysalis, 8(Summer),17.Google Scholar
Scott, Joan, AND Tilly, Louise. 1975. “Women's Work and the Family in Nineteenth Century Europe.” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 17:1,42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Secombe, Walley. 1973. “The Housewife and Her Labour under Capitalism.” New Left Review, 83:3.Google Scholar
Smedley, Agnes. 1976. Portraits of Chinese Women in Revolution. Old Westbury, New York: Feminist Press.Google Scholar
Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll. 1975. “The Female World of Love and Ritual.” Signs, 1:1,1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steakley, James. 1975. The Homosexual Emancipation Movement in Germany. New York: Arno.Google Scholar
Taylor, Gordon Rattray. 1965. “Historical and Mythological Aspects of Homosexuality,” in Sexual Inversion, Marmor, Judd, ed. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Trumbach, Randolph. 1977. “London's Sodomites: Homosexual Behavior and West ern Culture in the Eighteenth Century.” Journal of Social History, 11:1,1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robert, Tucker, ed. 1978. The Marx-Engels Reader: Second Edition. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Walkowitz, Judith. 1980. “The Politics of Prostitution.” Signs, 6:1,123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walkowitz, Judith. 1983. “Male Vice and Female Virtue” in Powers of Desire, Snitow, Ann, Stansell, Christine and Thompson, Sharon, eds. New York: Monthly Review Press.Google Scholar
Weeks, Jeffrey. 1977. Coming Out. London: Quartet.Google Scholar
Weeks, Jeffrey. 1981. Sex, Politics, and Society. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Yang, C. K. 1953. The Chinese Family in the Communist Revolution. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar