Sexuality Research Network of European Sociological Association: ESA RN 23 Sexuality Mid-Term Conference (Web)
Time: 11.-12.09.2025
Venue: Palermo
Proposals by: 15.04.2025
The title of this Mid-Term Conference is inspired by the sociology of deviance and its surprisingly tight relationship with sexuality studies. As we know, sociological approaches to sexuality studies have found it difficult to establish themselves as a specific and autonomous field within the discipline of sociology. Attempts at doing so, paradoxically, fed into the tendency to study sexualities as ‘taboo’ and to focus on phenomena that deviate from (assumedly) ‘normal’ sexual practices. In the early days of sociological analysis, there was a strong focus on the ‘normal’ occurrence of things and the verification of social typicality. It does not seem a coincidence, then, that sociology approached sexuality by including it within the studies on deviant phenomena and conduct, with the main objective of normalising its structures, manifestations, and practices. In the sociology of deviance, the study of sexuality often meant the study of those labelled as deviants – or sinners, in the language of various conservative-religious groups objecting to sexual rights and liberties of those breaking the patriarchal and heteronormative constraints of societies.
Over the last decades of sexuality studies, our field has found many ways to break free of these labels and to imbue the studies of sexuality with rebelliousness that has questioned and challenged these norms and constraints – both of the sociological discipline and societies in general. Sociological sexuality studies became interested in ‘dissident sexualities’ and embraced the figure of sexual rebels, asking questions on how it is possible to ‘resist’ oppressive ideologies and practice, and gendered, sexual, and intimate normativities. Still, new times of trouble now loom large on our horizon, with conservative and authoritarian movements and governments challenging and interfering into progressive work that takes account of gender and sexual diversity.
In our previous Mid-Term Conference (Zagreb, September 2023) we highlighted how gender and sexuality studies were subject to funding cuts and obstructive state and political interventions, which even led to the closure of entire university degree courses and departments in both Western and Eastern Europe. Moreover, in our society, we face Continue reading