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. 2023 Dec;36(5):3-14.
doi: 10.1177/09526951231213970. Epub 2023 Dec 6.

Sexology and development

Chiara Beccalossi  1 , Kate Fisher  2 , Jana Funke  2
Affiliations

Sexology and development

Chiara Beccalossi et al. Hist Human Sci. 2023 Dec.

Abstract

The history of sexology is a well-established field of scholarly investigation animated by ongoing contestations around the disciplinary boundaries, political outlook, and transnational dimensions of the sexological field. This special issue focuses on the multivalent concept of development to address some of the most pressing questions driving current historiographical conversations in this area. The five articles examine how sexology developed in the late 19th and 20th centuries and explore how sexologists deployed various developmental categories to understand sexuality in different national, geographical, and linguistic spaces, including India, Latin America, and Western and Southern Europe. They show how central tracing the relationship between sexuality and human development became to sexologists' understanding of their project and its value. By interrogating the intersecting individual, social, cultural, and evolutionary developmental frameworks at the heart of sexological knowledge production, the articles engage with sexology as a global and transnational project deeply shaped by ideologies of race, nation, and empire and motivated by a diverse range of political concerns and intellectual questions. In so doing, the special issue as a whole demonstrates the breadth of the sexological field in terms of its interdisciplinary scope, diverse political and intellectual agendas, and global dimensions.

Keywords: development; sexology; sexual science; sexuality; transnational.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

References

    1. Bauer H. (2010) ‘“Race”, Normativity and the History of Sexuality: Magnus Hirschfeld’s Racism and the Early-Twentieth-Century Sexology’, Psychology & Sexuality 1(3): 239–49.
    1. Bauer H., ed. (2015) Sexology and Translation: Cultural and Scientific Encounters Across the Modern World. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
    1. Bauer H. (2017) The Hirschfeld Archives: Violence, Death, and Modern Queer Culture. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
    1. Beccalossi C. (2012) Female Sexual Inversion: Same-Sex Desires in Italian and British Sexology, ca. 1870–1920. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
    1. Chiang H. (2009) ‘Double Alterity and the Global Historiography of Sexuality: China, Europe, and the Emergence of Sexuality as a Global Possibility’, e-pisteme 2(1): 33–52.

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