SOC100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 20: Margaret Mead, Casual Sex, Sexology
14 Nov 2018
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Document Summary
Conducted significant work on the sexual lives of people in diverse cultures. Cross-cultural research on what sex habits look like in different cultures. Common theme: all cultures have sex but the different understandings, meanings and representations of sex are different. Although not considered a sexologist per se, mead"s anthropological work demonstrated considerable variation in the ways that people experience sex. Among other things, mead noted that some young samoan women deferred marriage and enjoyed casual sex before they married. The amount of variation across and within cultures demonstrates that sexuality is learned and not innate, shaped by historical, political, and social forces. Think about the attitudes of sex have changed over history. Sociology of sex: theoretical and methodological approaches. Sociologists frequently stress the social and cultural relativity of norms surrounding sexual behaviour and the socio-historical construction of sexual identities and roles. Sociologists like irvine understand sexuality as being inter-connected to cultural, political, legal, moral, and ethical phenomena.
