SOC 014 Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: Deviant Behavior: Symbolic Interactionism, Essentialism, Human Sexual Activity

• School: University of Vermont
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 014
• Professor: Lutz F Kaelber

Document Summary

Positivism employs an essentialist position that sees sexuality as a real intangible thing that exists: sexual norms and customs very across the world and throughout time. It is a concretely real phenomenon , an imminent, indwelling inherent force. Sexual categories are rendered good or bad through the construction process. Today when discussing deviant sexual behavior we"re not referring to something that is pathologically wrong, but something that is socially disapproved: this discussion has no implication of harm, sickness or illness. Psychological and social deviants are not the same thing, they delineate two separate and independent dimensions that overlap at times. Sex research has four main traditions: (1) clinical tradition (2) social bookkeeping tradition (3) experimental laboratory tradition (4) descriptive, ethnographic and symbolic interactionist tradition: each of these traditions is appropriate for a different set of issues. The experimental laboratory tradition learns virtually nothing about how widespread sexual practices are.