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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
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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

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