In pursuit of the potential of sexual field theory: A research agenda

Abstract

Some argue that sexual field theory is the most promising approach to developing a comprehensive theory of collective sexual life. Yet, it remains underdeveloped. Pointing to a narrow empirical foundation, I use collegiate hookup cultures to reveal the potential of extended case study. I present the first comprehensive consideration of hookup cultures from a field theory perspective and show how these cases can both answer existing questions and provoke new ones. These include questions about the relationship between structures of desire and complex, contradictory, and untapped personal desires; the role of aversion and trauma in shaping the habitus; the dynamics of power, from the micro to the macrosociological; the bounds and reach of a field’s force; and sexual fields’ embeddedness in organizations. Given these potential theoretical advances, I argue that a wider range of cases will allow sexual field theory to fulfill its promise to sexualities scholarship.

Bounded Nonnormativity of Heterosexuality: Gendered Sex Partying in Hong Kong

“…This study finds a contradictory relationship between sex partygoers and the regime of normalcy: They embraced the ideal of straight manhood and womanhood but simultaneously felt constrained by and desired to transgress it. Thus, the bounded nonnormativity of sex partying, which allowed them to compartmentalize their normative and nonnormative desires, provided an alternative structure of desires (Wade 2022) for them to cope with this contradiction. Bounded nonnormativity can be understood as an attempt to suspend normative ideals.…”