Reinventing Sexual Scripts: Sexuality and Social Change in the Twenty-First Century (The 2008 John H. Gagnon Distinguished Lecture on Sexuality, Modernity and Change)

Abstract

This article focuses on the politics and practice of sexuality in the early twenty-first century. Drawing on a set of case studies from diverse societies in different regions of the world, the author examines both the intersection of and the tension between grassroots struggles for sexual freedom and transnational movements for sexual rights within the broader context of ongoing global transformations. Building on John Gagnon and William Simon's pioneering work on sexual scripts, the author explores the ways in which the rapidly changing politics of sexuality contribute to the reinvention of sexual meanings and intimate relations across a wide range of diverse social settings and contexts.

Educating the sighted: When activists reorganize solidarity by prefiguring new social scripts of help and interaction

“…have shaped various cultural narratives for understanding what is solidarity—and how it should be performed (Raghavan, 2017)—through time. I argue that these cultural narratives do not only shape policies, but also define social scripts that impact the way people interact, perform different roles, and define themselves at the local level (Green and Loseke, 2019; Parker, 2010). Help is a frequent, local, and embodied manifestation of solidarity, a “behavioral expression of social solidarity” (Nadler, 2020: 15), and as such, subjected to the same tensions as solidarity.…”

“…This article expands on the little-explored idea that social scripts can be conceived as “contested territory where meaning and power intersect as part of ongoing social and political processes” (Parker, 2010: 59). The influence of such scripts on individuals is dialectical: people can be told to conform to scripts—embodying for instance, the deserving poor (Buchter, 2019; Kusow and Eno, 2015)—but they can also contribute to challenging the social script forced on them (Parker, 2010), attempting to reinvent dominant cultural scripts, which, through “feedback relationships,” can influence “intrapsychic scripts” and “interactional scripts” (Parker, 2010: 64). I contend that social movements can seek to bring about social change through altering some intrapsychic and interpersonal scripts that reproduce discrimination.…”

“…This hierarchic solidarity is comforted by medical disability narratives picturing “disability as an individual tragedy best ameliorated through the application of professional interventions” (Green and Loseke, 2019: 2). Using the literature on social scripts, which shows how cultural scripts can affect our daily interactions (Simon and Gagnon, 1984, 1999) and be contested at the cultural, interpersonal, or intrapsychic levels (Parker, 2010), I examine how activists reorganize solidarity locally by prefiguring new scripts of interaction between minority and majority groups.…”

Combining photo-elicitation and discourse analysis to examine adolescents’ sexuality in rural Zambia

“…Previous studies have shown that cultural and social norms play a major role in adolescents’ understandings and practices in relation to sexuality and reproduction [ 4 – 6 ]. In many countries, such understandings and practices are not only shaped by laws that often limit adolescents’ autonomy in relation to SRHR, but also by cultural norms, religion, gendered expectations and inequalities.…”

“…The concept challenges essentializing constructions of sexuality to acknowledge that sexuality and sexual practices are culturally embedded and need to be understood in the intersection between intrapersonal, interpersonal, and cultural sexual scripts [ 4 , 8 ]. Parker (2010) argues that, while the sexual script and discursive theories differ extensively, sexual scripts, especially the cultural dimension, might be complementary in understanding adolescent sexuality [ 4 – 6 ].…”