| Popis: |
This volume began by exploring various ways of approaching ‘what sexology is’ and writing its history. In the Introduction, Alain Giami distinguished ‘sexology’ from ‘theories of sexuality’ in order to examine the circulation of theories, both globally and between institutions and disciplines. An approach focused on circulations allows for a close investigation of the avenues through which theories were taken up or produced by sexology among other sciences and studies of sex around the world. Furthermore, with reference to Michel de Certeau’s (1987) comparison of psychoanalysis and historiography, Giami’s Introduction also suggested temporal ‘circulations’ of ideas past and present in intellectual history. This conclusion focusses in particular on this sort of circulation. It examines features of sexology’s boundary-work (Gieryn 1983) in establishing its ‘scientific’ and ‘medical’ value in the nineteenth century. We suggest that the case of the history of sexology can provide a particularly significant, yet often overlooked opportunity to think about the changing status of scientists’ subjective experiences in the history of science, medicine and the social sciences. |
