Sociologists are increasingly aware that analyses of social life must include a consideration of how the social may be structured by the sexual. In turn, this insight is contributing to a shift in understandings of sociology. This volume - drawn from papers from the 1994 British Sociological Association Annual Conference on ''Sexualities in Social Context'' - brings together a range of writers who are contributing to this exciting new agenda. Various aspects of social life - including employment, family life, representations, politics, identities and the workings of the law - are considered, in terms of how sexuality shapes their organization and they shape sexuality. In so doing a series of ongoing and new controversies and debates are confronted, from the relationship of feminism to prostitution to the constitution of the self in late modernity.

Sociologists are increasingly aware that analyses of social life must include a consideration of how the social may be structured by the sexual. In turn, this insight is contributing to a shift in understandings of sociology. This volume - drawn from papers from the 1994 British Sociological Association Annual Conference on ''Sexualities in Social Context'' - brings together a range of writers who are contributing to this exciting new agenda. Various aspects of social life - including employment, family life, representations, politics, identities and the workings of the law - are considered, in terms of how sexuality shapes their organization and they shape sexuality. In so doing a series of ongoing and new controversies and debates are confronted, from the relationship of feminism to prostitution to the constitution of the self in late modernity.