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- Convenors:
-
Agnieszka Koscianska
(University of Warsaw)
Hadley Renkin (Central European University)
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- Formats:
- Workshops
- Location:
- V411
- Sessions:
- Friday 13 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Paris
Short Abstract:
This workshop focuses on ethnographic, historical and sociological analyses of the role of science in processes of the naturalization and modernization of sexuality, as well as the defining of modernity in relation to sexuality in Eastern Europe (broadly defined) from the past to the present.
Long Abstract:
Since the beginning of the 20th century Eastern Europe has experienced enormous social, political, and economic change. In this context, sexuality has played a critical role in the constitution of modernity and its others, and in the creation of spaces of both power and resistance.
Researchers have analyzed gender issues in the region extensively. Study of sexualities, however, remains undeveloped. This workshop will explore how diverse scientific discourses and practices surrounding sexuality (e.g. sexology, medicine, psychology, psychiatry, ethnography/ethnology, law, criminology) have, from past to present, made Eastern Europe a particular site for understanding sexuality, and sexuality a particular site for understanding Eastern Europe. We draw special attention to how, in different historical-political moments, these sciences have naturalized sexual acts, desires, identities, and communities, as well as distinctions between modern and non-modern, thus legitimizing new visions of political bodies, social relations, and moral-political geographies.
We seek papers from ethnographic, historical, and sociological perspectives focusing on the following questions:
In what ways have sexual sciences in and about Eastern Europe constituted certain sexual acts, identities, and communities as natural, in relation to particular political regimes? What have been the changing relations between forms of sexual knowledge and resistance in the region? How have sexual sciences contributed to shifting definitions of gender and pleasure/pain? How have understandings of sexuality served to demarcate borders between east and west, and past and present?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 13 July, 2012, -Paper short abstract:
This paper examines how Géza Róheim’s mingling of psychoanalysis and ethnography contributed to the naturalization of Eastern Europe as a space of sexual Otherness to the Modern West. It argues that these scientificized assumptions continue to inform current reactions to postsocialist homophobia.
Paper long abstract:
A vast body of research has, following Foucault, shown the scientific study of sexuality to be central to the construction of Modernity and its Others. Similarly, much historical work has acknowledged the critical role of the Eastern European Other in imagining a Modern European West. Yet while ethnographic representations of sexuality were important in the "invention" of Eastern Europe, there has been surprisingly little scholarly concern with how such hierarchical symbolic and political relationships were not only constructed but reinforced through the historical intersections of ethnographic and sexual scientific practice - despite recent attention to an increasingly visible "neo-Orientalism" within Europe. This paper will examine the work of Hungarian folklorist, ethnographer, and psychoanalyst Géza Róheim (1891-1953). Reflecting larger patterns of conjunction, Róheim's scholarship brought together Eastern European folklore, the ethnography of indigenous peoples, and psychoanalytic principles, joining evolutionist understandings of culture to theories of universal psychic development in order to read Eastern Europe as a site of psycho-sexual and civilizational immaturity. Róheim's work, I argue, thus served to map the scientific study of sexuality onto the perverse geographies of ethnographic orientalism, strengthening both, and naturalizing Eastern Europe and its inhabitants as sexual Others of Modernity. Mappings such as these, I suggest, continue to inform current interpretations of postsocialist homophobia, which revive tropes of Eastern European "primitiveness" and "barbarity," in ways that also reinstantiate an imagined West as an idealized space of sexual freedom, masking its persistent inequalities, and legitimating its renewed efforts to discipline the East.
Paper short abstract:
This paper tracks changing constructions of 'the homosexual male' and 'the homosexual female' in correspondence with models of male and female sexuality in Poland in the period from 1870 till 1939.
Paper long abstract:
This paper presents how the construction of 'the homosexual male' and 'the homosexual female' changed across 70 years of Polish history, from the publication of the first broad scientific researches on this matter until WWII. It analyzes sources such as translations of European authors, the original publications of Polish scientists (Leon Wachholz, Antoni Miklaszewski, Gustaw Bychowski and others), and the writings of lawmakers who worked on the new criminal code of the 1920s and the early 1930s.
I will place scientific research in the context of social transformations in several clearly discernible epochs: the last 20 years of the 19th century, the turn of the 20th century, and the years 1918-1939 in independent Poland. I will also show how models of homosexuality corresponded with broader models of male and female sexuality in the given periods.
Paper short abstract:
The discourse of gender and sexuality played the crucial role in the defining of modernization in post-war Poland . For catholic thinkers it was associated with the idea of bodily purity of women, for communists - with the acceptance of status-quo.
Paper long abstract:
The post-WWII period in Poland was a moment of transition. It became obvious that nothing could be the same as it had been before 1939. Soviet domination very quickly became taken for granted and new claims for legitimacy were made.
"Modernity" and "modernization" were keywords for both the communists and the Catholic Church. The discourses of gender and sexuality with the slogan "new woman" played a crucial role in the process of defining post-war modernity. Primarily, it was a symbol of division between past and present. For Catholic thinkers the concept of "new woman" was associated with maternity and perceived as a strong factor capable of restoring traditional society, thanks to moral strength and bodily purity.
At the same time, the declaration of women's equality and the family law reform in 1945 created new national policies. The government promised to take care of unmarried mothers, and women who returned from Germany pregnant or with small, often illegitimate, babies. Modernization was associated with the unification of the status of legitimate and illegitimate children (perceived as war victims), as well as with claims for "sexual reform". This was an attempt to accept post-war status quo.
In the meantime scientific and medical discourses were focused on the matter of fertility and reproductive health. They had to face many problems , which were results of the war. Medical discourses were still affected by pre-war eugenic ideas, but were being re-written to better fit the new times. Scientific argumentation became more important than old concepts connected with pre-war chastity movements.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the role of statistics and sociological research in the Committee of the Bulgarian Women’s Movement's ongoing attempts to reshape the sexual politics of communist Bulgarian society.
Paper long abstract:
Although the emancipation of women was one of the core ideological goals of communist regimes, the incorporation of women into the formal labor force often produced an unbearable double burden for women who maintained primary responsibility for childcare and housework while also working full time. This paper examines the role of statistics and sociological research in the efforts of the Committee of the Bulgarian Women's Movement (CBWM) to advocate for greater social supports for women between 1968 and 1989.
The collection and dissemination of statistical data regarding women's time use and their fertility intentions was the key tool for Bulgarian women trying to force elite male politicians to expend the resources necessary to support women's dual roles. Although sociology was a suspect discipline for many communist regimes, women in the CBWM strategically deployed the tools of sociological research to their advantage, using nationally representative surveys of women's opinions to influence high-level policymaking. Specifically, the CBWM bombarded politburo members with carefully designed charts and graphs demonstrating a variety of women's needs not yet being met by the Bulgarian state, including the provision of kindergartens, crèches, and extended, paid maternity leaves. By statistically demonstrating the links between women's double burden and declining fertility rates, the CBWM successfully convinced Bulgaria's leaders to drastically expand state entitlements for working mothers while preserving the widespread availability of abortion. As a result, statistics became the primary tool of the CBWM in its ongoing attempts to reshape sexual politics in communist Bulgarian society.
Paper short abstract:
This paper analyzes the influence of oral contraceptives on ideas and discourses on female sexuality in the US, Britain and Germany during the 1960s-70s, and discusses possible differences with case of Poland, where the circulation of the pill was low and abortion was the main family planning method
Paper long abstract:
Contraceptive pill, first introduced in the US in the 1960, is one of the drugs by far most studied from a gender perspective. From the late 1990s, American, British and German historians of science and medicine have published on the history of this drug in the US and some European countries, analysing with a gender approach different aspects of its introduction, circulation, reception and use. They also underlined how the pill, as a drug taken by women independently of the sexual act, contributed to transforming the patterns of female sexuality.
However, almost no research has been done by far regarding the introduction of the pill in non-democratic regimes, such as communist Poland. In contrast to Spain, where the right-wing dictatorship banned selling, advertising and publicly exposing contraceptives between 1941 and 1978, in Poland in the same period there was no legal prohibition to sell or use contraceptives, and abortion was legalised in 1956. The pill was introduced in Poland in the late 1960s, but, for different reasons, the consumption of contraceptives in general, and the pill in particular, was very low.
In this paper, I will look at how the pill influenced during the 1960s and the 1970s the changing ideas and discourses about sexuality in the US and some other European countries. Further, I will formulate questions on how these patterns may relate to contraceptive practices in Poland, shaped by the scarce circulation of the pill and relatively wide practice of abortion during the period under discussion.
Paper short abstract:
Through an analysis of sexological publications from the 1970s and 1980s, this paper shows the political context of the scientific approach to sexuality and gender roles within which women's emancipation was presented as an obstacles to a satisfying sexual life.
Paper long abstract:
The 1970s and 1980s mark a period in which sexology developed in Poland; several important books appeared, and sexologists published extensively in the popular press. Health professionals discussed various sexuality related issues, such as sexual techniques and pleasure, sexual "deviations," gender, marriage and violence. They provided guidelines on how to achieve pleasure and how to eliminate obstacles to good sex. One of the obstacles discussed by sexologists was women's emancipation. Referring to various scientific theories, sexologists argued that women's sexual expectation made many men unable to perform.
This paper is based on discourse analysis of Polish publications on sexuality in the 1970s and 1980s such as popular magazines and sexological books. The analysis focuses on the cultural notions of gender, sexuality and relationships embedded in scientific knowledge. In the analyzed writings, women are associated with the domestic and passivity, men with the public, activity and aggression; and sustaining this order is a necessary condition for a good sex life, hence women's emancipation is presented as an obstacle in this process. At the same time, these publications presented sex as an important element of personal, marital and social happiness and provided detailed guidelines on how to achieve this happiness. The analysis of sexological publications is placed in the context of the political situation in Poland. On the one hand, in this period the communist party promoted women's full employment, on the other, it supported traditional marriage and gender roles. This tension might be seen as a political background for scientific development.