RESEARCH
My primary areas of interest include the sociology of sexuality, medical sociology, science and technology and HIV/AIDS, and much of my research sits at the intersection of these subfields. Here, I focus on how institutions and social structures shape sexual subjectivities and practices, including sexual desire, sexual health, drug use, and intimate partnership among gay and bisexual men. In these projects I am especially interested in developing new lines of sociological theory that account for how individual, intrapsychic and micro-level, interactional phenomena are linked to broader structures and processes.
SEXUAL FIELDS
In one major body of work, I develop the Sexual Fields Framework, which builds on Bourdieusian field theory to conceive of collective sexual life as a particular kind of stratified social system. Organized by appetites and dispositions related to race, ethnicity, class, gender, and age, sexual fields are arenas of sexual exploration but, also, sites of stratification and dominion wherein actors vie for partners, social significance, and esteem. This research has led to a stream of journal articles and a book, Sexual Fields: Toward a Sociology of Collective Sexual Life (University of Chicago Press). For more on this stream of research, see the Sexual Fields tab above.
HIV PREVENTION
More recently, I have turned my attention to the history of HIV prevention for gay/ bisexual/MSM in a comparative study of prevention work in Los Angeles and Toronto. HIV prevention is a complex, multi-level enterprise that brings together a wide range of actors and entities with very different disciplinary backgrounds, professional and organizational interests, and cultural proximity to the populations for whom prevention is targeted. Using in-depth interview and archival research methods, I show that the science of modeling and changing behavior (i.e., HIV prevention science), and the actual execution of behavioral interventions on the ground, arise in an iterative process of boundary work (Gieryn 1983) and jurisdictional struggles (Abbott 1988) among key stakeholders in the prevention field. Here, looking at the development of US HIV prevention science and praxis over time, I find that its most basic elements—including the what, for whom, how, and why of HIV interventions—reflects less the steady advance of a “pure” science (Epstein 1996; Tesh 1988), than a dynamic field of contest among actors with vastly different access to credibility and resources. This is by no means to propose a cynical view of the prevention project but, instead, to suggest that the making of HIV prevention is inextricably bound to the disciplinary dispositions of agents, individual and organizational self-interests, and the political economy of the prevention field. For more on this stream of research, see the HIV Prevention tab above.
SAME-SEX MARRIAGE
In a third stream of research I examine the sexual life history with respect to the institution of marriage. In a first publication from this stream of research, “Until Death Do Us Part?: The Role of Differential Access to Marriage in a Sample of Urban
Men” (in Sociological Perspectives), I compare the sexual careers of heterosexual and homosexual men to highlight how legal inclusion in and exclusion from civil marriage produce divergent norms and practices over the sexual life history. This paper was awarded the 2007 ASA best paper in the Sexuality section. In three subsequent papers, including, “Queer Unions: Lesbians and Gay Spouses Marrying Tradition and Innovation” (in the Canadian Journal of Sociology); “Debating Same-Sex Marriage: Lesbian and Gay Spouses Speak to the Literature” (in Mary Bernstein and Verta Taylor (eds.), (Not) The Marrying Kind: The Politics of Same-Sex Marriage); and “The Symbolic Power of Civil Marriage on the Sexual Life Histories of Gay Men” (in John DeLamater and Laura Carpenter (eds.), Sex for Life: From Virginity to Viagra), I use original data from same-sex married spouses in Toronto and examine how the actual lived experiences of same-sex couples relates to and, in some cases, confounds the prognostications of the impact of same-sex marriage across conservative, religious, feminist and queer contingents. Finally, in the most recent piece of this stream of research, funded by a multi-year standard operating grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), I collected 180 in-depth interviews of newly married lesbian and gay same-sex spouses, heterosexual newlyweds, and same-sex common-law partners. By comparing heterosexual and same-sex married spouses, the project is uniquely situated to explore the role of sexual orientation in shaping marital norms, dyadic arrangements, and structures of social support. And by comparing how lesbians and gay men construct conjugal units, this research is uniquely situated to consider the role of gender in shaping marital norms and arrangements among nontraditional couples.
SOCIOLOGY & QUEER THEORY
Given my interest in sexuality studies and social theory, I have also spent some time considering the relationship of sociological scholarship to poststructural currents represented most vociferously in "queer theory". My first paper on this issue, “Gay but Not Queer: Toward a Post-Queer Study of Sexuality” (in Theory and Society) uses historical examples of gender and sexual identity to make sense of poststructural currents in the sociology of sexuality. This paper was awarded the 2002 ASA Theory section Shils-Coleman Memorial Award for outstanding graduate student paper. A second paper, “Queer Theory and Sociology: Locating the Subject and the Self in Sexuality Studies” (in Sociological Theory) conducts an epistemological and
methodological comparison of queer theory and interactionist sociology, and argues that the two approaches represent distinct yet invaluable ways of investigating sexual identity and practice. Finally, a third paper, “Remembering Foucault: Queer Theory and Disciplinary Power” (in Sexualities) recasts Foucault’s contribution to the study of sexual identity by showing how his approach to disciplinary power established both the limits of self and, under certain conditions, new pathways for self-development.
SEXUAL FIELDS
In one major body of work, I develop the Sexual Fields Framework, which builds on Bourdieusian field theory to conceive of collective sexual life as a particular kind of stratified social system. Organized by appetites and dispositions related to race, ethnicity, class, gender, and age, sexual fields are arenas of sexual exploration but, also, sites of stratification and dominion wherein actors vie for partners, social significance, and esteem. This research has led to a stream of journal articles and a book, Sexual Fields: Toward a Sociology of Collective Sexual Life (University of Chicago Press). For more on this stream of research, see the Sexual Fields tab above.
HIV PREVENTION
More recently, I have turned my attention to the history of HIV prevention for gay/ bisexual/MSM in a comparative study of prevention work in Los Angeles and Toronto. HIV prevention is a complex, multi-level enterprise that brings together a wide range of actors and entities with very different disciplinary backgrounds, professional and organizational interests, and cultural proximity to the populations for whom prevention is targeted. Using in-depth interview and archival research methods, I show that the science of modeling and changing behavior (i.e., HIV prevention science), and the actual execution of behavioral interventions on the ground, arise in an iterative process of boundary work (Gieryn 1983) and jurisdictional struggles (Abbott 1988) among key stakeholders in the prevention field. Here, looking at the development of US HIV prevention science and praxis over time, I find that its most basic elements—including the what, for whom, how, and why of HIV interventions—reflects less the steady advance of a “pure” science (Epstein 1996; Tesh 1988), than a dynamic field of contest among actors with vastly different access to credibility and resources. This is by no means to propose a cynical view of the prevention project but, instead, to suggest that the making of HIV prevention is inextricably bound to the disciplinary dispositions of agents, individual and organizational self-interests, and the political economy of the prevention field. For more on this stream of research, see the HIV Prevention tab above.
SAME-SEX MARRIAGE
In a third stream of research I examine the sexual life history with respect to the institution of marriage. In a first publication from this stream of research, “Until Death Do Us Part?: The Role of Differential Access to Marriage in a Sample of Urban
Men” (in Sociological Perspectives), I compare the sexual careers of heterosexual and homosexual men to highlight how legal inclusion in and exclusion from civil marriage produce divergent norms and practices over the sexual life history. This paper was awarded the 2007 ASA best paper in the Sexuality section. In three subsequent papers, including, “Queer Unions: Lesbians and Gay Spouses Marrying Tradition and Innovation” (in the Canadian Journal of Sociology); “Debating Same-Sex Marriage: Lesbian and Gay Spouses Speak to the Literature” (in Mary Bernstein and Verta Taylor (eds.), (Not) The Marrying Kind: The Politics of Same-Sex Marriage); and “The Symbolic Power of Civil Marriage on the Sexual Life Histories of Gay Men” (in John DeLamater and Laura Carpenter (eds.), Sex for Life: From Virginity to Viagra), I use original data from same-sex married spouses in Toronto and examine how the actual lived experiences of same-sex couples relates to and, in some cases, confounds the prognostications of the impact of same-sex marriage across conservative, religious, feminist and queer contingents. Finally, in the most recent piece of this stream of research, funded by a multi-year standard operating grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), I collected 180 in-depth interviews of newly married lesbian and gay same-sex spouses, heterosexual newlyweds, and same-sex common-law partners. By comparing heterosexual and same-sex married spouses, the project is uniquely situated to explore the role of sexual orientation in shaping marital norms, dyadic arrangements, and structures of social support. And by comparing how lesbians and gay men construct conjugal units, this research is uniquely situated to consider the role of gender in shaping marital norms and arrangements among nontraditional couples.
SOCIOLOGY & QUEER THEORY
Given my interest in sexuality studies and social theory, I have also spent some time considering the relationship of sociological scholarship to poststructural currents represented most vociferously in "queer theory". My first paper on this issue, “Gay but Not Queer: Toward a Post-Queer Study of Sexuality” (in Theory and Society) uses historical examples of gender and sexual identity to make sense of poststructural currents in the sociology of sexuality. This paper was awarded the 2002 ASA Theory section Shils-Coleman Memorial Award for outstanding graduate student paper. A second paper, “Queer Theory and Sociology: Locating the Subject and the Self in Sexuality Studies” (in Sociological Theory) conducts an epistemological and
methodological comparison of queer theory and interactionist sociology, and argues that the two approaches represent distinct yet invaluable ways of investigating sexual identity and practice. Finally, a third paper, “Remembering Foucault: Queer Theory and Disciplinary Power” (in Sexualities) recasts Foucault’s contribution to the study of sexual identity by showing how his approach to disciplinary power established both the limits of self and, under certain conditions, new pathways for self-development.
