Sexualities

http://sexualities.sagepub.com Locating Economics within Sexuality Studies

Jon Binnie Sexualities 2008; 11; 100 DOI: 10.1177/13634607080110010305 The online version of this article can be found at: http://sexualities.sagepub.com

Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com

Additional services and information for Sexualities can be found at: Email Alerts: http://sexualities.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://sexualities.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Citations (this article cites 4 articles hosted on the SAGE Journals Online and HighWire Press platforms): http://sexualities.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/11/1-2/100

Downloaded from http://sexualities.sagepub.com by Mara E. Martnez Morant on May 14, 2008 2008 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

Sexualities 11(1/2)

Biographical Note
Hilary Radner is holder of the Foundation Chair of Film and Media Studies at the University of Otago, New Zealand. Address: Department of Media, Film and Communication, University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand. [email: hilary.radner@otago.ac.nz]

Jon Binnie
Manchester Metropolitan University, UK

Locating Economics within Sexuality Studies

I began writing this piece with a certain fear and trepidation as it is impossible to do justice to the richness, complexity, strength and impact of these works in a full-length journal article, never mind a short comment piece. Both works have generated considerable debate and have the status of foundational texts within sexuality studies. Given the fact that these are much discussed works, and the word limit, it is difcult to write something original without lapsing into banality, or triteness. It is also hard to nd something focused and specic to say about them given the wealth of issues they raised, and the range of debates they have informed. At rst glance these texts and authors may appear to have little to do with one another. Foucaults analysis of sex and power includes reections on the liberatory potential of male bathhouses, while Rich, the advocate of lesbian feminism, argues that:
heterosexuality, like motherhood, needs to be recognized and studied as a political institution even, or especially, by those individuals who feel they are, in their personal experience, the precursors of a new social relation between the sexes. (1980: 637)

Richs essay forcefully challenges the virtual or total neglect of lesbian existence in a wide range of writings, including feminist scholarship (1980: 632). Despite the considerable progress in many disciplines in the decades since Richs essay was published, her argument unfortunately still holds true in some areas such as international relations and political geography. While some arguments in her essay inevitably appear dated, simplistic or deeply troubling, for instance some of her statements concerning the desire of maintaining distinctions between lesbian sexuality and male homosexuality: the prevalence of anonymous sex and the justication of pederasty among male homosexuals, the pronounced ageism in male homosexual standards of sexual attractiveness, etc. (1980: 100

Downloaded from http://sexualities.sagepub.com by Mara E. Martnez Morant on May 14, 2008 2008 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

Binnie Locating Economics within Sexuality Studies

64950) the essay is still valuable, particularly in the numerous contexts where lesbian existence is rendered invisible. Despite obvious differences between Rich and Foucault they do share considerable common ground. Each is concerned with understanding and effecting change. They do not see sexuality as inert, as biological fact, but rather as a force through which power is exercised and contested. Rich and Foucault passionately address questions of power in relation to sexuality and both these works engender passion in their advocates (and detractors). Both can also be seen as stimulating, and provocative, rather than comprehensive, rounded and detailed. They are bristling with energy. Both works examine sexuality in relation to wider social, economic and political processes. The connection between sexuality and economics has perhaps been overlooked in discussions and debates they have spawned. This is perhaps only to be expected, as the economic has often seemed like a distant stranger or outsider within sexuality studies notwithstanding the extremely important interventions by Badgett (2001), Hennessy (2000) and Gluckman and Reed (1997). It is my contention that the relationship between the economic and sexuality still needs to be more coherently established within contemporary sexuality studies. How sexuality links to wider economic and political concerns is a key feature of both works. Both authors call for the interrogation of the connections between sexuality and economics. Rich states: we need an economics which comprehends the institution of heterosexuality, with its doubled workload for women and its sexual divisions of labor, as the most idealized of economic relations (1980: 659). For her, it is compulsory heterosexuality that lies as the cornerstone of womens economically inferior status to men. In The History of Sexuality Foucault traces connections between the development of capitalism, the modern state in the 18th century and the deployment of sexuality:
one of the great innovations in the techniques of power in the eighteenth century was the emergence of population as an economic and political problem: population as wealth, population as manpower of labor capacity, population balanced between its own growth and the resources it commanded (1990: 25).

Control and management of population was therefore a key function of the 18th-century capitalist state. This necessitated the control and regulation of sex as he goes on to note: Through the political economy of population there was formed a whole grid of observations regarding sex (1990: 26). Throughout this discussion of the development of modern discourses about sex, Foucault integrates politics and economics and demonstrates how the deployment and regulation of sexuality became a key concern of the modern state. The discourse of sexuality was therefore deployed to further the development of the capitalist state. Central to this 101

Downloaded from http://sexualities.sagepub.com by Mara E. Martnez Morant on May 14, 2008 2008 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

Sexualities 11(1/2)

deployment of sexuality was what Foucault terms a socialization of procreative behaviour: an economic socialization via all the incitements and restrictions, the social and scal measures brought to bear on the fertility of couples; a political socialization achieved through the responsibilization of couples with regard to the social body as a whole (1990: 1045). This draws attention to the intimate connection between the state, the economy and the body. Economics and sexualities are intimately connected as Foucault argues that if the deployment of alliance is rmly tied to the economy due to the role it can play in the transmission or circulation of wealth, the deployment of sexuality is linked to the economy through numerable and subtle relays, the main one of which, however, is the body the body that produces and consumes (1990: 1067). The impact of these two works attest to the value of provocation of saying unfashionable, or original, or counterintuitive things of taking risks and going out on a limb of not going along with the ow. While 10 years on from the setting up of this journal, sexuality studies is more accepted, and institutionalized in some contexts (Richardson, 2005), we need to be aware of the dangers and risks as well as pleasures of doing work in this eld. In the UK context, after major advances in law reform Foucaults challenge to the notion that we are more advanced, more liberated is in fact more relevant than ever. His focus on responsibilization seems as relevant as ever as discussion of the balance of rights and responsibilities associated with the introduction of civil partnerships in the UK has shown (Stychin, 2006). In some ways it feels like everything has changed in the sexual landscape over the past decade, yet nothing has changed. The 10 years of the publication of Sexualities has coincided with a decade of New Labour government. As Gordon Brown has taken over as PM and Blair has exited the British political stage, political life is experiencing something of a sense of looking back, reviewing the achievements and failures of the Blair years, as the political diaries of events during this decade are published. The achievements and political, legal advances have been manifold. On the down side of the changes in the sexual political landscape that have taken place in the past decade one can point towards the failure of activists to link law reform to economic questions. The economic basis of sexual politics is now thankfully receiving greater critical attention. For instance we see Carl Stychins (2003) writing on the governance of sexuality, which has drawn attention to the economic basis of legal transformations under New Labour. Revisions to UK immigration policy to recognize same-sex relationships for the purpose of immigration reproduce a neoliberal agenda by making distinctions between economically valued sexual citizens and those who are excluded by their inability to pay. The connections between sexuality and neoliberalism (a term that has become almost banal in human geography) have yet to be fully 102

Downloaded from http://sexualities.sagepub.com by Mara E. Martnez Morant on May 14, 2008 2008 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

Binnie Locating Economics within Sexuality Studies

explored and teased out, just as the term is starting to lose analytical currency though for some examples see Patels (2006) essay on neoliberalism, risk and sexuality in India, and Richardsons (2005) essay on neoliberalism and the institutionalization of lesbian and gay studies in the UK. Rich and Foucault wrote these works in very different social, economic and political contexts, however both continue to have considerable relevance and import today. The return to some of the earlier foundational work in sexuality studies is pertinent as we take stock of a decade of Sexualities. It also comes at a time when sexuality studies is becoming both more established and less marginalized in some contexts, but also a time when much of the critical energy of the 1990s boom in sexuality studies appears to have waned. In the context of my arguments about the economic and wider social questions, Sexualities has played a pivotal role in providing a space for this important work. Rich and Foucaults works attest to the value of non-conformity, of challenging norms in theory and politics, of stating the counterintuitive. The energy, imagination and vitality of these works that have stimulated several decades of debate will hopefully be reected in the next decade of writing in Sexualities.

References
Badgett, M. V. L. (2001) Money, Myths, and Change: The Economic Lives of Lesbians and Gay Men. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press. Foucault, Michel (1990) The History of Sexuality, Vol 1. New York: Vintage Books. Gluckman, A. and Reed, B. (eds) (1997) HomoEconomics: Capitalism, Community, and Lesbian and Gay Life. Routledge: London. Hennessy, R. (2000) Prot and Pleasure: Sexual Identities in Late Capitalism. Routledge: London. Patel, G. (2006) Risky Subjects: Insurance, Sexuality, and Capital, Social Text 89 24(4): 2565. Rich, Adrienne (1980) Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence, Signs: Journal of Women, Culture and Society 5(4): 63160. Richardson, D. (2005) Desiring Sameness? The Rise of a Neoliberal Politics of Normalisation, Antipode 37(3): 51535. Stychin, C. F. (2003) Governing Sexuality: The Changing Politics of Citizenship and Law Reform. Oxford: Hart. Stychin, C. F. (2006) Las Vegas is Not Where We Are: Queer Readings of the Civil Partnership Act, Political Geography 25(8): 899920.

Biographical Note
Jon Binnie. Address: Department of Environmental and Geographical Sciences, Manchester Metropolitan University, John Dalton Building, Chester Street, Manchester, M1 5DG, UK. [email: j.binnie@mmu.ac.uk]

103

Downloaded from http://sexualities.sagepub.com by Mara E. Martnez Morant on May 14, 2008 2008 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.