Sexual field

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A sexual field is an arena of contestation whereby sexual actors compete for sexual status. The term builds on Pierre Bourdieu's (1980) concept of field and has been defined as a "set of interlocking institutions" (Martin and George 2006) and an "institutionalized matrix of relations" (Green 2005, 2008) that confers status upon sexual actors based on individual variation in erotic capital. Relative to those with an erotic capital deficit, actors in possession of erotic capital reap the rewards of the sexual field--including the ability to select desired sexual partners and the acquisition of social significance.

Sexual fields are themselves distiniguished by the institutionalization of distinct "currencies of erotic capital" (Green 2005, 2008), the latter which are quite variable, acquiring a hegemonic status in relation to the preferences of highly specialized audiences. For example, Green (2005, 2008) argues that the characteristics which confer erotic capital in one field may not in another. Thus, in a gay leather bar, a bearded, stocky White man in his late-thirties dressed in Levi's jeans and a leather jacket will possess an optimal form of erotic capital, whereas the same man in a swanky Martini bar catering to a twenty-something, high-fashion, urban gay customer base will face an erotic capital deficit. This variation in power and status occurs because a gay leather bar and a gay Martini bar are physical sites organized by the logic of two distinct sexual fields with contrasting currencies of erotic capital (Green 2005, 2008)--i.e., distinct "hegemonic systems of judgment" (Martin and George 2006).

For sociological theory, the concept of the sexual field offers a framework that addresses the problem of order in the domain of modern sexual life. To the extent that sexual stratification is related to but not isomorphic with the structure of alternative fields, so the study of sexual fields cannot be subsumed to the study of an economic or political field, for example. Nevertheless, to the extent that race, class, gender, ethnicity, age and ability, among others, are organizing features of sexual status within a given sexual field, so the relationship of sexual fields to broader historical systems of stratification requires consideration (Green 2005, 2008).

References

• Bourdieu, Pierre. 1980. The Logic of Practice. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
• Green, Adam Isaiah. 2008. "The Social Organization of Desire: The Sexual Fields Approach". Sociological Theory. 26: 25-50.
• Green, Adam Isaiah. "The Social Organization of Desire", Paper presented at the 2005 Annual American Sociological Association, Philadelphia.
• John Levi Martin and Matt George. 2006. "Theories of Sexual Stratification: Toward an Analytics of the Sexual Field and a Theory of Sexual Capital." Sociological Theory. 24:107-132.