Abstract
Sexuality is understood to alter over the lifecourse of the individual. In addition, sexuality is seen to be subject to generational, cultural and historical context and, as some would have it, self-management (Giddens, 1992). One of the ways of researching such changing and changeable sexuality has been through the sex survey. Of these, random-sample population surveys are regarded by many to provide valid and reliable information about sexual behaviour and its age — and generation-related expressions. The assumption here is that scientifically constructed surveys can reveal sexuality — its features and scope intersecting with temporality — and therefore provide the basis for truth claims that can assist with such matters as sexual health and well-being. I want to adopt a different point of view in this chapter and suggest how sexuality comes into being through such surveys. With reference to several examples of large-scale, national and international surveys, I want to show how politics, morality, commerce and the provisions on survey science itself find expression in the knowledge produced by sex surveys. Therefore, and following a well-known Foucauldian line of argument, I want to explore how sex surveys themselves constitute the truths of sexuality in the sense that they help to name and quantify it and therefore exercise and extend the discursive power of the technology of sex.
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© 2010 Mark Davis
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Davis, M. (2010). Surveys, Citizenship and the Sexual Lifecourse. In: Burnett, J. (eds) Contemporary Adulthood. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230290297_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230290297_8
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-36903-4
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-29029-7
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social Sciences CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)