Sexual place, spatial change, and the social reorganization of sexual culture

Journal of Sex Research, Nov, 2005 by Brian C. Kelly, Miguel A. Munoz-Laboy

"Place" plays a profound role in the practice of sexuality in everyday life. Through sociocultural interactions, "space" is imbued with meaning, as locations come to be experienced as places with specific sentiments and memories. These meanings emerge from the practice of everyday life, in which sexuality plays an important role. Thus, context-specific practices ultimately shape and reshape the world in which individuals live. Individual agents act collectively to produce and reproduce local social worlds nested within broader socio-cultural systems. Sexual subjects act within a realm of embodied structures, creating sexual culture through practice.

So what does space have to do with sex? Space provides a stage which supplies "the scenery and props for the spate of human action played out before, within, or upon it" (Goffman, 1959, p. 22). However, space is not merely a stage upon which sexual subjects act. Geographical, anthropological, and sociological research has demonstrated how spaces do not merely have objective physical characteristics that shape behavior, but also become places imbued with subjective meaning that shapes the experience of a location (Carrillo, 2001; Dolance, 2005; Gaissad, 2005; Green, 2001; Leap, 1999; Parker, 1999).

Space refers to a locale with a given topographical layout, either natural or man-made. Space lacks the subjective imposition of meaning upon the layout by those within it. The concept of place, on the other hand, relates more directly to the symbolic meanings given a space by those positioned within it. Place is space personalized by the meanings imposed by subjects within it. As noted by Fullilove (2004), "places--the buildings, neighborhoods, cities, nations--are not simply bricks and mortar that provide us shelter ... each of these places becomes imbued with sounds, smells, noises, and feelings of those moments and how we lived them" (p. 10). Such impositions of meaning shape the sexual experience, and space becomes eroticized by social actors through their construction of a sense of place (Bell & Valentine, 1995). Because of qualities such as safety and public presence, the ecology of the surrounding environment can enhance or inhibit sexual experiences. In turn, sexual subjects, through practice, further impose symbolic meaning upon spaces. This imposition of symbolic meaning further influences the manner in which the spatial environment shapes the sexual encounter.

Though space does, in the strictest sense, provide physical limitations within which individuals must act, it does not provide a total structure within which the actions of its inhabitants are deterministically constrained. Rather, it provides a frame within which subjects actively shape social relations as well as create and recreate normative patterns of behavior through their practices. Furthermore, place does not deterministically constrain the practice of sexual culture. Sexual subjects contend not only with internalized structures, but also with the structure of the physical landscape, while they actively create local culture. We refer to the individuals engaged in this sexual culture at San Jose Park as "sexual subjects" in order to highlight that they are limited by structures, and thus "subject to" constraints. Yet they also intentionally and creatively act and thus are "subject of" their own selves (Foucault, 1982). The practice of sexual culture by these subjects, in the context of a particular sexual space, lies at the nexus of structure and agency.

Sexual culture is expressed via practice; that is to say, the culture exists in the practice of desire within this local social world. In a sense, their desire provides the groundwork for the cultivation of a sense of place on the part of these sexual subjects. Few research efforts have examined sexuality as socially organized through practice (e.g., Dowsett, 1996). Yet, the examination of the intersection of micro-social practices and larger social structures remains crucial for a fuller understanding of human sexuality. Given that larger structural forces play out in local places, the examination of place and sexuality provides key insights to how sexual subjects produce a sexual culture and how broader social forces influence this cultural production.

Like the examination of sexual culture as practice, there are few systematic explorations of the synergistic influences between space and sexuality not specific to sexual identity. Explorations of the relationship between space, place, and sexuality have largely focused upon gay and lesbian spaces (Bell & Valentine, 1995). Much of this literature either reflects research on "gay ghettos" and commercial gay and lesbian spaces or discusses sexual communities utilizing space to situate what are otherwise "imagined communities." Yet, the lived experience of sexuality extends beyond the culturally-constructed frameworks of representations and meanings associated with sexual identity. Our research on the sexual spaces of public parks of New York City drew us away from commercial venues and residential locales linked to gay identities. This subsequently led us to focus our examination on the interface of place and homoerotic desire, rather than on sexual place's relation to identity-laden sexuality.