Turning Bourdieu back upon sexual field theory

Abstract

In recent years, sexual field theory has emerged as the cutting edge of the sociology of sexuality. This paper turns Bourdieu’s own formulation of field back upon sexual field theory to investigate sites where sexual field theorists break from Bourdieu and what questions these sites of divergence raise. I pinpoint two unresolved issues in sexual field theory: (1) the ambiguous boundaries of sexual fields and (2) the obfuscation of power. Both points relate to the autonomy of sexual life, which sexual field theorists may overstate. This paper recommends new lines of analysis which may advance field theory more broadly, the sociology of sexuality, and the feminist reinvention of Bourdieu.

Keywords

Sexuality field theory sexual field theory Bourdieu

In the last two decades, researchers have developed the sexual fields framework to theorize collective sexuality. This framework draws upon Bourdieu to argue that sexual life is organized into fields, defined as institutionalized networks of relations that coordinate (and in some cases inculcate) desires. The notion of a sexual field can be traced to Matt George’s 1996 dissertation in rhetoric, core concepts of which George elaborated in a 2006 paper with John Levi Martin disseminating sexual field theory to sociologists. Adam Isaiah Green further popularized this framework in two major papers (Green, 2008a, 2008c). Since 2008, this literature has flourished across conferences (e.g. “Bringing Bourdieu to Sexual Life: A Conference on Sexuality and the Sexual Field,” held in Toronto in May 2010), journals (David, 2015; Farrer, 2010; Green, 2011, 2012; Leschziner and Green, 2013; Scheim et al., 2019; Weinberg and Williams, 2010), books (Carrillo, 2017), and an edited volume (Green, 2014). Leading sexuality scholars have characterized this framework as “a tremendous advance in the sociology of sexuality” which “likely will set the research agenda for the sociological study of sexuality over the next several decades” (Taylor, 2014: xv). Other sociologists characterize the framework as pioneering new directions in field theory, with sexual fields functioning as “the field degree zero and, thus, the privileged case from which to empirically investigate how action is ordered within fields” (Lizardo, 2014: xi, emphasis in original). Additionally, this body of research contributes to the feminist reinterpretation of Bourdieu as an interdisciplinary theoretical project (Adkins and Skeggs, 2004).

Yet some orthodox Bourdieusians suggest that sexual field theory represents a corruption of Bourdieu’s concept of field. Loïc Wacquant, for instance, dismisses the existence of sexual fields: “there is no such thing as a ‘sexual field’ or a ‘racial field’ for the simple reason that desire and racialization (as the naturalization of statutory gradations of honor) can and do invade and pervade multiple domains of social action” (Wacquant, 2014: 124). He elaborates on this critique by suggesting that a more focused definition of field

allows us to avoid the comical multiplication of fields and forms of capital ad infinitum—hardly a month goes by without some scholar proposing a new species! Thus there is no “sexual field” (pace Illouz, 2012; Green, 2013) and no “racial field” (sorry for Matt Desmond and Mustafa Emirbayer, 2015) for the simple reason that neither sex nor race as denegated ethnicity are monopolized by a nexus of distinct institutions and agents…their sociological importance resides precisely in the fact that they cut across microcosms (Wacquant and Akçaoğlu, 2017: 62–63, emphasis in original).

This quote suggests that sexual (and apparently racial) field theory overstate the autonomy of sexuality and racialization, as Bourdieu uses the term “field” to describe institutionalized spaces which filter larger forces. According to Wacquant’s critique, sexuality operates in social space writ large and cuts across fields, making “sexual field” oxymoronic. In Wacquant’s terms, sexual field theory is thus a form of “Bourdieuese” which applies Bourdieu’s language but not his conceptual apparatus to an empirical object (Wacquant and Akçaoğlu, 2017: 61).

However, if sexual field theory represents a break from Bourdieu (and I will argue that it does), scholars using this framework are right to treat Bourdieu’s theories as violable. Prefacing his own contribution to sexual field theory, Martin writes, “Orthodox Bourdieusians often make the error of imagining that Bourdieu’s great accomplishment was to manufacture, through sheer effort of will, an ideothesis, a particular structure of thought, and that all subsequent investigations need to be checked against particular statements that he did or did not make” (2014: 171). This sanctification of Bourdieu’s writings violates Bourdieu’s own epistemological precepts. Rather, Bourdieu invites reformulations of his work, as his conceptual tools are designed for empirical ends rather than dogmatic adherence (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: xiv). The analytical value of a given interpretation lies not in its faithfulness to Bourdieu’s own writing, but in its scientific truth.

Therefore, this paper turns Bourdieu’s own formulation of field back upon the sexual fields literature to work toward scientific truth—specifically, to identify areas of conceptual murkiness which merit especially careful empirical investigation. I trace sites where sexual field theorists break from Bourdieu in order to identify what clarifications or obfuscations of social life these conceptual breaks produce. First, the sexual fields literature tends to define “field” at a more microsocial level than Bourdieu, though sexual field theorists vary their implicit definitions of field. Second, the sexual fields literature is less concerned with conflict within fields than Bourdieu and analyzes many fields as sites of consensus, cooperation, and solidarity. These two breaks imply greater autonomy among sexual actors than Bourdieu’s work would indicate, which may mask structural forces acting upon these actors. I illustrate this point through the example of masculine domination. As a corrective to these tendencies, I recommend a more meso-level definition of field and new empirical work on women within sexual fields. Beyond the sexual fields framework, this analysis may be of use for scholars of sexuality, scholars reformulating field theory across substantive domains, or feminist re-use of Bourdieu.

This paper goes beyond Wacquant’s critique in its emphasis on domination. Wacquant asks whether sexuality is monopolized by specific institutions or cuts across social space; he does not raise direct questions about the operation of power within or between sexual fields. By contrast, power is a focus of this paper and is treated as inextricable from the question of relative autonomy. However, though my perspective is therefore in one sense more critical than Wacquant’s, our aims diverge. Unlike Wacquant, I am less interested in definitive statements about what can or cannot be considered a field and more interested in rehabilitating a theoretical apparatus that has proven empirically generative for scholars of sexuality. I follow Martin’s claim, “Field theory is an analytic approach, not a static formal system” (2003: 24). Indeed, the conclusion to this paper will suggest that although sexual fields researchers trace their framework to Bourdieu, their breaks from Bourdieu align with breaks enacted by alternative strains of field theory, meaning that this analysis can be leveraged to compare field theoretic perspectives. Therefore, I do not weigh in on the overall value of the sexual fields framework, but instead ask questions of sexual field theory which may provoke conceptual refinement or new empirical work.

Bourdieu’s field theory

For Bourdieu, field analysis entails three stages addressing: (1) a field’s relationship to other fields, especially the field of power, (2) a field’s objective internal structure, and (3) the subjective dispositions of the actors vying for power within the field (Bourdieu, 1993: 124; Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 104–205). Bourdieu’s first stage of field analysis—the analysis of fields’ interrelationships—introduces the concept of relative autonomy: “To say that the field is relatively autonomous with respect to the encompassing social universe is to say that the system of forces that are constitutive of the structure of the field (tension) is relatively independent of the forces exerted on the field (pressure). It has, as it were, the ‘freedom’ it needs to develop its own necessity, its own logic” (Bourdieu, 2004: 47). Though some fields are more autonomous than others, autonomous and heteronomous poles which provide an independent internal structure and logic are required to describe a social arena as a field (Bourdieu, 1993). Otherwise, as Wacquant indicates, the site of analysis is better characterized as a scene or subculture within general social space. For instance, the artistic field emerged when literary and artistic prestige developed as principles of consecration independent of the market (Bourdieu, 1993). Yet fields’ internal principles of differentiation do not disappear external hierarchies but transform these hierarchies, producing misrecognition (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 106).

The second stage of field analysis is to map the internal structure of a given field. As Bourdieu states the key innovation of field theory, “To think in terms of field is to think relationally … a field may be defined as a network, or a configuration, of objective relations between positions” (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 96–97). Objective relations here indicate relations determined by each actors’ capital relative to other actors in the field. Therefore, to map a field, scholars must identify the forms of capital prized within a field and the principles of division that they correspond to (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 98–99). Each field is structured by the cross-cutting oppositions which correspond to the forms of capital legitimized within their boundaries and by the relative volume and composition of these capitals which characterize objective positions and guide their subsequent position-takings.

These position-takings bring us to Bourdieu’s third stage of field analysis: the study of the habitus expected or cultivated within a given field. Here, field theory does not elide the study of individual-level practices but contextualizes these practices as acts coordinated through the habitus, defined as a mediator between objective structures and individual subjectivity. The habitus has an important temporal dimension: Bourdieu defines it as “embodied history,” shaped more by the structures of one’s past than the structures of one’s present, and especially by one’s early childhood (Bourdieu, 1990: 56). Bourdieu posits congruence between field and habitus, which develops primarily via the predispositions of one’s background that orchestrate entrance into one field or another. As a secondary mechanism of coordination, entering a new field may lead to the inculcation of new dispositions, though adult pedagogical learning often exercises weaker control over subconscious dispositions than the deep learning done in childhood. In many cases, these two processes lead to an approximate but incomplete correspondence between field and habitus (Bourdieu, 1993: 65). However, in other cases, field and habitus are more disjoint (Bourdieu, 1990: 63). When the dispositions learned in childhood are ill-adjusted to the social conditions of one’s adult life, this disjuncture between habitus and field produces a hysteresis effect of great interest to sexual field theorists.

Though this article focuses on Bourdieu, whom sexual field theorists identify as their primary influence (Green, 2014: 12–13), it is worth noting that other strains of field theory diverge from Bourdieu’s approach. At the inter-field level, neo-institutional theories of organizational fields and Fligstein and McAdam’s (2015) work on strategic action fields both sketch circumscribed fields based on actors’ direct interactions with one another, whereas Bourdieu defines fields as clusters of institutions and actors which position themselves vis-à-vis one another but need not interact directly (Fligstein and McAdam, 2015: 167–168, 216). At the intra-field level, theorists of organizational and strategic action fields downplay power relative to Bourdieu (Fligstein and McAdam, 2015: 89–90; Kluttz and Fligstein, 2016: 185–186). These perspectives critique Bourdieu as obsessed with power at the theoretical expense of cooperation, pleasure, and what Fligstein and McAdam broadly term “the existential function of the social” (2015: 34–56). Though sexual field theorists engage Bourdieu over these perspectives, the conclusion to this paper will indicate parallels between these literatures with implications for field theory as a broader intellectual movement.

Sexual field theory

Overview

The majority of empirical work within the sexual fields framework maps webs of interacting desire among gay, bisexual, and queer men (Adam and Green, 2014; Carrillo, 2017; Green, 2008a, 2008c, 2011; Hennen, 2014; Leschziner and Green, 2013; Scheim et al., 2019; Tan, 2019). This empirical literature has been influential within the broader field of research on gay men’s sexual experiences and health, and especially research on racism within gay male communities (e.g. Choi et al., 2011; Lundquist and Lin, 2015; Orne, 2017). Sexual field theory has also been applied to transgender women’s experiences of sex work (David, 2015; Weinberg and Williams, 2010, reprinted as Weinberg and Williams, 2014). Some scholars have also used sexual field theory to conceptualize transnational sexuality (Carrillo, 2017; David, 2015; Farrer, 2010; Farrer and Dale, 2014), demonstrating how networks of sexual relations are embedded in globalization processes. Sexual field theory addresses Bourdieu’s second and third stages of field analysis most directly, so I will describe its handling of these stages first, then move to fields’ relationships to one another.

Sexual field theory is most concerned with the relational mandate of Bourdieu’s second stage of field analysis. As Green defines his object: “I argue that a sexual field is an institutionalized matrix of relations that materializes as the overlapping erotic habitus of a given set of actors are projected into (or strategically cultivated within) social space, producing a structure of desire and tiers of desirability reflected in thematically organized sign-equipment, personal fronts, and the patterning of sociosexual interaction” (2008c: 45). This definition aligns with those of other scholars, e.g. Farrer (2010: 75) and Taylor (2014: xiii). The core of sexual field theory, then, is its relational view of sexual life and its attention to the institutionalization of these systems of relations. This view counteracts individualizing theories of sexual identity and experience, such as HIV research which sees practices like condom use as asocial, individual-level decisions (Green, 2008c; Scheim et al., 2019: 569).

Out of this relational perspective comes the notion of the erotic habitus, perhaps the most important contribution of sexual field theory to date. This concept addresses questions posed by Bourdieu’s third stage of field analysis (the analysis of agents’ habitus). Green defines the erotic habitus as “the sociological component of sexual desire that straddles social structure and unconscious processes. That is, the erotic habitus is the subjectively embodied social order in psychic structure that orients sexual desire to the social world without determining their precise expression” (2008a: 622, emphasis in original). This concept represents a major advance for Bourdieusian theory, extending the habitus to dispositions commonly believed to be out of reach of the social and analyzing the social libido (a primarily metaphorical term in Bourdieu) as it manifests in the literal libido (George, 2014). Furthermore, sexual field theory focuses on the development of the erotic habitus within sexual fields: “the relationship of desire to the organization of the sexual field is not static but subject to change, and must be considered in light of the structures of desire that exist…actors can learn to acquire the erotic habitus of a given erotic world” (Green, 2008c: 44; see also Farrer, 2010: 90; Green, 2014: 40). Though Green and other sexual field theorists do acknowledge some prior affinity for the practices of a given sexual field, they focus empirically on social learning within sexual fields, contra Bourdieu’s emphasis on how dispositions learned in childhood might guide one into or away from fields. This line of research extends Wacquant’s (2004) work on the pedagogical inculcation of the pugilistic habitus, making analytic use of embodied dispositions learned in adulthood as a limiting case to sharpen sociological understanding of the habitus (Lizardo, 2014; Martin, 2014).

As I will detail later, sexual field theorists are less concerned with relations between fields than with intra-field systems of relations and coordinated cultural practices. However, applying principles of Bourdieu’s first stage of field analysis, some sexual field theorists pose a historical argument about the increasing autonomy of sexuality. Martin and George (2006: 122) identify precursors to this argument in the work of Max Weber, who posits six “spheres of value” in the modern world, including an erotic sphere. In modernizing societies, the erotic sphere “possesses its own laws of action and development, and correspondingly appears in distinct unions,” i.e. unions outside marriage; the erotic sphere further reverses the rationalizing logics found in other realms of modern life (Martin and George, 2006: 123). Green takes up this claim to argue that sexual life grows more autonomous as societies modernize and bureaucratize, in direct parallel to the emergence of the artistic and economic fields described in Bourdieu (Green, 2014: 105). Among other effects, this autonomy decreases the convertibility of sexual and economic capital, meaning that wealth becomes a weaker predictor of sexual status and sexual attractiveness a less effective path to upward mobility (Green, 2011: 247). Farrer (2010) and Farrer and Dale (2014) document this increasing autonomy in transnational sexual fields. These historical arguments represent one response to Wacquant’s critique: sexual field theorists agree with Wacquant that the notion of “sexual field” is relevant only in periods where sexuality operates autonomously, but they argue contra Wacquant that we have transitioned into such a period (Farrer and Dale, 2014: 146; Green, 2008c: 48). Crucially, these historical arguments (especially Martin and George, 2006) imply or assert a singular sexual field, which operates with more or less autonomy in different historical moments. This essay will next take up the question of whether one or many sexual fields exist and its implications for the issue of autonomy.

Fields and scenes

Does one sexual field exist, or are there many sexual fields? If there are many sexual fields, how do we differentiate between sexual fields and sexual scenes or subcultures? Sexual field theorists diverge on these questions. Drawing on Weber’s concept of an erotic sphere, George (1996) and Martin and George (2006) describe a single sexual field which may be more or less autonomous across societies or time periods. Wacquant’s critique (excerpted previously) takes the sexual fields framework to be a theory of a single sexual field. Yet Green’s (2008a, 2008c) reformulation of sexual field theory, which initiated the current deluge of research, presumes multiple sexual fields. Hennen writes, “Field theory’s potential for a very different kind of success is linked to its fundamentally pluralist approach. It rejects any notion of a singular, definitive sexual field and instead acknowledges multiple and distinct sites of shared and mutually recognized desires, each tied to specific forms of sexual capital” (2014: 72). Since George (1996) and Martin and George’s (2006) notions of a singular sexual field were key to their historical argument about its increasing autonomy, uncertainty as to the number of sexual fields threatens the validity of this argument: does every sexual field grow more autonomous as societies modernize, or do they autonomize at varying rates, and how can individual sexual fields’ autonomy be documented rather than asserted?

Further complicating the issue of autonomy, field theorists who accept Green and Hennen’s identification of multiple sexual fields apply the framework at progressively more microsocial levels. Tan (2019: 565)’s analysis of Taipei bear culture uses the terms “subculture” and “field” synonymously, Hennen (2014) analyzes gay leather and bear communities as sexual fields, and Weinberg and Williams analyze a single bar as a sexual field (2010: 377). Scheim et al. (2019) differentiate between “gay” and “queer” sexual fields, distinguishing on the basis of overall political culture. Green offers the most extreme narrowing of all: “In some instances, it may be analytically useful to analyze the private bedroom of the monogamous couple as a field, whereby each jockeys for status relative to the other” (2014: 54). Taken literally, this claim opens billions of sexual fields to analysis. Yet in the same essay, Green indicates that a sexual field is smaller than a neighborhood but larger than a street corner (Green, 2014: 53). In another paper, Adam and Green distinguish between sexual fields and sexual sites: “These data, in turn, suggest that circuits may be critical to a field theoretic approach to sexual life insofar as they map onto and distinguish sexual fields across sexual sites” (2014: 124). It is unclear how a couple’s bedroom meets this implicit definition of sexual fields as aggregations of sexual sites. In a non-resolution of these contradictions, Hennen advocates for an ambiguous use of the term “sexual field,” specifically suggesting that “a distinction between subcultures and fields derives largely from theoretical habit” and scholars ought to be prepared to theorize subcultures (as well as other sexual sites) as sexual fields (Hennen, 2014: 83).

In conclusion, sexual field theory does not present a clear taxonomy differentiating between sexual fields, sites, circuits, subcultures, scenes, etc., but uses these terms interchangeably (and at times in contradictory ways) as it suits a given analysis. The next section of this essay will detail the obfuscation of domination in the sexual fields literature, then I conclude by using Bourdieu’s concept of relative autonomy to link this obfuscation to the uncertain boundaries of sexual fields. I will argue that the conceptual ambiguity of “field” masks threats to the autonomy of sexual life.

Negation of domination

Some researchers mobilizing the framework of sexual fields treat this substantive turn toward sexual culture in Bourdieusian analysis as a partial turn away from the analysis of power. While Green’s early formulations of sexual field theory are deeply concerned with domination (and especially racial domination), some subsequent work suggests that sexual fields are characterized more by consensus than by conflict. As Hennen describes the break from Bourdieu that the sexual fields framework enacts

Analytically speaking, what happens to the concept field when you reformulate it without struggle and stratification? Can it still be called a field? If one adheres to a strictly Bourdieusian approach, the answer to this last question is almost certainly no. Without Bourdieu’s specific emphasis on struggle and status attainment within sexual fields, one might argue that, once you remove these elements, what you are left with might more accurately be described as a scene or a subculture. However, I would argue that there is much to be gained by relaxing the conceptual reins a bit here (2014: 83).

Hennen’s footnotes align his “relaxing” of Bourdieu’s concepts with Lamont’s ongoing critique of Bourdieu as overly concerned with hierarchy. Moon identifies as a central insight of sexual field theory, “Bourdieu developed [field theory] for understanding social class, which differs from sex in ways that need to be discovered empirically…[Hennen] demonstrates that not all sexual fields are sites of struggle and hierarchy” (2015: 1272; see Hennen, 2014: 83 for similar remarks on how Bourdieu’s empirical focus on class might lead to an overemphasis on conflict). Rather, Moon argues based on the essays in Green that some sexual fields value “affability” and reject “competition and hierarchy” (2015: 1272). Green himself writes of Hennen’s contribution, “Hennen pushes sexual field theory forward by suggesting that, in some instances, the Bourdieusian metaphor of a field of struggle may not be analytically productive, as it rests on the axiom that fields are always arenas of battle and social stratification” (2014: 19). Subsequent sexual field analyses follow in Hennen’s footsteps by emphasizing the “democratization” of sexual life in many fields (Tan, 2019: 565–566).

The opposition that sexual field theory sets up between “affability” and “hierarchy” in sexual fields misses the central insight of Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic violence: that hierarchy very often manifests as affability. Bourdieu defines symbolic violence as “the violence which is exercised upon a social agent with his or her complicity” (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 167, emphasis in original). This complicity arises from concordance between the objective structures of the social world and the subjective structures internalized by a given agent (Bourdieu, 2004; Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992), which inhibits the conscious recognition of domination. Bourdieu posits sexuality as the domain of misrecognition par excellence and sexual and romantic love as the ultimate amor fati, or love of that to which one is already condemned (Bourdieu, 2001: 109–112). For Bourdieu, “The case of gender domination shows better than any other that symbolic violence accomplishes itself through an act of cognition and of misrecognition that lies beyond—or beneath—the controls of consciousness and will, in the obscurities of the schemata of habitus that are at once gendered and gendering” (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 172, emphasis in original). Because gender and sexuality operate directly upon the body, Bourdieu sees them as coordinating subjective dispositions with objective structures at a less conscious level than other forms of domination (e.g. class domination), making sexual domination resilient to resistance (Bourdieu, 1990, 2001). Therefore, Bourdieu’s work would suggest that low levels of visible conflict in sexual fields evince symbolic domination, not the real absence of conflict.

Sexual field theorists who do investigate power focus on hierarchies of sexual attractiveness. Green writes that sexual field theory “suggest[s] that collective sexual life is a system of stratification comprised of institutionalized inequalities between categories of persons that produce objective differences in opportunities for partnership” (2011: 247). The majority of empirical work within the sexual fields framework maps principles by which some gay and bisexual men are deemed more sexually attractive than others (Adam and Green, 2014; Green, 2008a, 2008c, 2011; Hennen, 2014; Scheim et al., 2019; Tan, 2019) and a smaller body of research delineates principles by men and women come to view one another as attractive (David, 2015; Farrer, 2010; Farrer and Dale, 2014; Green, 2012; Weinberg and Williams, 2010, reprinted as Weinberg and Williams, 2014). This work defines sexual capital as a symbolic resource accruing “to those for whom there is a general consensus regarding desirability” (Green, 2011: 247). Sexual field theory maps national and racial determinants of sexual capital (Carrillo, 2017; Ding and Ho, 2013; Farrer, 2010; Farrer and Dale, 2014; Green, 2008c, 2011; Tan, 2019) and mounts empirical evidence that these and other determinants vary by sexual site (Farrer and Dale, 2014; Green, 2008c; Martin and George, 2006; Scheim et al., 2019). A subliterature addresses the constitution of sexual capital in international and transnational sexual fields (Carrillo, 2017; David, 2015; Ding and Ho, 2013; Farrer, 2010; Farrer and Dale, 2014; Silva and Ornat, 2015; Tan, 2019). The adaptation of Bourdieu’s concept of capital to the sexual realm enables a relational understanding of attractiveness (in contrast to views which individualize attractiveness; see Green’s (2012) critique of Hakim’s (2010) advocacy for the individual-level cultivation of erotic capital as a solution to women’s subjugation).

Sexual field theorists devote far more attention to hierarchies of attractiveness than to other expressions of domination, such as sexual violence (to name one especially notable omission). The word rape appears once in the 2014 anthology when Green suggests in passing (within a laundry list of other implications) that studying hierarchies of sexual attractiveness may help sociologists understand rape on college campuses (2014: 51). Sexual field theory’s neglect of intimate partner violence, reproductive injustice, compulsory heterosexuality, social reproduction, and other forms of conflict with stakes beyond sexual capital represents an analytic abandonment of many sexual domains where women’s domination is most deeply felt. The comparative emphasis of sexual field theory on hierarchies of attractiveness, especially as experienced by men, is reminiscent of Margaret Atwood’s famous statement that where men fear that women will laugh at them, women fear that men will kill them (1995: 413). I do not deny the sociological importance of hierarchies of attractiveness: sexual field theory documents health effects of these hierarchies among gay and bisexual men, for instance, as predictors of mental health and HIV risk (Green, 2008a, 2008b). Green’s (2008b) application of the stress process model to hierarchies of attractiveness demonstrates the significance of these hierarchies in the production of health disparities. However, I argue that the analytic reduction of power to these hierarchies, within a theoretical framework hailed as the pioneering edge of sexuality research, may obfuscate male domination.

To return to Bourdieu, the negation of male domination in sexual field theory is linked to its distinction between horizontal versus vertical principles of differentiation, which breaks from Bourdieu’s own treatment of multidimensional social space. As Green presents the sexual fields model of intra-field relations:

Horizontal differentiation distinguishes actors in nonhierarchical aggregations organized by a range of player characteristics, from socioeconomic background to sex to erotic theme, and can take form both within and across sexual fields. For example, the most basic horizontal differentiation within a sexual field can be seen in the case of heterosexual fields wherein the players are male and female … By contrast, vertical stratification arises when members of each group within a given field are sorted into hierarchical status positions or tiers of desirability (Green, 2014: 29–30).

Green’s characterization of gender as nonhierarchical is empirically problematic (to say the least). One might also question the characterization of socioeconomic class as nonhierarchical. In contrast to sexual field theory, Bourdieu’s use of multiple correspondence analysis represents a relational mode of thinking that makes no a priori distinctions between relations involving power and relations not involving power—for Bourdieu, all objective oppositions entail struggles for distinction and all produce a dominated and dominant pole within social space, though the distance between these poles varies and must be ascertained empirically. Bourdieu’s field diagrams map aggregations on horizontal and vertical axes, but horizontality is used for visual convenience and indicates not equality but a second dimension of inequality (Bourdieu, 1988, 1993). In Bourdieu, a field’s competing principles of differentiation carry different stakes—sexual capital might indeed represent one dimension of domination, but this finding would not rule out cross-cutting struggles with different stakes, such as struggles which produce greater or lesser vulnerability to sexual violence. Relinquishing Green’s “horizontal” versus “vertical” distinction would enable sexuality scholars to better theorize power within the sexual realm, especially men’s power over women.

The empirical invisibility of women within sexual field research contributes to the theoretical distortions I describe. Out of 13 empirical papers and one book identified for this review, nine analyze gay male fields (Adam and Green, 2014; Carrillo, 2017; Green, 2008a, 2008b, 2008c, 2011; Hennen, 2014; Leschziner and Green, 2013; Tan, 2019), two analyze heterosexual fields (Farrer, 2010; Farrer and Dale, 2014), and three analyze fields populated by actors with mixed gender and sexual identities (David, 2015; Scheim et al., 2019; Weinberg and Williams, 2010, reprinted as Weinberg and Williams, 2014). Martin justifies this focus on gay men by emphasizing the theoretical utility of homosexuality:

[W]e may want to privilege investigations of same-sex desire. This is both because such relationships are more divorced from the homophilous tendencies of marriage and because they are of greater analytic tractability simply because (as George [1996] has said), since theories of sexual capitalization are themselves often moves within the field, a theory of the sexual field is an immediately useful tool in the boy-girl wars (Martin, 2014: 184).

However, if homosexuality is so analytically valuable, where are the lesbians? No published empirical work within the sexual fields framework investigates the social organization of desire among lesbian and bisexual women (though see Weber’s (2014) dissertation for an opening salvo for this research field). Martin offers a retort to this critique as well:

Further, there is an obvious reason to focus on male same-sex desire because there have been and are still more male arenas of exclusively sexual organization that produce extremely strong field effects with high phenomenological recognizability. That has an obvious danger—we do not want a theory of sex that is a theory of only male sexuality. A focus on homosexual male fields might well lead to a huge bias in our understanding of sex but might still provide a serious improvement in our basic phenomenology of field theory (Martin, 2014: 184).

This treatment of gay male sexual fields as limiting cases is reasonable in principle, but the majority of empirical work on gay male fields does not address factors differentiating these fields from the organization of heterosexual or lesbian sexual life; rather it uses these cases to illustrate generalized claims about collective sexuality. These practices of generalization lead sexual fields scholars to understate domination within the sexual realm (and in particular, to understate forms of domination not expressed through hierarchies of attractiveness, e.g., men’s control over women’s reproductive decisions) and to overstate the autonomy of sexual scenes.

Domination and autonomy

Indeed, the treatment of gay male fields as representative is problematic for the very reason Martin encourages their analysis: “because there have been and are still more male arenas of exclusively sexual organization that produce extremely strong field effects with high phenomenological recognizability” (Martin, 2014: 184). Rather than taking methodological advantage of this fact, sexual fields scholars ought to ask: why is gay male sexuality more likely to be corralled into specific sites than heterosexual or lesbian sexuality? How does autonomous sexual life emerge historically? The micro-level definition of field given in recent scholarship hinders the capacity of the sexual fields framework to take on this analytic project. Because sexual fields scholars define fields as bars, bedroom, etc., they do not conceptualize lesbian and gay male social scenes as operating in different regions of a larger, singular sexual field. These scholars thus lack an appropriate theoretical apparatus to analyze the relations between these social scenes. If they did, they might register male domination as a factor contributing to the lower level of organization (and thus autonomy) of lesbian sexual life (D’Emilio, 1998). For that matter, they might be better equipped to tackle the ongoing effects of external structures on gay male life. A significant literature exists on the conditions for the emergence of sexual communities, including gay male communities (among many, see Altman, 2001; D’Emilio, 1998; Weeks, 2007). Reinterpreting this literature through a sexual fields lens (a project begun by Adam, 2016) could advance sexual field theory.

These points lead back to relative autonomy, the centerpiece of Wacquant’s critique of sexual field theory and the primary issue at stake in the boundaries of sexual fields. The ambiguous, often contradictory definitions of “field” offered in this literature render the autonomy of sexual fields difficult to theorize. For Bourdieu, the first—and arguably most essential—stage in field analysis involves locating fields vis-à-vis one another and especially within the field of power. Yet sexual field theorists lack an overarching theory of how the social scenes that they conceptualize as fields (e.g. bars, neighborhoods, online dating networks) fit together into one or several larger sexual fields, and how these larger sexual fields fit into social space. With key exceptions, sexual field theorists take Bourdieu’s relational imperative as a mandate to study concrete connections between individuals, but they neglect his first mandate to study relations between social spaces. Some sexual field theorists presume the autonomy of sexual scenes without establishing its historical conditions—the very intellectual project for which field theory was developed. This presumption limits their capacity to theorize domination (including misrecognized domination) within collective sexual life.

Future directions for sexual field theory

Wacquant suggests that “sexual field theory” is a sociological non-starter, as sexuality is not monopolized within a single semi-autonomous domain. My critique is not so sharp: this review essay argues instead that the autonomy of sexual fields (and thus the sensibility of classifying systems of sexual relations as fields) is an empirical question, and that historical research indeed documents the emergence of at least one semi-autonomous sexual field in the contemporary period (Farrer, 2010; Farrer and Dale, 2014; George, 1996; Martin and George, 2006). Yet some sexual fields scholarship presumes a high level of autonomy in increasingly circumscribed spaces, taking a lack of visible conflict within these spaces as evidence of this autonomy from external hierarchies. However, using the example of masculine domination, I argue that a more meso-level definition of field and a heightened sensitivity to symbolic violence could enable scholars to better map relations between social spaces and theorize the effects of external forces on sexual life.

The empirical work that I recommend on gender within broader fields may lead sexual field theorists, first, to relinquish their distinction between horizontal and vertical patterns of differentiation, and second, to theorize relationships between social spaces. A vast literature documents men’s power over women in the sexual realm, yet further engagement with this work is an insufficient corrective to the concerns that this article raises. Sexual field theorists’ depiction of egalitarian and hierarchical principles of division (Green, 2014: 29–30), rather than multiple competing hierarchies, makes it difficult for sexual field theorists to analyze forms of domination not encapsulated in hierarchies of attractiveness. Since men’s sexual control over women does not manifest through these hierarchies (at least not primarily), theorizing gender domination require a reformulation of the sexual field framework’s theory of power which decenters (though does not displace) sexual capital. Furthermore, moving beyond the treatment of gay male fields as representative and analyzing how women’s subjugation (and other broader phenomena) structures the emergence of autonomous sexual life will force sexual field scholars to operationalize sexual fields more clearly and theorize relationships between social spaces, Bourdieu’s first mandate for field analysis.

This paper uses gender to exemplify the empirical stakes of its points (an especially stark illustration given the empirical neglect of gender within sexual field theory and prior evidence of gender as a principle of division and domination). However, the divergences from Bourdieu that I identify may lead sexual field theory to mask other external forces acting upon sexual fields. For example, turning Bourdieu back upon sexual field theory reveals the neglect of class conflict as an omission paralleling the neglect of gender. Moon (2015) and Hennen (2014) treat Bourdieu’s focus on domination as appropriate for the study of class but not for the study of sexuality, yet Hennen’s own prior empirical work finds that class domination may be sublimated into affability within sexual fields. His fieldwork in three gay male subcultures demonstrates that these subcultures are mainly populated by middle-class men and that shared cultural tastes prevent class conflict from rising to the surface (Hennen, 2008, see in particular 27–28, 74–75; see also Heaphy, 2011 on sublimated class conflict in gay male communities). Hennen’s (2014: 83) suggestion that Bourdieu’s work on class domination is of limited relevance for sexual field theory, given the low visible class conflict in sexual fields, is thus contradicted by his own findings on the routes through which class conflict is made invisible. Sexual field theorists’ microsocial definition of field and neglect of symbolic domination render the ongoing effects of class difficult to register.

Some sexual field theorists address these concerns more effectively, particularly those studying transnational fields. For example, Farrer (2010) and Farrer and Dale (2014) use the sexual fields framework to map sexual life in Shanghai as a single transnational field embedded in transnational routes of capital accumulation with the power to reconstitute hierarchies along gender, race, national, and class lines. Their broad definition of “field” allows them to map relations between social spaces as well as relations between individuals and to document rather than presume the historical emergence of a semi-autonomous sexual field. Furthermore, their empirical attention to women’s experiences of sexual life enables a more multidimensional theory of power than is presented in much of the research I have reviewed. Carrillo’s (2017) study of gay male migration between Mexico and the United States achieves similar ends and is especially notable for its analysis of class difference and domination in this transnational sexual field. Future research should thus treat Farrer (2010), Farrer and Dale (2014), and Carrillo’s (2017) studies as models. Further development of the sexual fields framework might draw upon the broader literature on transnational sexuality (e.g. Altman, 2001; Hoang, 2015), which, by grounding sexuality in political economy, offers a joint corrective to the neglect of domination and the microsocial emphasis of the sexual fields literature.

This review of the sexual fields literature has implications for field theory as a broader conceptual movement. While a full review of field theory is beyond the scope of this paper, I indicated previously that many sociologists have taken up Bourdieu’s concept of field in more flexible, more microsocial ways than Bourdieu himself uses it, and these perspectives tend to downplay domination (Kluttz and Fligstein, 2016; Fligstein and McAdam, 2015; Martin, 2003). Sexual field theory thus represents one strand of a broader American reinvention of field. While many contemporary field theorists see the flexibility of their approach as an empirical advantage, this paper suggests that Bourdieu’s more constrained definition of field may better sensitize sociologists to domination acting upon and within fields, as taking affability at face value may lend scientific reinforcement to symbolic violence. If everything is a field, then nothing is a field; the concept’s analytic utility lies in its specificity. A reconstruction of “field” along the lines I outline may equip sexual field theorists to map and contextualize sexual life within broader systems of domination, which will also contribute to field theory as a general meso-level approach to the social world.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I thank Michael Burawoy, Leslie Salzinger, Loïc Wacquant, and two anonymous reviewers for feedback.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Emily H Ruppel

Emily H Ruppel is a third-year doctoral student in sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research investigates the political economic moorings of embodied identities, particularly gender, sexuality, and disability. Current lines of work address: (a) class dynamics in LGBTQ communities and (b) labor practices within job training programs for people with disabilities. She holds an MA from Berkeley and a BA from Smith College, both in sociology.

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