Interactions and intersections

Abstract

This ‘thank you note’ pays tribute, albeit briefly, to the enormous contribution Ken Plummer’s work has made to sociology and to the study of sexualities in particular. He played a pioneering role in developing social understandings of sexuality, highlighting the importance of everyday interactions and social encounters. More specifically, over his career he addressed a range of important issues including, for example, sexuality and narrative analysis, generational sexualities, the significance of queer, sexual and intimate citizenship and the need for global critical sexualities studies. Along the way, it also sketches out some of the ways his work criss-crossed and informed my own research and scholarship in enriching and stimulating ways.

It is impossible in such a short piece to even begin to tell the story of the enormous contribution that Ken has made to sociology and to sexualities scholarship. Even if it were a much longer article, it would still be extremely difficult to do justice to his many successful achievements over the many years. Instead, what I will to try to do is give just a tiny flavour of the influence that Ken’s work has had, including on my own thinking and writing. Ken was a prolific and inspirational writer. In his early work, he pioneered social constructionist approaches to understanding sexuality, based on symbolic interactionism and building on the work of John Gagnon and William Simon, studying homosexuality as a socially stigmatised role in Sexual Stigma (1975) and the Making of the Modern Homosexual (1981). This early work included a chapter on ‘going gay’ that Ken wrote for my very first book as a young academic, with John Hart, which focused on the development of gay identities and lifestyles (Plummer, 1981). It may seem commonplace even orthodox to talk about the social construction of sexuality now, but in the 1970s and 80s this was groundbreaking and highly controversial, offering a new approach that challenged essentialist biological accounts and psychoanalytic explanations that had long dominated understandings of sexuality and gender.

In his work, Ken highlighted the importance of the historical context of the development of both theoretical approaches and the making sense of everyday interactions and social life. This is illustrated, for example, through his study of narrative sexualities and generational sexualities (Plummer 1995, 2010). Here, in this account, this historical marking is important not only in acknowledging the significance of Ken’s work both theoretically and methodologically in instituting a key period of transition in the study of sexuality. It is also about situating the pioneering of a sociological approach to sexuality in an era when it was not easy to be a sexualities scholar. There were huge barriers to carrying out research and scholarship in this field, more especially in what would become known as lesbian and gay studies. Echoing Telling Sexual Stories (1995), this is a shared personal story of the different risks, as well as achievements, associated with the making of these formative contributions to the social analysis of sexualities. It was a time of people being advised that they would never get on if they pursued a career in sexuality studies especially of ‘homosexuality’; of researchers having their findings dismissed as politically biased; of being stigmatised and discriminated against resulting in the use of academic pseudonyms; ¹ of not being able to get funding to support research (though from the 1980s, HIV/AIDS did afford some leverage); of fighting for legitimacy to establish sexuality as an academic field with often only a limited literature to draw upon and a small academic community to support you, in part due to the difficulties researchers faced in publishing in the field of sexualities as well as the stigmatisation of sexualities scholars. Despite the many challenges, Ken continued to play a leading role in the development of the sociology of sexuality as a ‘legitimate’ field of study that over the decades has ‘fragmented into a thousand blooms across the world’ (Plummer, 2018: 1208). This is clearly evident from his early scholarship through to his theoretical contribution to a wide range of issues throughout his career, including sexuality and narrative analysis, the significance of queer, and sexual and intimate citizenship, as well as in his role as the founding editor of Sexualities which has grown to become one of the leading journals in the field.

Ken’s work has criss-crossed with my own research in enriching and stimulating ways, across changing social and political landscapes over several decades. We shared ideas at conferences, and more (I once stored some prawns for him in my hotel fridge). We were both involved in setting up a highly successful Erasmus European Conference Summer School in Lesbian and Gay Studies that ran for several years and attracted students from the United Kingdom, Netherlands, Italy, Germany and elsewhere. In 1991, this pioneering 2-week conference was held in Essex with a huge input from Ken and other colleagues, including Mary McIntosh, and – of course – it ended with a wonderful party hosted by Ken and Everard at their home in Wivenhoe. Interactions and intersections, both in person and across the page, connected me with many important areas of scholarly debate that Ken’s work addressed. I could give many examples but will highlight three ‘dialogues’ that have been particularly important sources of inspiration for my own work over many years: symbolic interactionism and theoretical approaches to the development and maintenance of sexual identities (Richardson and Hart, 1981); the concept of sexual stigma and its effects (Richardson and Laurie, 2019); and sexuality and citizenship. At a time when a literature on sexual citizenship was emerging in 1990s, Ken chose to elaborate an idea of intimate citizenship, which he defined very loosely as a cluster of concerns over rights over our bodies, feelings, identities, relationships, genders, erotic experiences and representations (Plummer, 1995, 2003, 2005). This open notion of intimate citizenship later informed my own critical interrogations of the relationship between sexuality, intimacy and citizenship (Richardson, 2017).

Ken played a central role in the establishment of what he came to refer to as (global) critical sexualities studies (Plummer, 2012). Nevertheless, as he and others recognised, the enormous growth of the field of sexualities studies has led to it becoming very fragmented, at the same time as it has become more mainstreamed and professionalised. Ken expressed ‘anxiety’ that much of this work did not advance the field ‘theoretically very much’ (Plummer, 2013: 762). From the vantage point of writing at a time when challenges to social understandings of sexuality are increasingly voiced, and we are witnessing a revitalisation of essentialist and naturalising epistemologies, Ken’s call for the need for the continuing task of developing critical theory has proven to be particularly prescient. ²

There is so much more to say, but I will end with an affectionate thank you to Ken for the shared times, the shared stories, the shared interactions, the shared ideas, the shared knowledge and insights, all of which provided such inspiration to me and the many many others whose lives he touched and influenced.