Summary
Jeffrey Weeks: Against Nature - essays on the social construction of identity
Belief in an unchanging and eternal essence of identity, on which culture and history leave no trace, whether it is national or gender identities, or the identities of social phenomena and institutions ("democracy", "capitalism", "church", etc.) was first abandoned by contemporary historians and sociologists, seeing in it a simple metaphysical fixation that has no confirmation in concrete research. There are no "essences" outside of history and culture, different values, meaning and significance are attributed to them diachronically and synchronically.
British historian Jeffrey Weeks has for many years researched the emergence and construction of new social identities, which arose as a result of the increased interest in sexuality in early capitalism, which was born of the need for greater population control. His research methods and insights are paradigmatic and can be applied to a number of social phenomena. It is also evident from his work that a modern historian must know numerous sociological, philosophical and even psychoanalytical schools in order to explain complex social relations and the influence of ideas on social and political reality.
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