Summary
Jeffrey Weeks: Against Nature: Essays on the Social Construction of Identity
Faith in the unchanging and eternal essence of identity on which culture and history leave no trace, be it national or gender identities, or the identities of social phenomena and institutions ("democracy", "capitalism", "church", etc.). ) are the first to be abandoned by modern historians and sociologists, seeing in it an ordinary metaphysical fixation that has no confirmation in concrete research. Outside of history and culture, there are no "essences", diachronically and synchronically different values, meaning and meanings are attributed to them.
British historian Jeffrey Weeks has for many years researched the emergence and construction of new social identities, arising from the increased interest in sexuality in early capitalism, which arose from the need for greater population control. His research methods and insights are paradigmatic and can be applied to a range of social phenomena. It is also clear from his work that a contemporary historian must be familiar with 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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