1. Home
  2. Issues
2020
No. Nr (13), Oral History - Emotions 2019
No. (12), Public History 2018
No. (11), Cultural History of Knowledge 2017
No. (10), Anthropology – Folklore – History 2016
No. (9), Cultural Heritage 2015
No. (8), Anthropology and History 2014
No. 1 (6), Semiotics of History No. 2 (7), History and Gender 2013
No. 1 (4), On Representation No. 2 (5), Genealogies of Culture 2012
No. 2 (3), Readings of the Past No. 1 (2), Anthropology / history of the Contemporary World 2011
No. 1-2 (1), Preliminaries
ISSN 2084–1418
The paper edition of the Anthropology of History Yearbook is the definitive version

2015, No. (8), Anthropology and History

Agnieszka Kościańska
History as necessary knowledge: on the anthropological studies of expert discourse about sexuality

PDF version
Keywords: sexuality, gender roles, Poland, history of sexology, sexual dysfunctions, communism

Abstract:
This paper shows the role of historical findings in the interpretation of ethnographic research. The 1970s and 1980s mark a period in which sexology developed in Poland; several important books appeared, and sexologists published extensively in the popular press. Health professionals discussed with their readers various sexuality related issues, such as sexual techniques and pleasure, sexual “deviations,” gender, marriage and violence. They provided guidelines on how to achieve pleasure and how to eliminate obstacles to good sex. One of the obstacles discussed by sexologists was women’s emancipation. Referring to various scientific theories, sexologists argued that women’s sexual expectation made many men unable to perform. This paper asks how to interpret sexological understanding of gender in the 1970s.

About Author:
KOŚCIAŃSKA AGNIESZKA - cultural anthropologist, Assistant Professor in the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology of the University of Warsaw. Email: akoscianska[at]uw.edu.pl

References
Go back