1. subculture, Sexuality andsubculture, Sexuality and
biographybiography
@mark_carrigan
mark@markcarrigan.net

2. Social WorldsSocial Worlds
Social worlds are networks of interaction demarcated by their participants'
mutual involvement in specifiable sets of activities. They form around sports,
art forms and genres, pastimes, occupations, locations, conflicts and
controversies, and projects, anything that can become a focus for collective
interest and action. Worlds are networks whose members manifest a shared
orientated towards specific conventions and common adherence to a shared
framework of meaning. They are generated by interaction but also function
as a context and environment which shapes interaction. As actors 'enter' a
world, interacting with others whom they recognize as members of it, they
shift their orientation and perhaps also their identity,
thereby collaboratively with the other (re)generating their part of that world.
(Crossley 2010: 138)

3. The nature of social worldsThe nature of social worlds
Continually (re)constituted through interaction
Mediated interaction and/or face to face interaction
Irreducible to territory though often (re)constituted
territorially
Provides normative frames of reference which
participants can use ‘outside’ the social world
Fuzzily bounded but nonetheless experienced
‘inside’ and ‘outside’ or ‘inwards’/‘outwards’ facing
interaction
Opens up the questions of temporal ‘entry’ and ‘exit’

4. Myth of Cultural IntegrationMyth of Cultural Integration
Specific conventions and common adherence to a
shared framework of meaning...?
Common tendency to conflate the ‘community’
and the ‘meaning’ in sociological understandings
of culture
Mistake to infer shared belief from shared practice
or vice versa
If we accept this then subjectivity becomes crucial
to understanding reproduction and
transformation of social worlds

5. PsychobiographyPsychobiography
‘Entry’ and ‘exit’ into social worlds are temporal concepts.
Psychobiography as concept to recognize the “linked
series of evolutionary transitions” which unfold at “various
significant junctures in the lives of individuals” (Layder
1997: 47)
So how do people ‘enter’ and ‘exit’ social worlds?
How does this manner of entry and exit (direction,
meaning, velocity) shape their participation in its
(re)constitution?
Social worlds as emergent from particular configurations of
convergent psychobiographies

6. Case Study: AsexualityCase Study: Asexuality
People “who do not experience sexual attraction”
Great deal of diversity underlying ‘umbrella definition’
Online communities began to form 2001 onwards
(though some pre-history)
Attracted much media attention which brings new
people into community
Online: forums, blogs, youtube, tumblr
‘Offline’ meet-ups and activism

7. Psychobiographical ConvergencePsychobiographical Convergence
Lack of sexual attraction (heterogenous across the
group) previously rendered situationally problematic
Both relations (“you’re just a late bloomer!”) and
ideas (“if I’m not sexual then I must be broken”) at
work here
Discovery of the asexual social world: directly
(e.g.google etc) or indirectly (e.g. media article or
friend/acquaintance)
Reappraisal of prior self-interpretation and
assumption of pathology

8. ConclusionConclusion
Recognizing the independent variability of subjectivity
and refusing the homogenization of ‘sub-cultures’
Treating subjectivity in a way which foregrounds
temporality and agency
Moving from ‘groups’ to individuals, networks and
social worlds in sexuality studies. Getting beyond
essentialism debates.
The crucial question: how do identifiable psychobiographical
trajectories shape the (re)constitution of specific social worlds?
Thoughts appreciated! This is plan for analysis yet to
be undertaken....