Steven Epstein, Northwestern University, Sexual Health as Buzzword: Competing Stakes, Proliferating Meanings, and the Politics of Niche Standardization

 

Commentator: Professor Danny Filk, Ben Gurion University

 

Chair: Yossef Schwartz

 

THE BAR-HILLEL COLLOQUIUM FOR THE HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY, AND SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE

 

 Monday, November 25th, 18:00 PM

 Gilman Building, Hall 449

 

In recent decades the idea of “sexual health” has gone from obscurity to ubiquity. The explosion of discourses, practices, and products that reference this goal can be traced through many of the usual markers of institutionalization in the worlds of public health and biomedicine, including the birth of journals, research centers, professional associations, and training programs around the world. Yet the convergence around the term masks a remarkable diversity of scientific, political, economic, and cultural agendas. Through an analysis of both emergence and dispersion, I describe the contexts in which the recent emphasis on sexual health has arisen and the consequences of attempts to lay claim to it. I argue that the effects of the invention and dispersion of sexual health are diverse and relatively uncontained, and that no social actor or institution has succeeded in establishing ownership. These findings provide insight into the character and functions of buzzwords, and I suggest steps toward the development of “buzzword studies” within STS.