In the late modern period, an unprecedented expansion of specialized erotic worlds has transformed the domain of intimate life. Organized by appetites and dispositions related to race, ethnicity, class, gender, and age, these erotic worlds are arenas of sexual exploration but, also, sites of stratification and dominion wherein actors vie for partners, social significance, and esteem. These are what Adam Isaiah Green calls sexual fields, which represent a semblance of social life for which he offers a groundbreaking new framework.

To build on the sexual fields framework, Green has gathered a distinguished group of scholars who together make a strong case for sexual field theory as the first systematic theoretical innovation since queer theory in the sociology of sexuality. Expanding on the work of Bourdieu, Green and contributors develop this distinctively sociological approach for analyzing collective sexual life, where much of the sexual life of our society resides today. Coupling field theory with the ethnographic and theoretical expertise of some of the most important scholars of sexual life at work today, Sexual Fields offers a game-changing approach that will revolutionize how sociologists analyze and make sense of contemporary sexual life for years to come.

Adam Isaiah Green is associate professor of sociology at the University of Toronto. A native of New York City, he lives in Toronto.

— Verta Taylor, coauthor of Drag Queens at the 801 Cabaret

— Arlene Stein, Rutgers University

— Joshua Gamson, University of San Francisco

— John DeLamater, University of Wisconsin

— Elizabeth A. Armstrong, author of Forging Gay Identities: Organizing Sexuality in San Francisco, 1950-1994

— LSE Review of Books