heh. Randall Collins has a nifty little discussion of how sex can be understood as an exchange of erotic property (not as bad as it sounds Joanna--since property here is understood sociologically: property is nothing more and nothing less than a set of formal and informal rules regulating how we behave toward and think about objects, people, and animals).
he goes on to point out how sex, love, and marriage can also be understood as the enactment of rituals between the couple and the couple and the rest of the world and how these are not unlike those found in religious institutions (as we conventionally define them).
Kelley