(--And note that this social analysis does not imply a position in the
Nature/nurture debate! All biologically determined traits must be embedded in social interactions to create social structure and processes. From the sociological standpoint, biological characteristics cannot explain any social facts, because it is always through social interactions that any social roles, statuses, groups, and institutions
are created and sustained. --Thus the "social construction" of homosexuality and heterosexuality, regardless of the biological factors
that influence individual sexual preferences.)
Miles
^^^^ CB; This is all true, but there is a subtlety with respect to sexuality. The social determination, that you correctly always emphasize, is in part made through a symbolic structure, systems of ideas, sets of rules, social "grammars", culture, custom, tradition. In this case, it may be that the symbolic structure of the social 'imitates' or is determined ( some time in the past when the symbolic social structure, system of ideas was itself "constructed") by the structure of the biological instinct. I think Levi-Strauss' concept of totemism ( See book by the same name) may be of use here. In totemism, a cultural structure, a symbolic social structure, takes its structure from some a structure in nature. Culture imitates nature.
So, two different clans -social groups- might be named for different animals. The structure of relationship and difference between the animals, nature, is used to structure a social relationship, that between two human clan groups.
Thus with heterosexual relations., the social structure of heterosexuality "imitates" the structure of the instinct or biological relationship. As you say, the heterosexual social relations rules construct the actual individual heterosexual relationships. People who are heterosexual are following certain social rules. But in this case the rules themselves were constructed in imitation of the biological pattern. Culture imitates nature. They are a totemism , in the Levi-Straussian sense.
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