LIŠKOVÁ, Kateřina. Sexological Spring? The 1968 International Gathering of Sexologists in Prague as a Turning Point. In Patrick Manning and Mat Savelli. Global Transformations in the Life Sciences, 1945-1980. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018, p. 114-127. ISBN 978-0-8229-4527-7.
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Basic information
Original name Sexological Spring? The 1968 International Gathering of Sexologists in Prague as a Turning Point
Authors LIŠKOVÁ, Kateřina (203 Czech Republic, guarantor, belonging to the institution).
Edition Pittsburgh, Global Transformations in the Life Sciences, 1945-1980, p. 114-127, 14 pp. 2018.
Publisher University of Pittsburgh Press
Other information
Original language English
Type of outcome Chapter(s) of a specialized book
Field of Study 60101 History
Country of publisher United States of America
Confidentiality degree is not subject to a state or trade secret
Publication form printed version "print"
WWW book details
RIV identification code RIV/00216224:14230/18:00101181
Organization unit Faculty of Social Studies
ISBN 978-0-8229-4527-7
Keywords (in Czech) Sexuologie; Československo; studená válka; historie medicíny; sexuální deviace
Keywords in English Sexology; Czechoslovakia; Cold War; history of medicine; sexual deviance
Tags rivok
Tags International impact, Reviewed
Changed by Changed by: Mgr. Blanka Farkašová, učo 97333. Changed: 23/2/2019 09:43.
Abstract
How is science shaped by the time and place it originates from? Did Cold War science, and particularly that formulated in the totalitarian East, conform to the demands of an omnipotent state? Is it possible to think about knowledge without the interference of its social surroundings? What better situation to seek answers to these questions than a gathering of scientists from both sides of the Iron Curtain? This chapter analyzes exactly such a meeting, the conference "Symposium sexuologicum pragense" which took place in 1968, as a case study. I show how the understanding of the etiology of sexual pathologies diverged between the Eastern and Western sexologists and how it subsequently changed in Czechoslovakia. How political regimes (and broader social conditions) shape but do not overdetermine the science that is produced in them. Science during the Cold War East was not any more afflicted with the regime's "ideology" than its Western counterpart; they were both products of their respective conditions of possibility. The lesson we can draw from the meeting of two sexologies, the Eastern and Western, is that while the life sciences of the Cold War East were not "Westernized", understood as conforming to Western concepts and modes of knowing, they were definitely globalized – meaning a science discussed across national borders, various cultural traditions and political emphases.
Links
GJ16-10639Y, research and development projectName: Intimní život v období státního socialismu v komparativní perspektivě. Sexualita, expertíza a moc ve střední a východní Evropě (1948-1989)
Investor: Czech Science Foundation
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