The Social Side of Sex

Like eating, sexual behavior will be featured through this book as an important category of behavior that is shaped by both nature and culture. Whereas food is needed for survival, sex is needed for reproduction.

Sex has been a bitter battleground between those who explain it on the basis of nature and evolution and those who emphasize cultural construction. Is sex a matter of genes and hormones causing people to feel desires the way nature has prescribed them? Or is culture the principal cause of who wants to do what to whom in bed?

Some features of sexuality are found everywhere and may well be rooted in nature. In all cultures, for example, men seem to desire a greater number of sexual partners than women (Pedersen, Miller, Putcha-Bhagavatula, & Yang, 2002). Sex is everywhere the main way (and usually the only way) to make babies. The same basic sex practices are known to most cultures. Sex historian Reay Tannahill (1980) observed that the sex manuals written thousands of years ago in ancient China covered almost all the same techniques one would find in a sex manual today, with only one exception (sadomasochism).

Virtuous Vegetarians

Throughout this book, we will feature research relevant to eating. We have selected eating for this treatment because human eating is relevant to both nature and culture.

On the nature side, eating is natural; all animals eat. Eating is a vital means of getting what one needs for survival, which, as we saw, was a crucial goal of biological life. Social animals are social precisely because their social interactions help them get food and thereby to survive. Like other animals, humans feel bad when they do not have enough to eat, and these bad feelings motivate people to seek food. Also like other animals, humans quickly learn to dislike and avoid foods that make them sick.

Humans resemble other animals in their need to eat regularly. But eating has been transformed by culture. Unlike all other animals, humans go on diets, have elaborate systems of etiquette and table manners, cook their food, experiment endlessly with recipes, and sometimes serve meals to total strangers.

Another uniquely human trait is the tendency to reject certain categories of food based on ideas. Many religions, for example, prescribe or forbid particular foods, especially on certain days. Based on religious views, some people will eat beef but not pork, while others eat pork but not beef.

Why We Need Cultural Studies?

The citizens of multicultural countries need to have a better understanding of cultural studies than people living in countries that have a single culture

Many people are unable to describe why they behave the way they do or why their thought processes are similar to their neighbor's but not similar to a person from another country. The reasons for such differences are complicated. There are many such questions, the answers to which lie in the difference in cultures across the world. They can only be understood by studying the implication of difference in location and the evolution of behavior. The field of study that deals with such questions and variations is called cultural studies.

Such questions are relevant for a country like USA or India that has a large diversity of people. The citizens of such countries need to have a better understanding of cultural studies than people living in countries that have a single culture. One can invest time and money to understand this subject. This will promote a higher level of cooperation and understanding. Today, many institutions teach the basic tenets of the evolution of culture and tradition to their students, as a part of the country's history. Consequently, people who are interested in studying history find themselves delving deeper into the subject.