| Abstract: | This article provides a general sense of transgender studies in sociology. It does so by looking at the definitions and relationship between the terms transgender and transsexual, the history of transsexual studies, sociology's place in this development, and the active production (by trans people) of transsexual and transgender studies. This review primarily focuses on US sociological writing, including ethnomethodology, labeling, feminist, and symbolic interactionist frameworks, while incorporating critical theory, queer theory, and other interdisciplinary influences. The article explores various movements in the recent history of this scholarship: for instance, while transsexual studies were mostly developed with a male-to-female transsexual perspective, recent scholarship place female-to-male transsexual and transgender identity centrally. I present current trends and future steps of sociological inquiry in the area of transgender studies as a way of closing the discussion of sociology's potential contributions in the near future. |
