Reading Porn: The Paradigm Shift in Pornography Research

Abstract

This article examines the paradigm shift in pornography theory and research from a focus on `texts and effects' through to work emerging from the late 1980s onwards. The article considers the reconceptualization of pornography as a category, the location of pornography in relation to cultural hierarchy and form, the changing status of pornography in relation to mainstream representations, the significance of developing technologies and the movement towards more situated accounts of pornographic texts and their audiences as a series of attempts to contextualize the question `what is pornography?'