Emancipating Sexuality: Breakthroughs into a Bulwark of Tradition.
This article presents evidence for a rising emancipatory spirit, across generations and around the world, in a life domain in which religion hitherto blocked emancipatory gains: sexual freedoms. We propose an explanation of rising emancipative values that integrates several approaches into a single idea-the utility ladder of freedoms. Specifically, we suggest thatobjectivelyimproving living conditions-from rising life expectancies to broader education-transform the nature of life from a source of threats into a source of opportunities. As life begins to hold more promise for increasing population segments, societies climb the utility ladder of freedoms: practicing and respecting universal freedoms becomes increasingly vital to take advantage of rising life opportunities. This trend has begun to spill over into a life domain in which religious norms have until recently been able to resist emancipatory gains: sexual freedoms. We present (1) crossnational, (2) longitudinal, (3) generational and (4) multilevel evidence on an unprecedentedly broad basis in support of this theory.
The Quality of Government Institute (QoG), University of Gothenburg, P.O. Box 711, 40530 Gothenburg, Sweden.
Amy C
AC
Alexander
Institute for Social Research (ISR), University of Michigan, Thompson Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48008 USA ; Laboratory for Comparative Social Research (LSCR), National Research University-Higher School of Economics, Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia.
Ronald
R
Inglehart
Laboratory for Comparative Social Research (LSCR), National Research University-Higher School of Economics, Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia ; Center for the Study of Democracy (CSD), Leuphana University, Scharnhorststr. 1, 21335 Lüneburg, Germany.
Christian
0000-0002-1562-3580
C
Welzel
Cultural change; Economic development; Emancipation; Emancipative values; Existential opportunities; Fertility norms; Freedom ladder; Life quality; Moral evolution; Religion; Secular values; Sexual liberation