Ken Plummer, who has died aged 76, of complications of kidney disease, was an internationally respected sociologist who taught at the University of Essex for 30 years. Inspired by the radical social movements of the 1970s, he pioneered the application of social constructionist ideas to an understanding of sexuality. Along with Mary McIntosh, Jeffrey Weeks and others, Ken recast homosexuality as a socially stigmatised aspect of human experience rather than, as it was widely viewed at the time, an illness. He was my colleague, mentor and friend.
Ken was a proponent of symbolic interactionist thought, whose core belief is, as Ken put it, that “human beings are always engaged in continuous permutations of action”. Storytelling, he believed, is central to the ways humans act in the world and make sense of their experiences. In his 1995 book, Telling Sexual Stories, Ken looked at the rise of rape stories, coming out stories, and recovery stories and, more generally, a “sexual storytelling culture” , in which there is a greater willingness to discuss in public what might in the past have been considered private. He analysed the ways social movements help to push certain kinds of previously taboo stories into the public arena, and argued that listening to the stories of others helps create empathy for their experiences.
