Trying to catch up with Dr. Abela for an interview is like trying to flag down an express train because right now he is very much in demand with his lecturing and the double whammy - the publication of a study on poverty in Malta as well as his latest book, `Secularised Sexuality: youth values in a city-island.’ Such works bring in their trail inevitable press-conferences, interviews with the local print and broadcast media and seminars and much else. But catch up with him we did.

Dr Abela needs no introduction as his expertise and experience in the field of sociological surveys and such instruments of torture is well  known.

He began researching some 13 years ago with the analysis of European and Maltese values survey data when he was reading for his doctorate degree in sociology at Oxford University.

The findings from this work eventually ended up as the ground-breaking ‘Transmitting values in European Malta: A Study in the contemporary values of modern society’. Earlier, when he was doing post-graduate studies in Chicago his M.A. thesis was on gender relations. At Oxford, he examined the various values of human relations that included sexuality, gender, religion, marriage and the family. Even earlier, during his undergraduate studies he remembers writing a dissertation on the concept of love in Freud.

So somehow or other, research on sexual mores and behaviour have been an integral part of his studies, as they are -- and must be -- of the social sciences. "The sociologist of human values" he told us, "is interested amongst other things, in such matters as divorce, abortion, promiscuity, gender relations as part of the whole gamut of human existence."

Over the past few years, he has supervised several students for their degree requirements at the university of Malta and others who were reading for post-graduate degrees with overseas universities, in their research on child abuse, domestic violence, sexual attitudes and behaviour, AIDS, parenting, stereotypes and so on

As director of the former Institute of Social Welfare he has also carried out an extensive survey on poverty and demands for social welfare, and presented research findings in local and international sociological conferences.

His first book on values caught the attention of those who were interested in divorce. This was one of the subjects that made headlines and created a lot of debate in the local papers.  So polemic is nothing new him as a sociologist. In fact Dr Abela considers it an occupational hazard. "Yet", he says, "if your research forces to an inescapable conclusion, intellectual honesty forces you to publish it - no matter how unpalatable it may be to some segments or vested interests."

The theoretical chapter of Transmitting Values makes reference to the Mediterranean code of ‘honour and shame’. Social anthropologists describe how Mediterranean people behave.

Men feel honour-bound to uphold tradition and control the sexual activity of the females in their household, while the women are bound by shame - to be deferential towards the male, not to lose their virginity before marriage, and to be faithful to their husband after marriage etc. The Catholic Church has assumed this Latin Mediterranean culture and reproduced it through its institutions. Sexual behaviour was regulated through its teachings and practices. Sexual misconduct was designated as mortal sin, to be confessed and forgiven.

As we reflect on today’s society we find that serious consideration is being given to specific problems of the modern world. AIDS, life-style diversity, de-emphasis of the pro-creational aspect of sex to the inter-relational, transformation of intimacy, power and gender relations, and so on.

The sociologist is duty-bound to investigate the workings of society and come back to society with the results, however shocking they might be. Very often sociologists look like voices in the desert addressing people in society with words like: ‘Hey listen this is what I find about you. You may not like it; you can bury your head in the sand.  But my duty is to let you know what the findings are.’

First Sunday: There are those who are very sceptical about surveys. We all know how numbers are manipulated: the EU or not EU, divorce or no divorce; photo-finish of election results - all these show that data and statistics can be twisted as one sees fit. In other words how scientific is your study?

Dr. Abela: There are various kinds of social research making use of qualitative or quantitative surveys, time-series data, anthropological or ethnographic fieldwork and so on. No study can claim full objectivity or exclusive knowledge in the truest sense of the word. The national youth values study, which was commissioned by the secretariat for youth of the Ministry of Education, was not limited to one club, a particular political party, a church group or anything like that. It was a cross-section of Maltese society. This was done by means of a random sample, where respondents were selected at random like in a lottery from the full list of young people aged 16 to 26 years old. This assures a cross-sectional representation of all young people in Malta and Gozo.
 
Again, whereas most surveys conducted in Malta take a sample of not more than 500 respondents from the total population, the youth survey has interviewed 1000 respondents.  To take a mundane example, when you have stirred your ‘minestra’  quite thoroughly, you only need to taste a spoonful to see whether it is just right.  The same with surveys. In our case, a sample of 1000 young people means one respondent for every 59 young people in the Maltese islands. The generalisations from our findings approximate closely to the true situation and have a higher degree of scientific reliability than previous surveys of its kind.

First Sunday: So now we come to the nitty gritty - which is to explain the title of the present publication, `Secularised Sexuality: youth values in a city-island’   The intriguing title may make it sound, as if only sexuality is secularised here? And what about the city-island hypenation part of it?

Dr. Abela.  Let us start with the sub-title first: youth values in a city-island. As we approach the new millennium, Malta aspires to be a modern European city.  But we live as islanders on circumscribed territory with a very insular mentality that begs and borrows and plagiarises from here and there. So there is this tussle if not dichotomy that exists in the Maltese psyche and whether we like it or not we have to deal with it. As to the sexuality part of it, as I said before, most of my earlier sociological studies dealt with some of the many aspects of sexuality. But recently I acted as  local supervisor for a dissertation of a Hungarian student in the social sciences reading for her Master’s degree on sexuality at the University of London and I had to do a lot of reading about the matter -- to keep up with the student if nothing else. In the process I gained a lot of insights myself on the sexual behaviour of University students. And this partly triggered the present research on the subject. I figured why not expand all this to examine the outlook of  young people in general in Malta?

First Sunday: encouraged by the relaxed  openness and creative investigative analysis, went one further and asked: What are some of the more striking conclusions/discoveries made in this survey especially about sexuality?

Dr. Abela: Sexuality has always been controlled and regulated by some group or other. We have already made reference to the traditional code of honour and shame. Also in Malta, the Church adopted this sexual code of ethics, which was enforced in the confessional and in its teaching ministry. This reinforced a family culture for couples to have more and more children. Certain sociologists find that such a practice safeguards a constant flow of pious faithful to the Church, also leading to a constant supply of men and women ‘vocations’ bound by celibacy to propagate its missions.

Today we talk about openness as if Maltese society has become emancipated. In some respects young people, the higher educated in particular, adopt more liberal lifestyles and are closer in their sexual behaviour to their European counterparts. But all this takes place in a predominantly traditional context of a culturally bound island where the influence of a restrictive catholic moralism and double standards although weakened persist. In some respects new social agents, the secular caring professions, the leisure industry and the media have displaced traditional Church control in the regulation of sexuality. Maltese society may be more open but it is still controlled. This is shown in Gyongyi V. Saunderson’s work and is confirmed in the findings from my research. (For those interested, FIRST SUNDAY carried the interview with Gyongyi on her findings in November 1997 under the title: ‘Sex and Catholicism don’t mix’)

First Sunday: The title of the book harps on the word  `secularised’ How far do you think Malta has become so secularised especially in view of the oft-repeated reflections of the Hierarchy on the pervasive spread of materialism in ‘Catholic’  Malta?

Dr. Abela:  Much as we berate materialism and think it is a modern phenomenon, we should know that it is not so altogether. In the past we had a lot of materialism and it was church-abetted to boot.  To amass wealth, so that the faithful can make contributions to the church was a pious and commendable activity. They gained merits according to the amount of Masses said in life and after death -- and these had to be paid for. There was a great attachment to wealth as is evident when the Church and its people got involved in property management and accepted death-bed and other bequests. All this gave the idea that being wealthy was an act of piety. Today young people think differently, are and act differently. They believe not so much in wealth as such but in consumerism. They are  not attached to wealth but in squandering what they have. This may be due perhaps to the benefits of the previous generations, the work of their parents and the welfare state. they do not have to worry about old age, there are the pensions, unemployment and sickness benefits and so on. The adult generation has built for them a society where there is no scarcity hence no need to ‘save for a rainy day’ but an urge to spend and consume here and now, which for certain young people often takes place in a hedonistic manner.

Hence life-styles change and have changed. Young people have a choice in their life and hence in their morality and sexual behaviour. They can mix and match and do so with equal ease from among apparently irreconcilable values. They can feel godly without going to church; they can engage in pre-marital sex and belong to Christian communities or prayer groups, they can be earning good money at a good job and still not feel obliged to contribute to the expenses even though living at home with their parents.

Naturally we cannot lump all of the young people in one basket. But we can distinguish the life-style of young people of today in Malta by four life-orientations: First there is the traditional-conservative orientation or lifestyle. Second there are the creativity seekers, those who want to lead an individualised, independent and autonomous life. Then there are those who live by a hedonistic philosophy - bent on love of money, sex, over-concern with their appearance, fashion where the beauty business is big business and finally the religious life orientation not in the traditional sense as in the first case but more of a spirituality, a believe in a direct relationship to God rather than through the intervention of an institution.

First Sunday: Your findings certainly throw light on what is happening. After all that is the role of the sociologist’s job, to reflect society.  Are there any other projects up your sleeve?

Dr. Abela:  As a matter of fact I do. We plan, that is myself in collaboration with an international group of scholars, to work on in-depth analyses (notice the plural) of certain aspects of research already done; in other words to do some quality research of certain lifestyles that have already been identified from the quantitative surveys at hand. This will involve, for example, seeing how certain life-styles developed over a period of time and to see how all this is affecting society and will do so in the future.

We are currently busy studying the results of the survey on poverty in Malta which has already received  a lot of media attention and then of course there is ...

Here Dr. Anthony Abela’s voice trailed off as if what he has up his sleeve may better remain there for the time being. We have to wait with baited breath for he was not letting the cat out of the bag this early.