The Sexual History of the Global South explores the gap between sexuality studies and post-colonial cultural critique. Featuring twelve case studies, based on original historical and ethnographic research from countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, the book examines the sexual investments underlying the colonial project and the construction of modern nation-states. Covering issues of heteronormativity, post-colonial amnesia regarding non-normative sexualities, women's sexual agency, the policing of the boundaries between the public and the private realm, sexual citizenship, the connections between LGBTQ activism and processes of state formation, and the emergence of sexuality studies in the global South, this collection is of great geographical, historical, and topical significance.
The Sexual History of the Global South explores the gap between sexuality studies and post-colonial cultural critique. Featuring twelve case studies, based on original historical and ethnographic research from countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, the book examines the sexual investments underlying the colonial project and the construction of modern nation-states. Covering issues of heteronormativity, post-colonial amnesia regarding non-normative sexualities, women's sexual agency, the policing of the boundaries between the public and the private realm, sexual citizenship, the connections between LGBTQ activism and processes of state formation, and the emergence of sexuality studies in the global South, this collection is of great geographical, historical, and topical significance.
The Global Trajectories of Queerness interrogates the term “queer” by closely mapping what space the theorizing of same-sex sexualities and sexual politics in the non-West inhabits. From theoretical discussions around the epistemologies of such conceptualizations of space in the Global South, to specific ethnographies of same-sex culture, this collection hopes to forge a way of tracking the histories of race, class, caste, gender, and sexual orientation that form what is called the moment of globalization. The volume, co-edited by Ashley Tellis and Sruti Bala, asks whether the societies of the Global South simply borrow and graft an internationalist (read Euro-US) language of LGBT/queer rights and identity politics, whether it is imposed on them or whether there is a productive negotiation of that language. Contributing Authors: Sruti Bala, Laia Ribera Cañénguez, Soledad Cutuli, Roderick Ferguson, Iman Ganji, Krystal Ghisyawan, Josephine Ho, Neville Hoad, Victoria Keller, Haneen Maikey, Shad Naved, Guillermo Núñez Noriega, Stella Nyanzi, Witchayanee Ocha, Julieta Paredes, Mikki Stelder, Ashley Tellis, and Wei Tingting
Why is it so hard to talk about sex and sexuality? In this crisp and compelling book, Amin Ghaziani provides a pithy introduction to the field of sexuality studies through a distinctively cultural lens. Rather than focusing on sex acts, which make us feel flustered and blind us to a bigger picture, Ghaziani crafts a conversation about sex cultures that zooms in on the diverse contexts that give meaning to our sexual pursuits and practices. Unlike sex, which is a biological expression, the word 'sexuality' highlights how the materiality of the body acquires cultural meaning as it encounters other bodies, institutions, regulations, symbols, societal norms, values, and worldviews. Think of it this way: sex + culture = sexuality. Sex Cultures offers an introduction to sexuality unlike any other. Its case-study and debate-driven approach, animated by examples from across the globe and across disciplines, upends stubborn assumptions that pit sex against society. The elegance of the arguments makes this book a pleasurable read for beginners and experts alike.
Until the 1970s the history of sexuality was a marginalized practice. Today it is a flourishing field, increasingly integrated into the mainstream and producing innovative insights into the ways in which societies shape and are shaped by sexual values, norms, identities and desires. In this book, Jeffrey Weeks, one of the leading international scholars in the subject, sets out clearly and concisely how sexual history has developed, and its implications for our understanding of the ways we live today. The emergence of a new wave of feminism and lesbian and gay activism in the 1970s transformed the subject, heavily influenced by new trends in social and cultural history, radical sociological insights and the impact of Michel Foucault’s work. The result was an increasing emphasis on the historical shaping of sexuality, and on the existence of many different sexual meanings and cultures on a global scale. With chapters on, amongst others, lesbian, gay and queer history, feminist sexual history, the mainstreaming of sexual history, and the globalization of sexual history, What is Sexual History? is an indispensable guide to these developments.
Sex has no history, but sexual science does. Starting in the late nineteenth century, scholars and activists all over the world suddenly began to insist that understandings of sex be based on science. As Japanese and Indian sexologists influenced their German, British and American counterparts, and vice versa, sexuality, modernity, and imaginings of exotified “Others” became intimately linked. The first anthology to provide a worldwide perspective on the birth and development of the field, A Global History of Sexual Science contends that actors outside of Europe—in Asia, Latin America, and Africa—became important interlocutors in debates on prostitution, birth control or transvestitism. Ideas circulated through intellectual exchange, travel, and internationally produced and disseminated publications. Twenty scholars tackle specific issues, including the female orgasm and the criminalization of male homosexuality, to demonstrate how concepts and ideas introduced by sexual scientists gained currency throughout the modern world.
Southern Theory presents the case for a radical re-thinking of social science and its relationships to knowledge, power and democracy on a world scale. Mainstream social science pictures the world as understood by the educated and affluent in Europe and North America. From Weber and Keynes to Friedman and Foucault, theorists from the global North dominate the imagination of social scientists, and the reading lists of students, all over the world. For most of modern history, the majority world has served social science only as a data mine. Yet the global South does produce knowledge and understanding of society. Through vivid accounts of critics and theorists, Raewyn Connell shows how social theory from the world periphery has power and relevance for understanding our changing world from al-Afghani at the dawn of modern social science, to Raul Prebisch in industrialising Latin America, Ali Shariati in revolutionary Iran, Paulin Hountondji in post-colonial Benin, Veena Das and Ashis Nandy in contemporary India, and many others. With clarity and verve, Southern Theory introduces readers to texts, ideas and debates that have emerged from Australia's Indigenous people, from Africa, Latin America, south and south-west Asia. It deals with modernisation, gender, race, class, cultural domination, neoliberalism, violence, trade, religion, identity, land, and the structure of knowledge itself. Southern Theory shows how this tremendous resource has been disregarded by mainstream social science. It explores the challenges of doing theory in the periphery, and considers the role Southern perspectives should have in a globally connected system of knowledge. Southern Theory draws on sociology, anthropology, history, psychology, economics, philosophy and cultural studies, with wide-ranging implications for social science in the 21st century.
To the sound of machine gun fire and the smell of burning flesh, award-winning author In Koli Jean Bofane leads readers on a perilous, satirical journey through the civil conflict and political instability that have been the logical outcome of generations of rapacious multinational corporate activity, corrupt governance, widespread civil conflict, human rights abuses, and environmental degradation in Africa. Isookanga, a Congolese Pygmy, grows up in a small village with big dreams of becoming rich. His vision of the world is shaped by his exploits in Raging Trade, an online game where he seizes control of the world's natural resources by any means possible: high-tech weaponry, slavery, and even genocide. Isookanga leaves his sleepy village to make his fortune in the pulsating capital Kinshasa, where he joins forces with street children, warlords, and a Chinese victim of globalization in this blistering novel about capitalism, colonialism, and the world haunted by the ghosts of Bismarck and Leopold II. Told with just enough levity to make it truly heartbreaking, Congo Inc. is a searing tale about ecological, political, and economic failure.
This book investigates how different cultures of fear manifest in South African social and mainstream media, arguing that fear and other emotions are a critical lens for understanding contemporary life. It discusses the myth of 'white genocide'; so-called 'Satanist' murders; township urban legends; and white suburban anxieties.
Until the 1970s the history of sexuality was a marginalized practice. Today it is a flourishing field, increasingly integrated into the mainstream and producing innovative insights into the ways in which societies shape and are shaped by sexual values, norms, identities and desires. In this book, Jeffrey Weeks, one of the leading international scholars in the subject, sets out clearly and concisely how sexual history has developed, and its implications for our understanding of the ways we live today. The emergence of a new wave of feminism and lesbian and gay activism in the 1970s transformed the subject, heavily influenced by new trends in social and cultural history, radical sociological insights and the impact of Michel Foucault’s work. The result was an increasing emphasis on the historical shaping of sexuality, and on the existence of many different sexual meanings and cultures on a global scale. With chapters on, amongst others, lesbian, gay and queer history, feminist sexual history, the mainstreaming of sexual history, and the globalization of sexual history, What is Sexual History? is an indispensable guide to these developments.
