Description
Book SynopsisHow are we to live with the wide varieties of sexuality and gender found across the rapidly changing global order? Whilst some countries have legislated in favour of same-sex marriage and the United Nations makes declarations about gender and sexual equality, many countries across the world employ punitive responses to such differences.
Trade Review"Plummer has given us a new sexology for our age… Warning us not to take our stereotypes for granted, he takes us through sexualities in China, in Africa and in Middle Eastern societies, and organises sexualities into global zones, regional discrepancies and local eruptions."
Times Higher Education "Ken Plummer's new work on sexualities is a carefully constructed book designed to captivate students and scholars with an interest in sexuality studies...a thoroughly enjoyable read which leaves the reader with a comprehensive knowledge of sexualities and a hopeful perspective for a humanistic world."
James Pickles, Network Review "This is a book of deep knowledge and passionate commitment. It is the culmination of a lifetime’s work on the sociology, culture and politics of sexuality, and is suffused with a critical humanism that offers a guide for the perplexed troubled by our contemporary sexual labyrinth. It is a landmark of sexual scholarship."
Jeffrey Weeks, London South Bank University"Ken Plummer helped define the field of sexuality studies, and now he pushes well beyond its boundaries, taking on big questions of social theory.
Cosmopolitan Sexualities uses the lens of sexuality studies to grapple with debates about belonging and difference in our rapidly globalizing world. Plummer has read absolutely everything, and in this book he offers a comprehensive, often dazzling road map of the myriad changes which are simultaneously remaking intimate life and macro worlds, and what they tell us about what it means to be human."
Arlene Stein, Rutgers UniversityTable of ContentsBoxes x
Website xi
Abbreviations xii
Introduction 1
A troubled world 3
A tale to tell 5
An infinity of lists 8
Part One: Humanism and the Making of Cosmopolitan Sexualities 11
1 Plural Sexualities: Making Valued Human Lives 13
Plural lives 14
Contingency and the varieties of sexual experience 16
Critical humanism 20
Humanist troubles 22
Vulnerability and the dignity of the self 26
Plural values, valued lives 29
Search for common humanities 30
A world ethics for critical humanism? 32
Valued sexual lives 36
2 Transformational Sexualities: Making Twenty-First-Century Sexual Lives 39
Transformational sexualities 40
Reproductive sexualities, techno sexualities 44
Mediated sexualities 45
Electronic sexualities 47
Familial sexualities 50
Gendered sexualities 52
Violent sexualities 53
Post-honour sexualities 54
Secular, sacred and fundamentalist sexualities 56
Commodified sexualities 58
Urban sexualities and their assemblages 61
AIDS and sexualities 63
Divided sexualities, pauperized sexualities 64
Individualized, reflective sexualities 65
Migrating, diasporic and hybrid sexualities 67
Global sexualities/mobile sexualities 68
Conclusion: Making sexual politics 69
3 Cosmopolitan Sexualities: Living With Different Lives 71
On cosmopolitanism 72
Constructing cosmopolitan sexualities in a global arena 74
Troubles ahead: the contradictions and limits of cosmopolitanism 88
The (very) long walk to cosmopolitan sexualities 101
Part Two: Inclusive Sexualities: Nudging Towards a Better World 103
4 Cultural Sexualities: Cultivating Awareness of Complexity 105
Global sexualities and research 107
World cultures and macro sexualities 110
Impure cultures and subterranean sexualities 116
Local cultures and micro sexualities 123
Conclusion: complex cultures 130
5 Contested Sexualities: Inventing Enemies, Making Boundaries 131
Scaling the battlegrounds 133
Divisive sexualities, agonistic politics 135
The fault line of contested sexualities 141
On boundaries, belonging and the vulnerabilities of normativity 143
Normative sexualities 145
Vulnerable sexualities 150
Looking ahead 153
6 Communicative Sexualities: On the Hope and Empathy for a Common Global Humanity 155
Empathic sexualities 156
Narrative sexualities 161
Dialogic sexualities 164
Ethical sexualities 167
Democratic sexualities 175
Bleak sexualities 179
Hopeful sexualities 182
The little grounded everyday ‘utopian’ processes of global hope 183
In the end 187
Epilogue: Contingent Sexualities – Dancing into the Sexual Labyrinth 190
Personal tales 193
Textual tales 194
Research tales 196
Troubled tales 198
Mobile tales 200
Notes 202
References 232
Index: 100 Samples of Multiple Sexualities 268
Index: General 270
