Description
Book SynopsisConstructing intimacy in SM play and beyond
Trade ReviewPlaying on the Edge. . . is an exciting sociological contribution to academic explorations of SM, providing an empirically rich window into a rarely seen SM community.
* Sexualities *
Staci Newmahr's exploration of the public SM scene is interesting, thoughtprovoking, and in some cases, challenging. Her involvement in the field and her willingness to share at least the surface details of her experience are extraordinary. Moreover, her commitment to understanding the community of public SM players with rigor, intellectual honesty, and sensitivity is the hallmark of a great ethnography.
* Symbolic Interaction *
Playing on the Edge is a well written, well supported, clear, easily accessed, and comprehendible yet theoretically rich delineation of a (supposedly deviant) community. In simple terms, this is a very good book and a first-class example of what ethnographic research can and should look like.
* Criminal Justice Review *
[A] ground-breaking book . . . . captivating and ethnographically dense.
* Ethnos *
Table of ContentsContents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part 1: People
1. Defiance: Bodies, Minds, and Marginality
2. Geeks and Freaks: Marginal Identity and Community
Part 2: Play
3. Tipping the Scales: Striving for Imbalance
4. Fringe Benefits: The Rewards of SM Play
5. Badasses, Servants, and Martyrs: Gender Performances
Part 3: Edges
6. Reconcilable Differences: Pain, Eroticism, and Violence
7. Collaborating the Edge: Feminism and Edgework
8. "What It Is That We Do": Intimate Edgework
Concluding Notes: Erotic Subjectivity and the Construction of the Field
Glossary
Notes
Bibliography
Index
