Description
Book SynopsisEthnographic studies of the role of sexuality and gender in development discourse and policy.
Trade Review“This volume is an interesting read for social scientists, social historians, and health care workers. By bringing such richly documented case studies together, it inspires researchers who study sexuality to reflect upon how exactly sexuality is constituted in their time and place…. [T]his volume is a must.” - Anna C. M. Tijsseling,
Archives of Sexual Behavior"This collection adopts a sophisticated ethnographic and historical perspective. . . . [I]t will be invaluable to those with an interest in health policy or development as well as anthropology." - Sophie Day,
Times Literary Supplement“[A]n excellent anthropological intervention into development studies that deserves a broad interdisciplinary feminist audience. . . . Indeed, each of the chapters in this anthology is an excellent ethnographic case study exploring the situated dynamics of sex and development programs (Adams and Pigg, 21). Assembled together, and organized around clearly articulated common themes, they make this book a truly important one. The book has remarkable geographic and conceptual scope, and the conversation it stages among sexuality studies, science studies, and critical development work is exceptionally innovative. In short, the collection deserves to have broad and lasting impact on the
field.” - Kate Bedford,
Signs“[A] refreshing perspective. . . . The authors, and especially Adams and Pigg in their introduction, skillfully examine the facticity of scientific understandings of the body and sex typical of development projects, uncovering ways in which certain discourses, like science, come to be different and often more powerful than others in practice. . . . Through all of the contributions, we see sex in development as a global process but one that takes on many different guises.” - Robert C. Philen,
American Anthropologist“[A] series of rich and detailed ethnographic studies carried out by anthropologists over the past 10 years in Asia, Africa and Europe. . . . [T]his collection makes an important contribution to fledgling debates on sexuality and development in a global context.” - Carolyn H. Williams,
Feminist Review“This book charts territory that has so far been little explored in gender and development literature, namely the interrelationships between totalizing, ‘scientifically neutral’ concepts of sex and sexuality and local constructs of sex and gender in developing societies.”— - Sylvia Chant,
Progress in Development Studies“The book makes a case for thinking in new directions about sexuality in relation to the ‘scientization’ of development policies. It's an important reference work for scholarship in anthropology, public health, and gender and sexuality studies, and in development studies.” -
Frauen Solidarität“This important and timely book makes a case for thinking in new directions about sexuality in relation to the ‘scientization’ of development policies. It will become an important reference work for future scholarship in anthropology, public health, and gender and sexuality studies, and, one would hope, in development studies.”—Rayna Rapp, coeditor of
Conceiving the New World Order: The Global Politics of Reproduction“[A] refreshing perspective. . . . The authors, and especially Adams and Pigg in their introduction, skillfully examine the facticity of scientific understandings of the body and sex typical of development projects, uncovering ways in which certain discourses, like science, come to be different and often more powerful than others in practice. . . . Through all of the contributions, we see sex in development as a global process but one that takes on many different guises.” -- Robert C. Philen * American Anthropologist *
“[A] series of rich and detailed ethnographic studies carried out by anthropologists over the past 10 years in Asia, Africa and Europe. . . . [T]his collection makes an important contribution to fledgling debates on sexuality and development in a global context.” -- Carolyn H. Williams * Feminist Review *
“[A]n excellent anthropological intervention into development studies that deserves a broad interdisciplinary feminist audience. . . . Indeed, each of the chapters in this anthology is an excellent ethnographic case study exploring the situated dynamics of sex and development programs (Adams and Pigg, 21). Assembled together, and organized around clearly articulated common themes, they make this book a truly important one. The book has remarkable geographic and conceptual scope, and the conversation it stages among sexuality studies, science studies, and critical development work is exceptionally innovative. In short, the collection deserves to have broad and lasting impact on the
field.” -- Kate Bedford * Signs *
“This book charts territory that has so far been little explored in gender and development literature, namely the interrelationships between totalizing, ‘scientifically neutral’ concepts of sex and sexuality and local constructs of sex and gender in developing societies.” -- Sylvia Chant * Progress in Development Studies *
“This volume is an interesting read for social scientists, social historians, and health care workers. By bringing such richly documented case studies together, it inspires researchers who study sexuality to reflect upon how exactly sexuality is constituted in their time and place…. [T]his volume is a must.” -- Anna C. M. Tijsseling * Archives of Sexual Behavior *
"This collection adopts a sophisticated ethnographic and historical perspective. . . . [I]t will be invaluable to those with an interest in health policy or development as well as anthropology." -- Sophie Day * TLS *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Introduction: The Moral Object of Sex /Stacy Leigh Pigg and Vincanne Adams 1
Globalizing the Facts of Life / Stacy Leigh Pigg 39
Part 1: The Production of New Subjectivities 67
Moral Science and the Management of "Sexual Revolution" in Russia / Michele Rivkin-Fish 71
Family Planning, Human Nature, and the Ethical Subject of Sex in Urban Greece / Heather Paxson 95
From Auntie to Disco: The Bifurcation of Risk and Pleasure in Sex Education in Uganda / Shanti A. Parikh 125
Part 2: The Creation of Normativities as a Biopolitical Project 159
Sexuality, the State, and the Runaway Wives of Highlands Papua, Indonesia / Leslie Butt 163
"Ordinary" Sex, Prostitutes, and Middle-Class Wives: Liberalization and National Identity in India / Heather S. Dell 187
Moral Orgasm and Productive Sex: Tantrism Faces Fertility Control in Lhasa, Tibet (China) / Vincanne Adams 207
Part 3: Contestations of Liberal Humanism Forged in Sexual Identity Politics 241
Uses and Pleasures: Sexual Modernity, HIV/AIDS, and Confessional Technologies in a West African Metropolis / Vinh-Kim Nguyen 245
The Kothi Wars: AIDS Cosmopolitanism and the Morality of Classification / Lawrence Cohen 269
References 305
Contributors 333
Index 335
