Description
Book SynopsisSexualities: Personal Lives and Social Policy explores the choices that we make about our sexuality and how these can transform our personal lives. It analyses how social policy informs and responds to such choices through an examination of normative assumptions about sexuality and its role in forming, regulating and constituting welfare subjects, discourses, theories, provisions and practices. Drawing upon a number of analytical tools and theoretical perspectives, the authors illustrate that sexuality is simultaneously central and marginal to the concerns of social policy. They place particular emphasis on social policy as a site of regulation that restricts and constrains our personal lives, but also highlight how social policy might be used as an instrument of positive change.
Trade Review"... an excellent resource with up-to-date facts, good links and resources, and very helpful key word summaries, aims and objectives for the student. This text is highly commended, both for courses on social policy and those dealing with the sociology of sexuality more broadly." Sexualities
"... an enlightening review of how social policies influence everday lives, even in the privacy of one's bedroom." The Review of Disability Studies
"This invaluable book explores the normative framework which strives to police the personal, whilst showing the vital ways in which the transformation of the intimate sphere reflect back on the making of social policy. Highly recommended." Jeffrey Weeks, Professor of Sociology and Executive Dean of Arts and Human Sciences, London South Bank University
Table of ContentsIntroduction; Personal lives; Defining sexuality; From personal lives to public policies; Sexuality and social policy; Centring sexuality and personal lives in social policy analyses; Conclusion; Further resources; References.
