How 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. In this compelling and original study, Ken Plummer argues the need for a practical utopian project of hope that he calls ‘cosmopolitan sexualities’. He asks: how can we connect our differences with collective values, our uniqueness with multiple group belonging, our sexual and gendered individualities with a broader common humanity? Showing how a foundation for this new ethics, politics and imagination are evolving across the world, he discusses the many possible pitfalls being encountered. He highlights the complexity of sexual and gender cultures, the ubiquity of human conflict, the difficulties of dialogue and the problems with finding any common ground for our humanity.
Cosmopolitan Sexualities takes a bold critical humanist view and argues the need for positive norms to guide us into the future. Highlighting the vulnerability of the human being, Plummer goes in search of historically grounded and potentially global human values like empathy and sympathy, care and kindness, dignity and rights, human flourishing and social justice. These harbour visions of what is acceptable and unacceptable in the sexual and intimate life. Clearly written, the book speaks to important issues of our time and will interest all those who are struggling to finding ways to live together well in spite of our different genders and sexualities.
Tabella dei contenuti
Boxes 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
Circa l’autore
Ken Plummer is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex. Amongst his key books are Sexual Stigma (1975), The Making of the Modern Homosexual (1981), Telling Sexual Stories (1995), Documents of Life (2001), Intimate Citizenship (2003) and Sociology: The Basics (2010). He was the founder editor of Sexualities.
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