Framing the Sexual Subject

This collection brings together the work of writers from a range of disciplines and cultural traditions to explore the social and political dimensions of sexuality and sexual experience. The contributors reconfigure existing notions of gender and sexuality, linking them to deeper understandings of power, resistance, and emancipation around the globe. They map areas that are currently at the cutting edge of social science writing on sexuality, as well as the complex interface between theory and practice. Framing the Sexual Subject highlights the extent to which populations and communities that once were the object of scientific scrutiny have increasingly demanded the right to speak on their own behalf, as subjects of their own sexualities and agents of their own sexual histories.

For the greater part of the twentieth century, human sexuality was relegated to the realm of the biomedical sciences; only recently, as feminism and the gay and lesbian movement have called attention to questions of gender and identity, has it emerged as a key field in social analysis. These essays consider issues such as population, sexual and reproductive health, sexual negotiation and gender power, and the response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic from anthropological, sociological, political, and psychological perspectives. The chapters range widely, dealing with locales as diverse as Australia, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, Costa Rica, Argentina, the Philippines, South Africa, and Peru.

Drawing on insights from both feminist theory and gay and lesbian studies, the authors use the concept of the sexual subject not only as a focus for investigation but also as a call to action. They examine both daily practices andbroader movements.