Sexuality, Gender and Power

Bringing together essays by a distinguished international group of leading and emerging scholars of sexuality and gender, this stimulating and accessible collection explores a range of theoretical and "real world" perspectives current in the field. Treating these approaches as complementary, Sexuality, Gender and Power fosters critical conversations about sexuality across disciplinary, cultural, national and ideological boundaries. Underpinned by a broad editorial commitment to intersectionality, the chapters deploy approaches that range from historical materialism to queer theory, and from contract theory to theories of the gendered sexual self to address recurrent questions around agency, power, identity and self-hood. Theoretical debates inform and are informed by more empirically oriented chapters focusing on topics such as gay identity in contemporary Croatia, sexual politics in the Commonwealth Caribbean, western "tango tourists," sexual violence in war, prostitution, femme fashion, changing sexual norms in China and Taiwan, and feminist politics in the 2008 US presidential campaign. Each chapter is interesting and important in its own right; taken together, they advance gender theory and research by developing a complex conception of sexuality that explores intersections between and amongst theories, levels of analysis and identities, linking case studies to international trends and theoretical debates to everyday experiences.