Sexuality

For over twenty years, Sexuality has provided a cutting edge introduction to debates about sexualities, gender, and intimate life. Previous editions included pioneering discussions of the historical shaping of sexuality, identity politics, the rise of fundamentalism, the social impact of AIDS, the influence of the new genetics, ‘global sex’, queer theory, ‘sex wars’, the debates about values, new patterns of intimacy, and much more. In this new edition,
Jeffrey Weeks offers a thorough update of these debates, and introduces new concepts and issues. Globalization is now a key way of understanding the reshaping of sexual life, and is discussed in relation to global flows, neo-liberalism, new forms of opposition, cosmopolitanism and the heated debates around sex trafficking and sex tourism. Arguments about the regulation and control of sexuality, and the intersection of various dimensions of power and domination are contextualised by a sustained argument about the importance of agency in remaking sexual and intimate life. In particular, new forms of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer politics, and the high impact of the debates about same-sex marriage are explored. These controversies, in turn, feed into debates about what is ‘transgressive’, ‘normal’, ‘ordinary’; into the nature of heter-normativity; and into the meanings of diversity and choice. To conclude, the book turns to questions of values and ethics, recognition, sexual citizenship and human sexual rights.

This book displays the succinctness, clarity and comprehensiveness for which Jeffrey Weeks has become well known. It will appeal to a wide range of readers internationally.

Jeffrey Weeks is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at London South Bank University. He has an international reputation as a writer on sexuality and intimate life, and is the author or co-author of over 100 papers and articles, and twenty-two books. Previous Routledge publications include Sexuality and its Discontents, Same Sex Intimacies and The World We Have Won.

1. The Languages of Sex 2. The Invention of Sexuality 3. The Meanings of Sexual Difference 4. The Challenge of Diversity 5. Sexuality, Intimacy and Politics 6. Private Pleasures and Public Policies