Laura Harvey

Hannah Frith

Andrea Cornwall

Paul Boyce

Yingying Huang

Charlotte Morris

Sexuality is a complex and multifaceted domain – encompassing bodily, contextual and subjective experiences that resist ready categorisation. To claim the sexual as a viable research object therefore raises a number of important methodological questions: what is it possible to know about experiences, practices and perceptions of sex and sexualities? What approaches might help or hinder our efforts to probe such experiences? This collection explores the creative, personal and contextual parameters involved in researching sexuality, cutting across disciplinary boundaries and drawing on case studies from a variety of countries and contexts. Combining a wide range of expertise, its contributors address such key areas as pornography, sex work, intersectionality and LGBT perspectives. The contributors also share their own experiences of researching sexuality within contrasting disciplines, as well as interrogating how the sexual identities of researchers themselves can relate to, and inform, their work. The result is a unique and diverse collection that combines practical insights on field work with novel theoretical reflections.

Researching Sex and Sexualities

On April 21st 1701, Yazama Jiutarô, a young Japanese samurai is devastated when he and his fellow warriors are informed of the ritual suicide of their master in punishment for a severe offence. The warriors are now ronin - masterless and on the run - but they vow vengeance on the court official whom they blame, promising to return in force at the New Year, December 31st 1702. They know that their revenge, no matter how justified, will only lead to their own deaths by the same ritual suicide. The band separates and scatters and Jiutarô heads south. As he crosses the sea from the main island of Honshu to that of Kyushu, his boat is hit by a tempest. When the storm abates he finds himself in a world populated by races and species of peoples familiar, strange and terrifying. Believing himself to be in one of the hells he has heard of in myths, theatre and stories, he knows he has to find a way back to the home he is far away from.

Book 1

Far from Home

Niharika Banerjea

Rohit K. Dasgupta

This book documents and analyzes the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic through queer and feminist perspectives. A testament of dispossessions as well as a celebration of various forms of resilience, community building and critical responses, it chronicles the social history of queer and trans persons and women in South Asia and the diasporas. Through a creative and collaborative form of ethnographic writing, the book enters in conversation with the worlds of domestic helps, caregivers, cultural workers, students, sex workers and other precariously employed people. It examines the confining effects of the pandemic on the lived realities of many queer and trans individuals, the caste-oppressed and women across socio-economic backgrounds. The chapters in the volume piece together narratives of prejudice, hardship, self-expression and resistance from interviews, personal accounts, as well as poems and stories from activists, artists and other collaborators. The book pays particular attention to issues of power and asymmetrical relationships amidst COVID-19 and offers critiques to deepen the understanding of the uneven fault lines within which historically oppressed persons reside in South Asia. Exploring themes of migration, disability and sexual politics, this book is an essential reading for scholars and researchers of gender and sexuality studies, cultural studies, South Asian studies, sociology and social anthropology.

Queer and Feminist Ethnographies from South Asia

COVID-19 Assemblages

Richard Parker

Peter Aggleton

Henrietta L Moore

Over the course of the past thirty years, there has been an explosion of work on sexuality, both conceptually and methodologically. From a relatively limited, specialist field, the study of sexuality has expanded across a wide range of social sciences. Yet as the field has grown, it has become apparent that a number of leading edge critical issues remain. This theory-building book explores some of the areas in which there is major and continuing debate, for example, about the relationship between sexuality and gender; about the nature and status of heterosexuality; about hetero- and homo-normativity; about the influence and intersection of class, race, age and other factors in sexual trajectories, identities and lifestyles; and about how best to understand the new forms of sexuality that are emerging in both rich world and developing world contexts. With contributions from leading and new scholars and activists from across the globe, this book highlights tensions or ‘flash-points’ in contemporary debate, and offers some innovative ways forward in terms of thinking about sexuality – both theoretically and with respect to policy and programme development. An extended essay by Henrietta Moore introduces the volume, and an afterword by Jeffrey Weeks offers pointers for the future. The contributors bring together a range of experiences and a variety of disciplinary perspectives in engaging with three key themes of sexual subjectivity and global transformations, sexualities in practice, and advancing new thinking on sexuality in policy and programmatic contexts. It is of interest to students, researchers and activists in sexuality, sexual health and gender studies, especially those working from public health, sociological and anthropological perspectives.

New Frontiers

Understanding Global Sexualities

On April 21st 1701, Yazama Jiutarô, a young Japanese samurai is devastated when he and his fellow warriors are informed of the ritual suicide of their master in punishment for a severe offence. The warriors are now ronin – masterless and on the run – but they vow vengeance on the court official whom they blame, promising to return in force at the New Year, December 31st 1702. They know that their revenge, no matter how justified, will only lead to their own deaths by the same ritual suicide. The band separates and scatters and Jiutarô heads south. As he crosses the sea from the main island of Honshu to that of Kyushu, his boat is hit by a tempest. When the storm abates he finds himself in a world populated by races and species of peoples familiar, strange and terrifying. Believing himself to be in one of the hells he has heard of in myths, theatre and stories, he knows he has to find a way back to the home he is far away from.

Walter J. Primeaux

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