Policing Sexuality - Sex, Society and the State

Policing Sexuality - Sex, Society and the State
English | 2011-10-11 | ISBN: 1848138970, 1848138962 | 177 pages | PDF | 1,3 MB

Policing Sexuality explores the regulation of sexual behavior and identity by nation states, and will question how and why states have sought to influence and control the sexuality of their citizens. This unique book simultaneously introduces the topic and argues for interpretation of state policing of sexuality.
The author presents both theoretical and ethnographic literature, distilling common themes and causes and presenting factors that contribute towards a state's desire to control both the sexual behavior and sexual identity of its citizens, such as the influence of colonialism, class, religion, and national identity. This book features five crucial case studies from India, Britain, the USA, Malaysia, and Turkey. Policing Sexuality illuminates this fascinating study with comparative accounts.
'Policing the body politic always entails sequestering the body sexual; the questions are only how and why, exactly where and when. This trans-regional examination of the different, and always self-contradictory, modalities of sexual state control and self-control is a treasure chest. Authors from Michel Foucault to Judith Butler would pawn one of their books to read this one: a combination of socio-cultural anatomies with humanist thinking. The anthropological wealth and comparative sociological imagination of this painstaking, yet amazingly easy-to-read book are scholarship at its best: accessible but never simplifying, liberating but never patronizing.' - Gerd Baumann, University of Amsterdam, author of Contesting Culture (1996), The Multicultural Riddle (1999) and Grammars of Identity / Alterity: A Structural Approach (2005)