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Same-Sex Cultures and Sexualities: An Anthropological Reader Editor: Jennifer Robertson, Professor of Anthropology University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Table of Contents Introduction: Jennifer Robertson, Sexualizing anthropology's fields Part 1: Anthropology's Sexual Fields 1. Carole Vance, "Anthropology rediscovers sexuality: A theoretical comment." Social Science and Medicine 33 (8): 875-884, 1991. Vance explores the strengths of social constructionist approaches to the study of sexuality, separating them from earlier nature-nurture debates. She observes that the concern with AIDS has created new possibilities and new problems alike for research on sexualities. 2. Bonnie Spanier, "Biological determinism and homosexuality." NWSA Journal 7:54-71, 1995. Spanier exposes the flawed methodology of so-called scientific claims about the biological bases for differences in sex and sexualities. Her broader aim is to make feminist sense of received notions of "reason" and "scientific evidence." 3. Barbara Voss, "Feminisms, queer theories, and the archaeological study of past sexualities." World Archaeology 32 (2):180-92, 2000. Voss employs an analysis of citational practices to consider how feminist and queer theories articulate with, and are useful in, archaeological investigations of sexuality. 4. Don Kulick, "No." Language and Communication 23 (4): 139-51, 2003. Kulick examines how the enunciation (or not) of "no" in particular social situations works to produce those situations as sexual. In distinguishing between performance and performativity, he aims to understand the way that language and sexuality intertwine. 5. Alisa Klinger, "Resources for lesbian ethnographic research in the lavender archives." Journal of Homosexuality 34 (3-4):205-224, 1998. Klinger discusses the pragmatic issues of creating and maintaining the accessible research venues necessary to develop the study of multiracial and multiethnic lesbian lives. Part 2: Problems and Propositions 6. Deborah Elliston, "Erotic anthropology: 'ritualized homosexuality' inMelanesia and beyond." American Ethnologist 22 (4): 848-867, 1995. Elliston critiques anthropological uses of the concept of "ritualized homosexuality" in Melanesia and explores related theoretical problems in the cross-cultural study of same- sex sexuality and erotics. 7. Corinne Hayden, "Gender, genetics, and generation: reformulating biology in lesbian kinship." Cultural Anthropology 10:41-63, 1995. Hayden explores the ways in which many lesbian mothers employ notions of biology to articulate their own sense of a uniquely lesbian kinship. Rather than show how lesbian kinship constitutes a radical critique of American kinship, she draws out the ways in which lesbians rework and recontextualize "blood ties." 8. Judith Shapiro, "Transsexualism: reflections on the persistence of gender and the mutability of sex," pp. 248-279. In Body Guards: The Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiguity, eds. Julia Epstein and Kristina Straub. NY and London: Routledge, 1991. Shapiro takes transsexualism as a point of departure for examining the paradoxical relationship between sex and gender. She notes that the comparative study of gender differences both reveals how few differences are predicted by sex in any sense of the term and demonstrates the great flexibility of gender systems. 9. Estelle B. Freedman and John D'Emilio, "Problems encountered in writing the history of sexuality: Sources, theory and interpretation." Journal of Sex Research 27 (4):481-495, 1990. Freedman and D'Emilio explore the array of interpretive problems and theoretical approaches to two historical subjects: changing definitions of sexual identity in the nineteenth century and working- class sexuality in the twentieth century. Part 3: Ethics, Erotics and Exercises 10. Edward Stein, "Choosing the sexual orientation of children. " Bioethics 12 (1):1-24, 1998. Stein argues that the availability of procedures to select the sexual orientation of children would contribute to discrimination and prejudice against lesbians, gays and bisexuals, and would undermine the maintenance of a just society. 11. Jennifer Robertson, "Yoshiya Nobuko: Out and outspoken in practice and prose," pp. 155-174. Anne Walthall, ed., The Human Tradition in Modern Japan. NY: Scholarly Resources. Robertson contextualizes the life and times of a Japanese female novelist who challenged social and familial conventions by both choosing a female life partner and creating a new genre of "girls' fiction." 12. Matti Bunzl, "Outing as performance/outing as resistance: a queer reading of Austrian (homo)sexualities." Cultural Anthropology 12:129-151, 1997. Bunzl analyzes the contradictory and ambivalent politics of outing, focusing on an "outing-action" in Austria in 1995. He argues that lesbians and gays should be wary of locating themselves in a reified reality of "lesbian and gay" experience, and should examine the constitution of their political experiential tropes. 13. Evelyn Blackwood, "Tombois in West Sumatra: constructing masculinity and erotic desire." Cultural Anthropology 13 (4): 491-521, 1998. Blackwood explores how tombois, Indonesian females acting in the manner of men, both shape their identities from and resist local, national, and transnational narratives of gender and sexuality. 14. Donald Donham, "Freeing South Africa: the 'modernization' of male-male sexuality in Soweto." Cultural Anthropology 13 (1): 3-21, 1998. Donham traces the life, work and death from AIDS of a gay black African activist is Soweto. He argues for a revitalized attention to ethnography in order to impart a fuller understanding of sexuality in South Africa and elsewhere. 15. Timothy Wright, "Gay organizations, NGOs, and the globalization of sexual identity: the case of Bolivia." Journal of Latin American Anthropology 5 (2):89- 111, 2000. Wright combines an ethnography of sexual activities, personal identities and social relations of males-who-have-sex-with-males in Bolivia with an analysis of attempts by government and international development agencies to create a demographically identifiable population of "gay" Bolivians.
Library of Congress Subject Headings for this publication: Homosexuality, Lesbianism, Gay and lesbian studies, Gay men, Lesbians