Abstract

The Sexual History of the Global South explores the gap between sexuality studies and post-colonial cultural critique. Featuring twelve case studies, based on original historical and ethnographic research from countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, the book examines the sexual investments underlying the colonial project and the construction of modern nation-states. Covering issues of heteronormativity, post-colonial amnesia regarding non-normative sexualities, women's sexual agency, the policing of the boundaries between the public and the private realm, sexual citizenship, the connections between LGBTQ activism and processes of state formation, and the emergence of sexuality studies in the global South, this collection is of great geographical, historical, and topical significance.
'In examining transnational genealogies of sexualities, this book connects many lost dots. The cartographies it draws of both the Western gaze and of gendered and sexualized constructs in the Global South will undoubtedly enrich the field of sexual theorizing and research. Good reading!' Dr Sonia Corrêa, research associate at ABIA (Brazilian Interdisciplinary Association for AIDS) and co-chair of Sexuality Policy Watch 'The Sexual History of the Global South is an exciting and challenging read. It puts together solid and original research with highly engaging analysis of sexuality in the colonial constructs of development. In the twelve chapters it covers huge ground, making it important reading for both students and scholars. It promises to be a landmark in the booming field of sexualities.' Dr Wendy Harcourt, Sexuality Research Institute at the Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University, The Hague 'This is an exciting collection that delivers what it promises: a truly transnational investigation of sexuality from the perspective of scholars from the Global South. Much more than a history of sexualities, or an exploration of sexual diversity cross-culturally, it offers compelling insights into the close interaction between political and social histories and ideologies of sexuality. It gives the reader a broad view of the colonial, the post-colonial, and the often reactionary ways that new and modernizing states shored up heterosexuality while condemning other types of gendered and sexual expressions. This will undoubtedly be a foundational text in sexual histories of the global South.' Dr Evelyn Blackwood, author of Falling into the Lesbi World: Desire and Difference in Indonesia 'The Sexual History of the Global South is urgent reading for anyone interested in not only the history of sexual practices but also in critical theory and sexual politics. Its brilliant contributions go beyond mere "case studies" of diverse desires, pleasures, sexual subjects, and their regulation in colonial and post-colonial settings. By adapting Foucault and showing his Eurocentric limits, they open up whole new ways of thinking about sexual diversity as it interweaves with race, ethnicity, gender, class and the meanings of power in modernity.' Rosalind Petchesky, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Hunter College and The Graduate Center, City University of New York
Saskia E. Wieringa is honorary professor at the University of Amsterdam, holding the chair on Gender and Women's Same-Sex Relations Crossculturally. She has a long experience of activism in both the women's and Third World solidarity movements. Since the late 1970s she has done research on women's movements and same-sex relations in many parts of the world, particularly in Indonesia. Her latest books include: Female Desires: Same-Sex Relations and Transgender Practices across Cultures; Sexual Politics in Indonesia; Lubang Buaya, a novel; Tommy Boys, Lesbian Men and Ancestral Wives: Women's Same-Sex Experiences in Southern Africa; Engendering Human Security (co-edited with Thanh-Dam Truong and Amrita Chhachhi); Women's Sexualities and Masculinities in a Globalizing Asia (co-edited with Evelyn Blackwood and Abha Bhaiya); Traveling Heritages and the Future of Asian Feminisms (with Nursyahbani Katjasungkana). She has received various awards for her scholarly work, most recently the 2011 award for Best Paper from the Journal of Contemporary Asia. Horacio Federico Sívori, PhD, is an Argentinean anthropologist, a post-doctoral fellow at the Institute for Social Medicine, State University of Rio de Janeiro, and the regional coordinator for the Latin American Center on Sexuality and Human Rights. He trained in Argentina, the USA, and Brazil and taught in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Peru. He is the author of Locas, chogos y gays, as well as journal articles, book chapters, and collective volumes on gay sociability, sexual rights, and AIDS activism. He is co-editor of Sexualities, a working paper series by CLAGS/CUNY's International Resource Network, and has acted as co-chair for Sexuality Studies Section of the Latin American Studies Association. His current research looks at LGBT rights activism in Argentina and Brazil.