Cosmopolitan Sexualities - Hope and the Humanist Imagination - Hope and the Humanist Imagination

How are we to live with the wide varieties of sexuality and gender found across the rapidly changing global order? Whilst some countries have legislated in favour of same-sex marriage and the United Nations makes declarations about gender and sexual equality, many countries across the world employ punitive responses to such differences. In this compelling and original study, Ken Plummer argues the need for a practical utopian project of hope that he calls 'cosmopolitan sexualities'. He asks: how can we connect our differences with collective values, our uniqueness with multiple group belonging, our sexual and gendered individualities with a broader common humanity? Showing how a foundation for this new ethics, politics and imagination are evolving across the world, he discusses the many possible pitfalls being encountered. He highlights the complexity of sexual and gender cultures, the ubiquity of human conflict, the difficulties of dialogue and the problems with finding any common ground for our humanity.
 
Cosmopolitan Sexualities takes a bold critical humanist view and argues the need for positive norms to guide us into the future. Highlighting the vulnerability of the human being, Plummer goes in search of historically grounded and potentially global human values like empathy and sympathy, care and kindness, dignity and rights, human flourishing and social justice. These harbour visions of what is acceptable and unacceptable in the sexual and intimate life. Clearly written, the book speaks to important issues of our time and will interest all those who are struggling to finding ways to live together well in spite of our different genders and sexualities.

List of contents

Boxes x
 
Website xi
 
Abbreviations xii
 
Introduction 1
 
A troubled world 3
 
A tale to tell 5
 
An infinity of lists 8
 
Part One: Humanism and the Making of Cosmopolitan Sexualities 11
 
1 Plural Sexualities: Making Valued Human Lives 13
 
Plural lives 14
 
Contingency and the varieties of sexual experience 16
 
Critical humanism 20
 
Humanist troubles 22
 
Vulnerability and the dignity of the self 26
 
Plural values, valued lives 29
 
Search for common humanities 30
 
A world ethics for critical humanism? 32
 
Valued sexual lives 36
 
2 Transformational Sexualities: Making Twenty-First-Century Sexual Lives 39
 
Transformational sexualities 40
 
Reproductive sexualities, techno sexualities 44
 
Mediated sexualities 45
 
Electronic sexualities 47
 
Familial sexualities 50
 
Gendered sexualities 52
 
Violent sexualities 53
 
Post-honour sexualities 54
 
Secular, sacred and fundamentalist sexualities 56
 
Commodified sexualities 58
 
Urban sexualities and their assemblages 61
 
AIDS and sexualities 63
 
Divided sexualities, pauperized sexualities 64
 
Individualized, reflective sexualities 65
 
Migrating, diasporic and hybrid sexualities 67
 
Global sexualities/mobile sexualities 68
 
Conclusion: Making sexual politics 69
 
3 Cosmopolitan Sexualities: Living With Different Lives 71
 
On cosmopolitanism 72
 
Constructing cosmopolitan sexualities in a global arena 74
 
Troubles ahead: the contradictions and limits of cosmopolitanism 88
 
The (very) long walk to cosmopolitan sexualities 101
 
Part Two: Inclusive Sexualities: Nudging Towards a Better World 103
 
4 Cultural Sexualities: Cultivating Awareness of Complexity 105
 
Global sexualities and research 107
 
World cultures and macro sexualities 110
 
Impure cultures and subterranean sexualities 116
 
Local cultures and micro sexualities 123
 
Conclusion: complex cultures 130
 
5 Contested Sexualities: Inventing Enemies, Making Boundaries 131
 
Scaling the battlegrounds 133
 
Divisive sexualities, agonistic politics 135
 
The fault line of contested sexualities 141
 
On boundaries, belonging and the vulnerabilities of normativity 143
 
Normative sexualities 145
 
Vulnerable sexualities 150
 
Looking ahead 153
 
6 Communicative Sexualities: On the Hope and Empathy for a Common Global Humanity 155
 
Empathic sexualities 156
 
Narrative sexualities 161
 
Dialogic sexualities 164
 
Ethical sexualities 167
 
Democratic sexualities 175
 
Bleak sexualities 179
 
Hopeful sexualities 182
 
The little grounded everyday 'utopian' processes of global hope 183
 
In the end 187
 
Epilogue: Contingent Sexualities - Dancing into the Sexual Labyrinth 190
 
Personal tales 193
 
Textual tales 194
 
Research tales 196
 
Troubled tales 198
 
Mobile tales 200
 
Notes 202
 
References 232
 
Index: 100 Samples of Multiple Sexualities 268
 
Index: General 270

About the author

Ken Plummer is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex. Amongst his key books are Sexual Stigma (1975), The Making of the Modern Homosexual (1981), Telling Sexual Stories (1995), Documents of Life (2001), Intimate Citizenship (2003) and Sociology: The Basics (2010). He was the founder editor of Sexualities.

Summary

How are we to live with the wide varieties of sexuality and gender found across the rapidly changing global order? Whilst some countries have legislated in favour of same-sex marriage and the United Nations makes declarations about gender and sexual equality, many countries across the world employ punitive responses to such differences.

Report

"Plummer has given us a new sexology for our age... Warning us not to take our stereotypes for granted, he takes us through sexualities in China, in Africa and in Middle Eastern societies, and organises sexualities into global zones, regional discrepancies and local eruptions."
Times Higher Education
 
"This is a book of deep knowledge and passionate commitment. It is the culmination of a lifetime's work on the sociology, culture and politics of sexuality, and is suffused with a critical humanism that offers a guide for the perplexed troubled by our contemporary sexual labyrinth. It is a landmark of sexual scholarship."
Jeffrey Weeks, London South Bank University
"Ken Plummer helped define the field of sexuality studies, and now he pushes well beyond its boundaries, taking on big questions of social theory. Cosmopolitan Sexualities uses the lens of sexuality studies to grapple with debates about belonging and difference in our rapidly globalizing world. Plummer has read absolutely everything, and in this book he offers a comprehensive, often dazzling road map of the myriad changes which are simultaneously remaking intimate life and macro worlds, and what they tell us about what it means to be human."
Arlene Stein, Rutgers University

Product details

• Authors: K Plummer, Ken Plummer, Plummer Ken
• Publisher: Polity Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 29.05.2015
• EAN: 9780745670997
• ISBN: 978-0-7456-7099-7
• No. of pages: 248
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Psychology > Theoretical psychology; Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > Sociological theories; Geschlecht, Soziologie, Kulturwissenschaften, Sociology, Cultural Studies, Gender & Sexuality, Soziale Identität, Social Identity, Allg. Kulturwissenschaften, Geschlecht u. Sexualität