Sexuality, Health and Human Rights

Description

This new work surveys how rapid changes taking place at the start of the twenty-first century in social, cultural, political and economic domains impact on sexuality, health and human rights. The relationships between men, women and children are changing quickly, as are traditional family structures and gender norms. What were once viewed as private matters have become public, and an array of new social movements – transgender, intersex, sex worker, people living with HIV – have come into the open.

The book is split into three sections:

• Global ‘Sex’ Wars – discusses the notion of sexualities, its political landscapes internationally, and the return of religious fervour and extremism
• Epistemological Challenges and Research Agendas – examines modern ‘scientific’ understandings of sexuality, its history and the way in which AIDS has drawn attention to sexuality
• The Promises and Limits of Sexual Rights – discusses human rights approaches to sexuality, their strengths and limitations and new ways of imagining erotic justice

Offering a unique framework for understanding this new world, set in the context of the major theoretical debates of recent decades, this book will be of interest to professionals, advocates and policy researchers and is suitable for a wide range of courses covering areas such as gender studies, human sexuality, public health and social policy.

Reviews

"…Across a tremendous range of situations in the global South and North, Correa, Petchesky and Parker explore the contentious politics of sexuality with verve, insight and courage. They offer new ideas about sexual and gender diversity, the political role of religion, and struggles in and around the United Nations. Their conclusion that sexual rights have a deep connection with economic justice is an important challenge to contemporary theory and practice…"

Professor Raewyn Connell, author of Southern Theory and Masculinities

"…A fascinating and rich exploration of the 'novel and expanding frontier of sexual politics' that is as full of emancipatory potential as it is of contradictions and tensions. This book bids fair to become a classic work on the intersections between sexuality, health and human rights…"

Professor Gita Sen, Centre for Public Policy, Indian Institute of Management, India

Contents

Introduction Part I: Global ‘Sex’ Wars 1. Landscaping Sexualities 2. The Real Politics of ‘Sex’ 3. The Sad ‘Return of the Religious’ Part II: Epistemological Challenges and Research Agendas 4. The Modernization of ‘Sex’ and the Birth of Sexual Science 5. The Social Construction of Sexual Life 6. After AIDS Part III: The Promises and Limits of Sexual Rights 7. On the Indispensability and Insufficiency of Human Rights 8. Inventing and Contesting Sexual Rights within the UN 9. Transnational Debates: Sexuality, Power, and New Subjectivities 10. At the Outer Limits of Human Rights: Voids in the Liberal Paradigm Postscript: Dreaming and Dancing – The ‘Beyond’ beyond Sexual Rights

Author Bio

Sonia Corrêa coordinates Sexuality Policy Watch at the Brazilian Interdisciplinary AIDS Association (ABIA), Brazil.

Rosalind Petchesky is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Hunter College, City University of New York, USA.

Richard Parker is Professor of Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University, USA.

Related Subjects

1. Gender
2. Health Studies
3. Sexuality & the Body
4. Human Rights