In the early 1990s, “queer anthropology” represented a new and radically different approach to anthropological research on sexuality and gender, but it is now an established subfield of sociocultural anthropology. Queer Anthropology provides a concise, accessible overview of queer anthropology’s academic and activist origins, its key theoretical and methodological principles, its strengths and weaknesses, and how it has changed since its first appearance over thirty years ago....

Over the past decade, effective prevention and treatment policies have resulted in global health organizations claiming that the end of the HIV/AIDS crisis is near and that HIV/AIDS is now a chronic but manageable disease. These proclamations have been accompanied by stagnant or decreasing public interest in and financial support for people living with HIV and the organizations that support them, minimizing significant global disparities in the management and control of the HIV pandemic. T...

“How do I prove I’m gay?” This is the central question for many refugee claimants who are claiming asylum on the basis of sexual orientation persecution. But what are the inherent challenges in obtaining this proof? How is the system that assesses this predicated upon homonormative frameworks and nervous borders? What is the impact of gender, race and class? What is an ‘authentic’ sexual or gender identity and how can it be performed?Real Queer? is an ethnographic examination of th...

While there has been increased attention to issues of sexuality in the Caribbean over the past decade, there continue to be very few in-depth ethnographic studies of sexual minorities in this region. A timely addition to the literature, Flaming Souls explores public discourses focusing on homosexuality and the everyday lives of gay men and ‘queens’in contemporary Barbados.David A.B. Murray's dynamic study features interviews with government and health agency officials, HIV...

What does diversity do? What are we doing when we use the language of diversity? Sara Ahmed offers an account of the diversity world based on interviews with diversity practitioners in higher education, as well as her own experience of doing diversity work. Diversity is an ordinary, even unremarkable, feature of institutional life. Yet diversity practitioners often experience institutions as resistant to their work, as captured through their use of the metaphor of the "brick wall." On ...

Jurgen Habermas is one of the most influential thinkers of our time. This detailed, article length guide examines his theory of deliberative democracy and covers many of the central concepts such as communicative reason, communicative power, and the ideal speech community.

Is Habermas’s concept of the public sphere still relevant in an age of globalization, when the transnational flows of people and information have become increasingly intensive and when the nation-state can no longer be taken granted as the natural frame for social and political debate? This is the question posed with characteristic acuity by Nancy Fraser in her influential article ‘Transnationalizing the Public Sphere?’ Challenging careless uses of the term ‘global public sphere’, Fraser r...

Bringing together classic and new writings of the trailblazing feminist theorist Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Feminism without Borders addresses some of the most pressing and complex issues facing contemporary feminism. Forging vital links between daily life and collective action and between theory and pedagogy, Mohanty has been at the vanguard of Third World and international feminist thought and activism for nearly two decades. This collection highlights the concerns running through...

Intersectionality theory has emerged over the past thirty years as a way to think about the avenues by which inequalities (most often dealing with, but not limited to, race, gender, class and sexuality) are produced. Rather than seeing such categories as signaling distinct identities that can be adopted, imposed or rejected, intersectionality theory considers the logic by which each of these categories is socially constructed as well as how they operate within the diffusion of power relati...

These revision notes have been designed to cover the theory aspect of the AQA's sociology A-Level syllabus, the new 2015 Specification onward. The content should also be suitable for other exam boards.Contents:Topic 0 - Sociological theories – an overviewTopic 1 – Positivism and InterpretivismTopic 2 – Is sociology a science?Topic 3 – FunctionalismTopic 4 – MarxismTopic 5 – FeminismTopic 6 – Social Action theoryTopic 7 – Moder...

Queer Methods and Methodologies provides the first systematic consideration of the implications of a queer perspective in the pursuit of social scientific research. This volume grapples with key contemporary questions regarding the methodological implications for social science research undertaken from diverse queer perspectives, and explores the limitations and potentials of queer engagements with social science research techniques and methodologies. With contributors based in the UK, USA...

An examination of how to establish truely objective scientific research methods, including knowledge derived from diverse cultures.Worries about scientific objectivity seem never-ending. Social critics and philosophers of science have argued that invocations of objectivity are often little more than attempts to boost the status of a claim, while calls for value neutrality may be used to suppress otherwise valid dissenting positions. Objectivity is used sometimes to...