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Breathtaking in its historical and geographical scope, this book provides a sweeping examination of the construction of male and female homosexualities, stressing both the variability of the forms same-sex desire can take and the key recurring patterns it has formed throughout history. "[An] indispensable resource on same-sex sexual relationships and their social contexts. . . . Essential reading." —Choice "[P]romises to deliver a lot, and even more extraordinarily succeeds in its lofty aims. . . . [O]riginal and refreshing. . . . [A] sensational book, part of what I see emerging as a new commonsense revolution within academe." —Kevin White, International Gay and Lesbian Review
The first anthropological collection that reveals patterns of male and female homosexuality in the Muslim World The dramatic impact of Islamic fundamentalism in recent years has skewed our image of Islamic history and culture. Stereotypes depict Islamic societies as economically backward, hyper-patriarchal, and fanatically religious. But in fact, the Islamic world encompasses a great diversity of cultures and a great deal of variation within those cultures in terms of gender roles and sexuality. The first collection on this topic from a historical and anthropological perspective, Homosexuality in the Muslim World reveals that patterns of male and female homosexuality have existed and often f...
Among the many myths created about Africa, the claim that homosexuality and gender diversity are absent or incidental is one of the oldest and most enduring. Historians, anthropologists, and many contemporary Africans alike have denied or overlooked African same-sex patterns or claimed that such patterns were introduced by Europeans or Arabs. In fact, same-sex love and nonbinary genders were and are widespread in Africa. Boy-Wives and Female Husbands documents the presence of this diversity in some fifty societies in every region of the continent south of the Sahara. Essays by scholars from a variety of disciplines explore institutionalized marriages between women, same-sex relations between...
Offers historical and cultural analysis of indigenous conceptions of male homosexuality in South America.
Drawing on two decades of research into gay life in North America, Stephen O. Murray examines the emergence of gay and lesbian social life, the creation of lisbigay communities, and the political and social forces of resistance that have mobilized and nurtured a group identity. Murray also considers the extent to which there is a single "modern" homosexuality, the enormous range of gay behaviors, and more.
"Lesbian and gay anthropologists write in "Out in the Field" about their research and personal experiences in conducting fieldwork, about the ethical and intellectual dilemmas they face in writing about lesbian or gay populations, and about the impact on their careers of doing lesbian/gay research. The first volume in which lesbian and gay anthropologists discuss personal experiences, "Out in the Field" offers compelling illustrations of professional lives both closeted and out to colleagues and fieldwork informants. It also concerns aligning career goals with personal sexual preferences and speaks directly to issues of representation and authority currently being explored throughout the social sciences.
This ethnography of the sexual culture of males who have sex with males in the lower-class part of San Pedro Sula, Honduras shows that the analytic distinction between gender and sexuality is inoperative for Honduran men. It provides original research and innovative analysis of Latin American sexual culture and the gendering of Latino sexualities and, based on the views of lower-class Hondurans, challenges the heralding of globalization as liberation. The collaboration between a Latin American anthropologist and an American comparativist sociologist is particularly novel and noteworthy for including the perspectives on homosexuality of the young men (hombres) who penetrate those classified as "homosexuals" and makes important contributions to Latin American studies, gender studies, cultural studies, and to understanding sexual cultures.
Theory Groups in the Study of Language in North America provides a detailed social history of traditions and "revolutionary" challenges to traditions within North American linguistics, especially within 20th-century anthropological linguistics. After showing substantial differences between Bloomfield's and neo-Bloomfieldian theorizing, Murray shows that early transformational-generative work on syntax grew out of neo-Bloomfieldian structuralism, and was promoted by neo-Bloomfieldian gatekeepers, in particular longtime Language editor Bernard Bloch. The central case studies of the book contrast the (increasingly) "revolutionary rhetoric" of transformational-generative grammarians with rhetorics of continuity emitted by two linguistic anthropology groupings that began simultaneously with TGG in the late-1950s, the ethnography of communication and ethnoscience.
"This volume offers the first synthesis in any language of male homosexual behavior in Latin America. Attention is given to the historical origins of homosexual organization as well as the current meaning and complexity of homosexuality in urban, rural, and tribal settings. Extensive vocabularies and lexicons of Spanish and Portuguese terms for homosexual and lesbian behavior are included."--Page [4] of cover.