Women's Sexualities and Masculinities in a Globalizing Asia


Book Description

Through detailed studies, this collection of writings by academics and activists explores the emergence of contemporary lesbian and butch/femme relationships and communities throughout Asia and their location within the context of nationalist struggles, religious fundamentalism, state gender regimes and global queer movements.




Cultural Politics of Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Asia


Book Description

In globalizing Asia, sexual mores and gender roles are in constant flux. How have economic shifts and social changes altered and reconfigured the cultural meanings of gender and sexuality in the region? How have the changing political economy and social milieu influenced and shaped the inner workings and micro-politics of family structure, gender relationships, intimate romance, transactional sex, and sexual behaviors? This volume offers up-to-date, grounded, critical analysis of the complex intersections of gender, sexuality, and political economy across a diverse array of Asian societies: China, Japan, Cambodia, Vietnam, India, Pakistan, Hong Kong, Thailand, and Taiwan. Based on intense ethnographic fieldwork, the chapters disentangle the ways in which gendered and sexual experiences are impinged upon by state policies, economic realities, cultural ideologies, and social hierarchies. Whether highlighting intimate relationships between elite businessmen and their mistresses in China; nightclub performances by Thai men in Bangkok; single women’s views of romance, motherhood, and marriage in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Tokyo; or male same-sex relationships in Pakistan—each chapter centers around the stories of the gendered subjects themselves and how they are shaped by outside forces. Taken together they provide a provocative entrée into the cultural politics of gender and sexuality in Asia. By foregrounding cross-cultural ethnographic research, this volume sheds light on how configurations of gender and sexuality are constituted, negotiated, contested, transformed, and at times, perpetuated and reproduced in private, intimate experiences. It will be of particular interest to students and scholars in anthropology, sociology, political science, and women’s and LGBTQ studies.




Men and Masculinities in Southeast Asia


Book Description

Brings together research on the study of men and masculinities in Southeast Asia. Drawing on rich ethnographic fieldwork from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia, this book examines both dominant constructions of masculinity and the ways in which marginal men engage with these.




East Asian Sexualities


Book Description

This book paints a vivid picture of women's active involvement in reshaping intimate and public sexual life in East Asia. In bringing together exciting new feminist research on sexuality from East Asia and making it available to a wider audience, East Asian Sexualities unsettles stereotypes, rectifies lack of awareness and demonstrates that East Asia matters. The chapters address the diversity and variety of everyday sexual lives and sexual politics in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea and Japan. They range from workplace sexual cultures, trans-national sexual relations, the conditions of sex-work and the emergence of new sexual desires, cultures and movements. The contributors highlight the gendered and sexual consequences of globalization and rapid social change. In doing so, they engage with western debates on late modernity while also exploring the contested understandings of modernization and westernization in the East. This is a collection which illuminates the local situations in which women's sexual lives are lived and offers fresh perspectives on global issues.




Gender and Globalization in Asia and the Pacific


Book Description

What is globalization? How is it gendered? How does it work in Asia and the Pacific? The authors of the sixteen original and innovative essays presented here take fresh stock of globalization’s complexities. They pursue critical feminist inquiry about women, gender, and sexualities and produce original insights into changing life patterns in Asian and Pacific Island societies. Each essay puts the lives and struggles of women at the center of its examination while weaving examples of global circuits in Asian and Pacific societies into a world frame of analysis. The work is generated from within Asian and Pacific spaces, bringing to the fore local voices and claims to knowledge. The geographic emphasis on Asia/Pacific highlights the complexity of globalizing practices among specific people whose dilemmas come alive on these pages. Although the book focuses on global, gendered flows, it expands its investigation to include the media and the arts, intellectual resources, activist agendas, and individual life stories. First-rate ethnographies and interviews reach beyond generalizations and bring Pacific and Asian women and men alive in their struggles against globalization. Globalization cannot be summed up in a neat political agenda but must be actively contested and creatively negotiated. Taking feminist political thinking beyond simple oppositions, the authors ask specific questions about how global practices work, how they come to be, who benefits, and what is at stake. Contributors: Nancie Caraway, Steve Derné, Cynthia Enloe, Kathy Ferguson, Maria Ibarra, Gwyn Kirk, Sally Merry, Virginia Metaxas, Min Dongchao, Monique Mironesco, Rhacel Parrenas, Lucinda Peach, Vivian Price, Jyoti Puri, Judith Raiskin, Nancy Riley, Saskia Sassen, Teresia Teaiwa, Chris Yano, Yau Ching.




Routledge Handbook of Sexuality Studies in East Asia


Book Description

This collection brings together cutting-edge work by established and emerging scholars focusing on key societies in the East Asian region: China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, North and South Korea, Mongolia and Vietnam. This scope enables the collection to reflect on the nature of the transformations in constructions of sexuality in highly developed, developing and emerging societies and economies. Both Japan and China have established traditions of ‘sexuality’ studies reflecting longstanding indigenous understandings of sex as well as more recent developments which interface with Euro-American medical and psychological understandings. Authors reflect upon the complex colonial and economic interactions and cultural flows which have affected the East Asian region over the last two centuries. They trace local flows of ideas instead of defaulting to Euro-American paradigms for sexuality studies. Through looking at regional and global exchanges of ideas about sexuality, this volume adds considerably to our understanding of the East Asian region and contributes to wider discussions of social transformation, modernisation and globalisation. It will be essential reading in undergraduate and graduate programs in sexuality studies, gender studies, women’s studies and masculinity studies, as well as in anthropology, sociology, history, cultural studies, area studies and health sciences.




Asian Masculinities


Book Description

This book shows how East Asian masculinities are being formed and transformed as Asia is increasingly globalized. The gender roles performed by Chinese and Japanese men are examined not just as they are lived in Asia, but also in the West. The essays collected here enhance current understandings of East Asian identities and cultures as well as Western conceptions of gender and sexuality. While basic issues such as masculine ideals in China and Japan are examined, the book also addresses issues including homosexuality, women's perceptions of men, the role of sport and food and Asian men in the Chinese diaspora.




Gender in Modern East Asia


Book Description

Gender in Modern East Asia explores the history of women and gender in China, Korea, and Japan from the seventeenth century to the present. This unique volume treats the three countries separately within each time period while also placing them in global and regional contexts. Its transnational and integrated approach connects the cultural, economic, and social developments in East Asia to what is happening across the wider world. The text focuses specifically on the dynamic histories of sexuality; gender ideology, discourse, and legal construction; marriage and the family; and the gendering of work, society, culture, and power. Important themes and topics woven through the text include Confucianism, writing and language, the role of the state in gender construction, nationalism, sexuality and prostitution, New Women and Modern Girls, feminisms, "comfort" women, and imperialism. Accessibly written and comprehensive, Gender in Modern East Asia is a much-needed contribution to the study of the region.




The Sexual History of the Global South


Book Description

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.




East Asian Men


Book Description

This book provides a fresh and contemporary take on the study of men and masculinity. It highlights new and exciting approaches to sexuality, desire, men and masculinity in East Asian contexts, focusing on the interconnections between them. In doing so, it re-examines the key concepts that underpin studies of masculinity, such as homophobia, homosociality and heteronormativity. Developing new ways of thinking about masculinity in local contexts, it fills a significant lacuna in contemporary scholarship. This thought-provoking work will appeal to students and scholars of gender studies, cultural studies and the wider social sciences.