Fraught Intimacies

Fraught Intimacies
Author: Nathan Rambukkana
Publisher: UBC Press
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2015-05-30
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 0774828994

Adultery scandals involving politicians. Dating websites for married women and men. Raids of polygamous communities. Reality shows about polyamorists. It seems that non-monogamy is everywhere: in popular culture, in the news, and before the courts. In Fraught Intimacies, Nathan Rambukkana examines how polygamy, adultery, and polyamory are represented in the public sphere and the effect this is having on intimate relationships and aspects of contemporary Western society. As this book demonstrates, although monogamy is considered and presented as the norm in Western society, many kinds of sexual and romantic relationships exist within its borders. Rambukkana’s intricate analysis reveals how some forms of non-monogamy are tacitly accepted, even glamourized, while others are vilified and reviled. By questioning what this says about intimacy, power, and privilege, this book offers an innovative framework for understanding the status of non-monogamy in Western society.

Sociology of Sexualities

Sociology of Sexualities
Author: Kathleen J. Fitzgerald
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Total Pages: 441
Release: 2020-07-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1544370644

Sociology of Sexualities takes a unique sociological approach to the study of sexualities and explores the ways sexuality operates in and through institutions. Drawing on the most up-to-date scientific research on sexuality, as well as the latest political developments on the issues, this core text helps students connect knowledge about sexuality with their broader understanding of society. The thoroughly revised Second Edition includes updated and expanded discussions of the latest sociological research and social justice movements regarding gender and sexuality, as well as a new chapter exploring sexuality and social class, space, and place. Included with this title: The password-protected Instructor Resource Site (formally known as SAGE Edge) offers access to all text-specific resources, including a test bank.

Philosophy of Love in the Past, Present, and Future

Philosophy of Love in the Past, Present, and Future
Author: André Grahle
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2022-01-25
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 100053751X

This volume features original essays on the philosophy of love. The essays are organized thematically around the past, present, and future of philosophical thinking about love. In Part I, the contributors explore what we can learn from the history of philosophical thinking about love. The chapters cover Ancient Greek thinkers, namely Plato and Aristotle, as well as Kierkegaard’s critique of preferential love and Erich Fromm’s mystic interpretation of sexual relations. Part II covers current conceptions and practices of love. These chapters explore how love changes over time, the process of falling in love, the erotic dimension of romantic love, and a new interpretation of grand-parental love. Finally, Part III looks at the future of love. These chapters address technological developments related to love, such as algorithm-driven dating apps and robotic companions, as well as the potential of polyamory as a future romantic ideal. This book will be of interest to researchers and advanced students in moral philosophy and social and political philosophy who are working on issues related to the philosophy of love.

Intimacies of Violence

Intimacies of Violence
Author: Nadine Shaanta Murshid
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2025
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0197755836

In Intimacies of Violence, Nadine Shaanta Murshid demonstrates how transnational middle-class Bangladeshi women personally embody structural violence to shed light on the ways in which violence is produced, perpetuated, and resisted. Transnational Bangladeshi women are individuals who occupy space in both the United States and Bangladesh, living bilocating yet bordered lives. Murshid forwards four broad arguments. First, a transnational feminist approach documents the "shock of arrival" to provide an examination of how social locations and associated status impact the intimate economies in which women experience inequities related to love, sex, and desire. Second, drawing on theories from social work, transnational feminism, Bangladesh studies, and migration studies, the book shows how social norms produced at the familial level serve to link the structural and the intimate. Third, the book illustrates how nationalist narratives about Bangladesh's history of wartime rape inform women's construction of violence. Finally, the institutions of home, immigration, and the criminal legal system are implicated as sites of violence for transnational Bangladeshi women. As the first book to examine the private lives of Bangladeshi migrant women, Intimacies of Violence allows academics, policymakers, and practitioners who work with migrant communities and immigration policy to understand the complex ways in which immigrant lives are structured by social systems.

Handbook on Migration and the Family

Handbook on Migration and the Family
Author: Johanna L. Waters
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 393
Release: 2023-03-02
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1789908736

This Handbook is a timely and critical intervention into debates on changing family dynamics in the face of globalization, population migration and uneven mobilities. By capturing the diversity of family ‘types’, ‘arrangements’ and ‘strategies’ across a global setting, the volume highlights how migration is inextricably linked to complex familial relationships, often in supportive and nurturing ways, but also violent and oppressive at other times.

Disrupting Queer Inclusion

Disrupting Queer Inclusion
Author: OmiSoore H. Dryden
Publisher: UBC Press
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2015-09-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 077482946X

Canada likes to present itself as a paragon of gay rights. This book contends that Canada’s acceptance of gay rights, while being beneficial to some, obscures and abets multiple forms of oppression to the detriment and exclusion of some queer and trans bodies. Disrupting Queer Inclusion: Canadian Homonationalisms and the Politics of Belonging seeks to unsettle the assumption that inclusion equals justice. The contributors detail how the fight for acceptance engenders complicity in a system that fortifies white supremacy, furthers settler colonialism, advances neoliberalism, and props up imperialist mythologies. They do this by highlighting the uneven relationships produced by normative articulations of sexual citizenship in a wide range of contexts – in prisons, at Pride House, Pride marches, fetish fairs, and the feminist porn awards – as well as within the laws and regulations governing marriage, hate crimes, citizenship, blood donation, and refugee claims.

Making a Scene

Making a Scene
Author: Liz Millward
Publisher: UBC Press
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2015-11-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0774830697

Starting in the mid-1960s, Canadian lesbians started leaving their closets en masse to find each other and build community. After decades of being pathologized or erased from public view, lesbians were ready to make a scene – both by bringing attention to themselves and by creating physical spaces and opportunities where they could meet to form relationships, debate politics, and forge their own culture. Making a Scene documents the lesbian movement that emerged in Canada between 1964 and 1984. Not just a story of big-city life, it chronicles the range of spaces lesbians created across rural and urban Canada, from physical locations, such as lesbian and gay centres, bookstores, and private members’ clubs, to ephemeral sites of encounter, such as conferences, festivals, and Dykes in the Streets marches. Enriched by interviews and excerpts from letters, club meeting minutes, diaries, and more, Making a Scene brings to life the exuberance and determination of these young women.

The Nature of Masculinity

The Nature of Masculinity
Author: Steve Garlick
Publisher: UBC Press
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2016-10-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0774833327

Social theorists have argued that as the complexity of our ecosystems becomes more apparent, the line between nature and culture, human and nonhuman, and technology and bodies becomes less distinct. Yet contemporary masculinity studies has generally failed to incorporate this new way of thinking. In this penetrating analysis of the relationship between gender and nature, Steve Garlick proposes that masculinity is best understood as a technology that shapes both our engagement with the natural world and how we define freedom. Extending the work of the Frankfurt School and Heidegger’s critique of modern technology, The Nature of Masculinity draws on case studies and new materialist theories to argue that the essence of technology is not in mechanical devices but in a particular relationship to natural forces. Within this critical framework, masculinity is a technology of embodiment, and freedom does not lie in the domination of nature but rather in fostering a new relation to it.

Disrupting Dignity

Disrupting Dignity
Author: Stephen M. Engel
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2021-06-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1479899860

Why LGBTQ+ people must resist the seduction of dignity In 2015, when the Supreme Court declared that gay and lesbian couples were entitled to the “equal dignity” of marriage recognition, the concept of dignity became a cornerstone for gay rights victories. In Disrupting Dignity, Stephen M. Engel and Timothy S. Lyle explore the darker side of dignity, tracing its invocation across public health politics, popular culture, and law from the early years of the HIV/AIDS crisis to our current moment. With a compassionate eye, Engel and Lyle detail how politicians, policymakers, media leaders, and even some within LGBTQ+ communities have used the concept of dignity to shame and disempower members of those communities. They convincingly show how dignity—and the subsequent chase to be defined by its terms—became a tool of the state and the marketplace thereby limiting its more radical potential. Ultimately, Engel and Lyle challenge our understanding of dignity as an unquestioned good. They expose the constraining work it accomplishes and the exclusionary ideas about respectability that it promotes. To restore a lost past and point to a more inclusive future, they assert the worthiness of queer lives beyond dignity’s limits.

Does Monogamy Work? (The Big Idea Series) (The Big Idea Series)

Does Monogamy Work? (The Big Idea Series) (The Big Idea Series)
Author: Luke Brunning
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2020-10-20
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0500775648

Written by an expert in the field, Does Monogamy Work? examines why monogamy is the social norm and the growing interest in alternative relationship models. Even with the current rise in awareness of sexual and intimate diversity, monogamous relationships remain the cultural norm. Most people aspire to it, and the state encourages it, providing legal and financial benefits to married couples; however, statistics show adultery is commonplace, marriage rates are falling, and divorce figures are rising. This entry in the Big Idea series traces the evolution and normalization of the monogamous ideal—questioning whether it is “natural” or not—and surveys the spectrum of alternative relationship models that people are seeking out in a world of internet dating and birth control. It explores the emotional and psychological facets of ethical polyamorous relationships; questions whether these relationships benefit men disproportionately and whether they are compatible with raising children; and assesses the likelihood that diverse forms of multipartner marriages and large friendship networks will become the norm in the future. With over 150 color images and incisive, engaging, and authoritative text, Does Monogamy Work? examines society’s attachment to monogamy, evaluates its benefits and limitations, and assesses the merits of polyamorous relationship models in our modern world.