Synopses & Reviews
The introduction of television to Fiji triggers an outbreak of bulimia, as young women try to emulate the stars of
Baywatch. A German tourist in Bangkok solicits a prostitute whom he met on the Internet. Images of a tearful Monica Lewinsky are broadcast on CNN to the farthest reaches of the globe. We really do live in a borderless world. Transportation, mass media, emigration, multinational corporations, advances in modern communications, and new information technologies all bring populations within the scope of an interconnected consumer culture. But this rapid process of globalization changes more than just our world economy. It radically reshapes the way we conceive of ourselves and experience our sexuality.
Global Sex is the first major work to take both the issues of globalization and sexuality head on. Dennis Altman looks at how pleasures of the body are framed, shaped, commercialized, and even commodified in our new global economy, exploring the impact of globalization on gender relations, political power, public health, migration, and the ways in which we imagine our own sense of self and place. Ranging from U.N. debates over abortion, to the advent of cybersex, to the rapid spread of AIDS in Africa, to the sex scandals that rocked both Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and President Bill Clinton, Global Sex sheds new light on how the personal and the political are now, more than ever, indistinguishable.
Synopsis
Global Sex is the first major work to take on the globalization of sexuality, examining the ways in which desire and pleasure--as well as ideas about gender, political power, and public health--are framed, shaped, or commodified by a global economy in which more and more cultures move into ever-closer contact."This valuable resource is compelling and easy-to-read, accessible to anyone interested in how technology and the global economy are shaping the ways we think."--Booklist"Altman is a wonderfully clear writer and thinker with a magpie skill for accumulating relevant nuggets of information. This makes Global Sex both illuminating and fascinating. . . . It is dazzlingly ambitious in its scope, ranging from fellatio in the White House and bulimia in Fiji to AIDS in Africa and transgender in Taiwan."--New Internationalist"A gripping portrait of a world barely able to keep pace with enormous, rapid-fire changes. . . . Offering neither a dire warning nor a reason to rejoice, his savvy, energetic book truly maintains a global perspective."--Publishers Weekly
Synopsis
Global Sex is the first major work to take on the globalization of sexuality, examining the ways in which desire and pleasure—as well as ideas about gender, political power, and public health—are framed, shaped, or commodified by a global economy in which more and more cultures move into ever-closer contact.
About the Author
Dennis Altman is a professor in the School of Politics, Sociology, and Anthropology at La Trobe University, Australia. He is the author of eight books, including AIDS in the Mind of America and Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation.
Table of Contents
Preface: Sex and Politics
1. Introduction: Thinking about Sex and Politics
2. The Many Faces of Globalization
3. Sex and Political Economy
4. The (Re)Discovery of Sex
5. Imagining AIDS: And the New Surveillance
6. The Globalization of Sexual Identities
7. The New Commercialization of Sex:
From Forced Prostitution to Cybersex
8. Sexual Politics and International Relations
9. Squaring the Circle:
The Battle for "Traditional" Morality
10. Conclusion: A Global Sexual Politics?
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index