Cultural Politics of Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Asia

• Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
• Year: 2016
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 240
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

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.

✦ Table of Contents

Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction. Gender And Sexuality In Contemporary Asia
Chapter One. Sexuality, Class, And Neoliberal Ideology Same-Sex Attracted Men And Money Boys In Postsocialist China
Chapter Two. Producing Purity An Ethnographic Study Of A Neotraditionalist Ladies’ Academy In Contemporary Urban China
Chapter Three. “Tonight, You Are A Man!” Negotiating Embodied Resistance In Local Thai Nightclubs
Chapter Four. Feeling Like A “Man” Managing Gender, Sexuality, And Corporate Life In After-Hours Tokyo
Chapter Five. Mobilizing The Masses To Change Something Intimate The Process Of Desexualization In China’S Family Planning Campaign
Chapter Six. Pleasure, Patronage, And Responsibility Sexuality And Status Among New Rich Men In Contemporary China
Chapter Seven. Labor, Masculinity, And History Bangbang Men In Chongqing, China
Chapter Eight. Boyz Ii Men Neighborhood Associations In Western India As The Site Of Masculine Identity
Chapter Nine. Marriage And Reproduction In East Asian Cities Views From Single Women In Shanghai, Hong Kong, And Tokyo
Chapter Ten. Media, Sex, And The Self In Cambodia
Chapter Eleven. Islam, Marriage, And Yaari Making Meaning Of Male Same-Sex Sexual Relationships In Pakistan
Chapter Twelve. Racialization Of Foreign Women In The Transnational Marriage Market Of Taiwan
Contributors
Index