Cosmopolitan Sexualities

Ken Plummer is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex. Amongst his key books are Sexual Stigma (1975), The Making of the Modern Homosexual (1981), Telling Sexual Stories (1995), Documents of Life (2001), Intimate Citizenship (2003) and Sociology: The Basics (2010). He was the founder editor of Sexualities.

• Boxes xWebsite xiAbbreviations xiiIntroduction 1A troubled world 3A tale to tell 5An infinity of lists 8Part One: Humanism and the Making of Cosmopolitan Sexualities 111 Plural Sexualities: Making Valued Human Lives 13Plural lives 14Contingency and the varieties of sexual experience 16Critical humanism 20Humanist troubles 22Vulnerability and the dignity of the self 26Plural values, valued lives 29Search for common humanities 30A world ethics for critical humanism? 32Valued sexual lives 362 Transformational Sexualities: Making Twenty-First-Century Sexual Lives 39Transformational sexualities 40Reproductive sexualities, techno sexualities 44Mediated sexualities 45Electronic sexualities 47Familial sexualities 50Gendered sexualities 52Violent sexualities 53Post-honour sexualities 54Secular, sacred and fundamentalist sexualities 56Commodified sexualities 58Urban sexualities and their assemblages 61AIDS and sexualities 63Divided sexualities, pauperized sexualities 64Individualized, reflective sexualities 65Migrating, diasporic and hybrid sexualities 67Global sexualities/mobile sexualities 68Conclusion: Making sexual politics 693 Cosmopolitan Sexualities: Living With Different Lives 71On cosmopolitanism 72Constructing cosmopolitan sexualities in a global arena 74Troubles ahead: the contradictions and limits of cosmopolitanism 88The (very) long walk to cosmopolitan sexualities 101Part Two: Inclusive Sexualities: Nudging Towards a Better World 1034 Cultural Sexualities: Cultivating Awareness of Complexity 105Global sexualities and research 107World cultures and macro sexualities 110Impure cultures and subterranean sexualities 116Local cultures and micro sexualities 123Conclusion: complex cultures 1305 Contested Sexualities: Inventing Enemies, Making Boundaries 131Scaling the battlegrounds 133Divisive sexualities, agonistic politics 135The fault line of contested sexualities 141On boundaries, belonging and the vulnerabilities of normativity 143Normative sexualities 145Vulnerable sexualities 150Looking ahead 1536 Communicative Sexualities: On the Hope and Empathy for a Common Global Humanity 155Empathic sexualities 156Narrative sexualities 161Dialogic sexualities 164Ethical sexualities 167Democratic sexualities 175Bleak sexualities 179Hopeful sexualities 182The little grounded everyday ‘utopian’ processes of global hope 183In the end 187Epilogue: Contingent Sexualities – Dancing into the Sexual Labyrinth 190Personal tales 193Textual tales 194Research tales 196Troubled tales 198Mobile tales 200Notes 202References 232Index: 100 Samples of Multiple Sexualities 268Index: General 270

"Plummer has given us a new sexology for our age… Warning us not to take our stereotypes for granted, he takes us through sexualities in China, in Africa and in Middle Eastern societies, and organises sexualities into global zones, regional discrepancies and local eruptions."https://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/content/book-review-cosmopolitan-sexualities-hope-and-the-humanist-imagination-by-ken-plummer"Times Higher Education "Ken Plummer's new work on sexualities is a carefully constructed book designed to captivate students and scholars with an interest in sexuality studies...a thoroughly enjoyable read which leaves the reader with a comprehensive knowledge of sexualities and a hopeful perspective for a humanistic world." James Pickles, Network Review "This is a book of deep knowledge and passionate commitment. It is the culmination of a lifetime’s work on the sociology, culture and politics of sexuality, and is suffused with a critical humanism that offers a guide for the perplexed troubled by our contemporary sexual labyrinth. It is a landmark of sexual scholarship."Jeffrey Weeks, London South Bank University"Ken Plummer helped define the field of sexuality studies, and now he pushes well beyond its boundaries, taking on big questions of social theory. Cosmopolitan Sexualities uses the lens of sexuality studies to grapple with debates about belonging and difference in our rapidly globalizing world. Plummer has read absolutely everything, and in this book he offers a comprehensive, often dazzling road map of the myriad changes which are simultaneously remaking intimate life and macro worlds, and what they tell us about what it means to be human."Arlene Stein, Rutgers University