The Gender/Sexuality Reader: Culture, History, Political Economy

Abstract

Gender/Sexuality Reader: Culture, History, Political Economy. Ed. Roger N. Lancaster and Micaela di Leonardo. New York: Routledge, 1997. x + 574 pages. $27.95 paper. Robert Lancaster and Micaela di Leonardo's compilation of essays for Gender/Sexuality reader is nothing short of an accomplishment. They have gathered thirty-seven essays from various disciplines related to gender, sexuality, race, and culture and have organized them into groups that highlight both their differences and similarities. commonalities among essays include their high quality, their concern with complicated intersections of race, gender, power, and nation, and fact that these essays reveal the current intellectual endpoints of these late twentieth-century transformative movements. This anthology, a locus for diverse considerations of identity politics, draws from and informs anthropology, history, politics, literature, and science. Its contributors represent best in their fields currently engaging in dialogue of considerations of body, and result is a book that is essential for anyone's library. editors explain in introduction their careful method of grouping essays. They have arranged works into nine thematic sections under three larger headings, which they call frames. Although a bit tedious, a brief description of organizational pattern, names of essays's authors, and a suggestion of essays's concerns may assist readers in making personal decisions about book's worth. first larger frame is Embodiments of History: Local Meanings, Global Economies, and it deals generally with placement of culture in time. Part One within first frame is Moving Borders: Genders, Sexualities, Histories, and it contains three essays: one by Ann Laura Stoler on gender and race in colonial Asia, one by Siobhan Somerville that traces invention of homosexual body, and a particularly engaging piece by co-editor Micaela di Leonardo. Part Two in first frame is called Modes of Reproduction: Kinship, Parenthood, States. six essays in this section all deal with families or body politic in some way: Jane Collier, Michelle Z. Rosaldo, and Sylvia Yanagisako question idea of family, Nancy Scheper-Hughes presents a situation of child death in Brazil, and Amartya Sen examines problem of population increases. Geraldine Heng and Janadas Deven explore Singapore's national sexual identity as fatherland, and two essays deal with abortion: Susan Gal looks at abortion in Hungary, and Rosalind Pollack Petchesky talks about use of visual in abortion debate (especially movie documentary Silent Scream). final part of first grouping is called The Social Construction of Identities: Comparative Sexualities. Its four essays discuss sexual identities in various contexts: Ellen Ross and Rayna Rapp look at sex, society, and how understanding sexuality requires critical attention to idea that sex is a lived and changing relationship; John D'Emilio's essays Capitalism and Gay Identity argues that gay men and lesbians are a product of history; David F. Greenberg reminds us in his essay that categorical schemes differ not only between cultures; but that they also vary within cultures of complex societies, and can be site of political contest in his essay Transformations of Homosexuality-Based Classifications, and Matthew C. Gutmann offers an interesting look at Seed of Nation: Men's Sex and Potency in Mexico. second large frame around which this book is organized is called Making Marks and Drawing Boundaries: Corporeal Practices. Part Four (the first section of this frame.) Bodies of Knowledge and Politics of Representation, presents seven essays that discuss everything from photography to orgasm to rhetoric as a way to help readers see importance that representation makes on our identities. …