Sexuality, Health And Human Rights

This new work surveys how rapid changes taking place at the start of the twenty-first century in social, cultural, political and economic domains impact on sexuality, health and human rights. The relationships between men, women and children are changing quickly, as are traditional family structures and gender norms. What were once viewed as private matters have become public, and an array of new social movements – transgender, intersex, sex worker, people living with HIV – have come into the open.
The book is split into three sections:


Global ‘Sex’ Wars – discusses the notion of sexualities, its political landscapes internationally, and the return of religious fervour and extremism


Epistemological Challenges and Research Agendas – examines modern ‘scientific’ understandings of sexuality, its history and the way in which AIDS has drawn attention to sexuality


The Promises and Limits of Sexual Rights – discusses human rights approaches to sexuality, their strengths and limitations and new ways of imagining erotic justice

Offering a unique framework for understanding this new world, set in the context of the major theoretical debates of recent decades, this book will be of interest to professionals, advocates and policy researchers and is suitable for a wide range of courses covering areas such as gender studies, human sexuality, public health and social policy.

Sonia Corrêa coordinates Sexuality Policy Watch at the Brazilian Interdisciplinary AIDS Association (ABIA), Brazil.
Rosalind Petchesky is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Hunter College, City University of New York, USA.
Richard Parker is Professor of Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University, USA.

Introduction Part I: Global ‘Sex’ Wars 1. Landscaping Sexualities 2. The Real Politics of ‘Sex’ 3. The Sad ‘Return of the Religious’ Part II: Epistemological Challenges and Research Agendas 4. The Modernization of ‘Sex’ and the Birth of Sexual Science 5. The Social Construction of Sexual Life 6. After AIDS Part III: The Promises and Limits of Sexual Rights 7. On the Indispensability and Insufficiency of Human Rights 8. Inventing and Contesting Sexual Rights within the UN 9. Transnational Debates: Sexuality, Power, and New Subjectivities 10. At the Outer Limits of Human Rights: Voids in the Liberal Paradigm Postscript: Dreaming and Dancing – The ‘Beyond’ beyond Sexual Rights