Intimate Citizenship: Private Decisions and Public DialoguesUniversity of Washington Press, 2011 M10 1 - 192 pages Solo parenting, in vitro fertilization, surrogate mothers, gay and lesbian families, cloning and the prospect of “designer babies,” Viagra and the morning-after pill, HIV/AIDS, the global porn industry, on-line dating services, virtual sex--whether for better of worse, our intimate lives are in the throes of dramatic change. In this thought-provoking study, sociologist Ken Plummer examines the transformations taking place in the realm of intimacy and the conflicts--the “intimate troubles”--to which these changes constantly give rise. In surveying the intimate possibilities now available to us and the issues swirling around them, Plummer focuses especially on the overlap of public and private. Increasingly, our most private decisions are bound up with public institutions such as legal codes, the medical system, or the media. |
From inside the book
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... are well known and much studied, such as gender and families. Others have started to be studied, such as emotions and bodies. Still others have hardly been noticed: most of the senses, for example—we ix Preface and Acknowledgments.
... example—we have yet to really ponder what the sociology of smells, sights, and sounds would look like (although a ... examples of the “culture wars.” Some of the conflicts outlined there seem to generate irreconcilable positions and lead ...
... example—many of them have long and tangled roots in the past. The new is often not as new as we like to think. Sex work—or prostitution—may be “the oldest profession,” same-sex marriages may have quite a long history, and families of ...
... and with differing levels of self-awareness. Those who are aging, for example, and most of the population of “developing / majority / ThirdWorld / low-income” societies may still lead lives guided largely by 8 intimate troubles.
... To expand on just one example: the world of cyberspace and erotica / pornography. Here we find a world of new problems that we have little The Dystopian View The Utopian View Widening disparities in levels intimate troubles 9.
Contents
3 | |
17 | |
3 Culture Wars and Contested Intimacies | 33 |
4 The New Theories of Citizenship | 49 |
5 Public Intimacies Private Citizens | 67 |
6 Dialogic Citizenship | 84 |
7 Stories and the Grounded Moralities of Everyday Life | 95 |
8 Globalizing Intimate Citizenship | 117 |
9 The Intimate Citizenship Project | 139 |
Notes | 147 |
Bibliography | 163 |
Index of Names | 179 |
Subject Index | 183 |