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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... linked to modern reproductive technologies or cybersex, for 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 ...
... linked to space and to objects—“an intimate room ... into which one withdrew from the hubbub of relatives and neighbors,” or intimate souvenirs and relics, such as a lock of hair, “which one cherished as though there was magic in them ...
... linked to each. How are we to cope with these questions while living in a world of growing dissent where appropriate ethical blueprints no longer seem readily available? Our intimacies are now thoroughly contested. Can we find some ...
... linked to issues of globalization, which I do in Chapter 8. Many of these debates can no longer be understood in terms of a specific country or nation but are engaged in on a wider scale and have much broader social ramifications. We ...
... linked cluster in the past—are becoming increasingly separated from one another.5 They are, indeed, becoming their own autonomous spheres. “Sex,” for example, no longer works its once prime task of procreation: instead, it now serves a ...
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 |