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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... major patterns, transformations, and contrasts in social orders across time and space. As I got a lowish mark, so I learned my first lesson. And, of course, my tutors were right; these are indeed the grand claims of sociology. I should ...
... major controversies surrounding the use of such a term and go on to claim that a newish form of doing citizenship is in the making. Four themes provide the framework for the rest of the book, chapters 5 through 8. I look at how the ...
... major choices concerning families, gender, bodies, identities, and sexualities hitherto unknown in human history. The infertile can turn to assisted conception. Lesbians and gays can enter into registered partnerships and become parents ...
... , but also the emergence of what some see as major “gender wars,” as men and women seem increasingly incapable of living with each other and as sexual violence seems to be on the increase. And side by side with intimate troubles 5.
... major changes of the sort discussed below. Second modernity is another such term.) From a great many sources come signs that at least some personal lives are being transformed. We could view them, as many do, in despair—as instances of ...
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 |