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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... people in the late modern world, there are decisions that can, and increasingly have to, be made about a life. I am interested in how these personal decisions connect with public debates. I am concerned with how our most intimate ...
... people can be more experimental with their sexualities. Women have gained some measure of autonomy over their bodies and their lives. Older people are living longer—even into their centenarian years —and thus face decisions about ...
... people as “cyborgs,” people as becoming “posthuman.” Just what does this mean—and do we really want to become post-human? At the same time, the sense of our bodies in time and space starts to become reconfigured as we are captured on ...
... (people with AIDS), surrogate mothers and “women who love too much,” “Iron Johns” and “New Men,” as well as those suffering from a whole new set of a›ictions with labels like “post-traumatic stress disorder” and “false memory syndrome ...
... people and richer nations may find the postmodern to be more and more congenial to the organization of their lives.9 ... people's lives remain largely untouched by the postmodern world. But many lives are affected—and increasingly so ...
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 |