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
Results 1-5 of 26
... violence toward women and the elderly are rampant everywhere, alongside a “crisis in masculinity.” Ethnic cleansing has become almost common, as has tribalism. A culture of neglect, apathy, and alienation has been born. Children are out ...
... 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.
... violence, we become saturated with moral problems. New intimate troubles bring new ethical conflicts. Doing. Intimacies. What all these problems have in common is that they reside in what I will call the intimate sphere. This book is ...
... violence. (In the perhaps unfortunate phrasing of Anthony Giddens, it may now be “plastic sexuality,” a sexuality divorced from reproduction and thus much more “open.”) Sexuality also probably now embraces a much wider range of routine ...
... violence.20 This is only an ideal: most relationships still fall short of it. Nevertheless, until fairly recently marriages and other relationships were usually much more hierarchical, and a degree of authoritarianism was often built ...
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 |