Cosmopolitan Sexualities

Hope and the Humanist Imagination

By: Ken Plummer

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Hardcover | 29 May 2015 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Hardcover
248 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
216.0 x 138.0 x 51.6

Hardcover

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How are we to live with the wide varieties of sexuality and gender found across the rapidly changing global order? Whilst some countries have legislated in favour of same-sex marriage and the United Nations makes declarations about gender and sexual equality, many countries across the world employ punitive responses to such differences. In this compelling and original study, Ken Plummer argues the need for a practical utopian project of hope that he calls ‘cosmopolitan sexualities’. He asks: how can we connect our differences with collective values, our uniqueness with multiple group belonging, our sexual and gendered individualities with a broader common humanity? Showing how a foundation for this new ethics, politics and imagination are evolving across the world, he discusses the many possible pitfalls being encountered. He highlights the complexity of sexual and gender cultures, the ubiquity of human conflict, the difficulties of dialogue and the problems with finding any common ground for our humanity.

Cosmopolitan Sexualities takes a bold critical humanist view and argues the need for positive norms to guide us into the future. Highlighting the vulnerability of the human being, Plummer goes in search of historically grounded and potentially global human values like empathy and sympathy, care and kindness, dignity and rights, human flourishing and social justice. These harbour visions of what is acceptable and unacceptable in the sexual and intimate life. Clearly written, the book speaks to important issues of our time and will interest all those who are struggling to finding ways to live together well in spite of our different genders and sexualities.

Industry Reviews

"Plummer has given us a new sexology for our age… Warning us not to take our stereotypes for granted, he takes us through sexualities in China, in Africa and in Middle Eastern societies, and organises sexualities into global zones, regional discrepancies and local eruptions."
Times Higher Education

"Ken Plummer's new work on sexualities is a carefully constructed book designed to captivate students and scholars with an interest in sexuality studies...a thoroughly enjoyable read which leaves the reader with a comprehensive knowledge of sexualities and a hopeful perspective for a humanistic world."
James Pickles, Network Review

"This is a book of deep knowledge and passionate commitment. It is the culmination of a lifetime’s work on the sociology, culture and politics of sexuality, and is suffused with a critical humanism that offers a guide for the perplexed troubled by our contemporary sexual labyrinth. It is a landmark of sexual scholarship."
Jeffrey Weeks, London South Bank University

"Ken Plummer helped define the field of sexuality studies, and now he pushes well beyond its boundaries, taking on big questions of social theory. Cosmopolitan Sexualities uses the lens of sexuality studies to grapple with debates about belonging and difference in our rapidly globalizing world. Plummer has read absolutely everything, and in this book he offers a comprehensive, often dazzling road map of the myriad changes which are simultaneously remaking intimate life and macro worlds, and what they tell us about what it means to be human."
Arlene Stein, Rutgers University

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