Sex Ethnographic Encounters [Hardcover]

Focusing on the unacknowledged, personal and often unconscious dimension,Sexexplores the intersection between sex and ethnography. Anthropological writing tends to focus on the influence of status markers such as position, gender, ethnicity, and age on fieldwork. By contrast, far less attention has been paid to how sex, sexuality, eroticism, desire, attraction, and rejection affect ethnographic research.

In the book, anthropologists reflect on their own encounters with sex during fieldwork, revealing how attraction and desire influence the choice of fieldwork subjects, field sites and friendships. They also examine the resulting impact on fieldwork findings and the generation of knowledge. Based on fieldwork in Germany, Denmark, Greece, the USA, Brazil, South Africa, Singapore, Turkey, Israel, Morocco, and India, the contributors go beyond the common heterosexuality/homosexuality divide to address topics which include celibacy, polyamory and sadomasochism.

This long overdue text provides perspectives from a new generation of anthropologists and brings the debate into the 21st century. Examining challenging and controversial issues in contemporary fieldwork, this is essential reading for students in anthropology, gender and sexuality studies, sociology, research methods, and ethics courses.

Foreword
John Borneman, Princeton University, USA

Introduction
Richard Joseph Martin, Harvard University, USA and Dieter Haller,Ruhr-Universit?t Bochum, Germany

1. Towards an Intimately 'Impure' Ethnography: The Limits of Non-Participant Observation
Timothy M. Hall,University of California, Los Angeles, USA

2. When Bodies Talk: Indulging Anthropology
Sebastian Mohr, Aarhus University, Denmark

3. 'Going With': Desire and Power Amid the Politics of Asylum in Greece
Heath Cabot, College of the Atlantic, USA

4. (Un)Changing Men in the Face of AIDS in South Africa