Sex is often regarded as a dangerous business that must be rigorously controlled, regulated, and subjected to rules. Sexual acts that defy acceptable practices may be seen as variously defiling, immoral, and even unnatural. They may challenge and subvert both cultural preconceptions and the social order in a politics of sexual transgression that threatens to transform permissible boundaries and restructure bodily engagements. This collection of essays explores acts of sexual transgression that have the power to reconfigure perceptions of bodily intimacy and the social norms of interaction. Considering issues such as domestic violence, child prostitution, health and sex, teenage sex, and sex with animals across a range of settings from contemporary Oceania, the Pacific, South Africa, and southeast Asia to Euro-America, this book should interest all those who question the "naturalness" of sex, including public health workers, clinical practitioners and students of sex, sexuality, and gender in the humanities and social sciences.

Sex is often regarded as a dangerous business that must be rigorously controlled, regulated, and subjected to rules. Sexual acts that defy acceptable practices may be seen as variously defiling, immoral, and even unnatural. They may challenge and subvert both cultural preconceptions and the social order in a politics of sexual transgression that threatens to transform permissible boundaries and restructure bodily engagements. This collection of essays explores acts of sexual transgression that have the power to reconfigure perceptions of bodily intimacy and the social norms of interaction. Considering issues such as domestic violence, child prostitution, health and sex, teenage sex, and sex with animals across a range of settings from contemporary Oceania, the Pacific, South Africa, and southeast Asia to Euro-America, this book should interest all those who question the "naturalness" of sex, including public health workers, clinical practitioners and students of sex, sexuality, and gender in the humanities and social sciences.

Sex scholarship has a long history in anthropology, from the studies of voyeuristic Victorian gentlemen ethnographers, to more recent analyses of gay sex, transsexualism, and the newly visible forms of contemporary sexuality in the West. "The Anthropology of Sex" draws on the comparative field research of anthropologists to examine the relationship between sex as identity, practice and experience. Sexual cultures vary enormously and, while often the topic of tabloid titillation, they are more rarely subjected to strict cultural analysis. "The Anthropology of Sex" is the first work to critically synthesize over a century of comparative expertise, knowledge and understanding of diverse sexual forms. The book: -Explores sexuality from diversity to perversity and asks how diverse sexual practices are linked.-Probes the cultural and comparative context of contemporary sexual practice and belief. -Examines the shaping of sex by global and globalizing forces. "The Anthropology of Sex" will be key reading for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in anthropology and related disciplines.

Sound, music and storytelling are important tools of resistance, resilience and reconciliation in creative practice from protracted conflict to post-conflict contexts. When they are used in a socially engaged participatory capacity, they can create counter-narratives to conflict. Based on original research in three continents, this book advances an interdisciplinary, comparative approach to exploring the role of sonic and creative practices in addressing the effects of conflict. Each case study illustrates how participatory arts genres are variously employed by musicians, arts facilitators, theatre practitioners, community activists and other stakeholders as a means of 'strategic creativity' to transform trauma and promote empowerment. This research further highlights the complex dynamics of delivering and managing creativity among those who have experienced violence, as they seek opportunities to generate alternative arenas for engagement, healing and transformation.

Presenting a range of ethnographic case studies from around the globe, this edited collection offers new ways of thinking about the interconnectivity of gender, place, and emotion in musical performance. While ethnomusicologists and anthropologists have long recognized the theoretical connections between gender, place, and emotion in musical performance, these concepts are seldom analyzed together. Performing Gender, Place, andEmotion in Music is the first book-length study to examine the interweaving of these three concepts from a cross-cultural perspective. Contributors show how a theoretical focus one dimension implicates the others, creating anexus of performative engagement. This process is examined across different regions around the globe, through two key questions: How are aesthetic, emotional, and imagined relations between performers and places embodied musically? And in what ways is this performance of emotion gendered across quotidian, ritual, and staged events? Through ethnographic case studies, the volume explores issues of emplacement, embodiment, and emotion in three parts: landscape and emotion; memory and attachment; and nationalism and indigeneity. Part I focuses on emplaced sentiments in Australasia through Vietnamese spirit possession, Balinese dance, and land rights in Aboriginal performance. PartII addresses memories of Aboriginal choral singing, belonging in Bavarian music-making, and gender-performativity in Polish song. Part III evaluates emotion and fandom around a Korean singer in Japan, and Sami interconnectivitiesin traditional and modern musical practices. Beverley Diamond provides a thought-provoking commentary in the afterword. Contributors: Beverley Diamond, Fiona Magowan, Jonathan McIntosh, Barley Norton, Tina K. Ramnarine, Muriel Swijghuisen Reigersberg, Sara R. Walmsley-Pledl, Louise Wrazen, Christine Yano. Fiona Magowan is Professor of Anthropology at Queen's University, Belfast. Louise Wrazen is Associate Professor of Music at York University.