The fear of campus sexual assault has become an inextricable part of the college experience. Research has shown that by the time they graduate, as many as one in three women and almost one in six men will have been sexually assaulted. But why is sexual assault such a common feature of college life? And what can be done to prevent it? Drawing on the Sexual Health Initiative to Foster Transformation (SHIFT) at Columbia University, the most comprehensive study of sexual assault on a campus to date, Jennifer S. Hirsch and Shamus Khan present an entirely new framework that emphasises sexual assault's social roots-transcending current debates about consent, predators in a "hunting ground" and the dangers of hooking up. Sexual Citizens is based on years of research interviewing and observing college life-with students of different races, genders, sexual orientations and socioeconomic backgrounds. Hirsch and Khan's landmark study reveals the social ecosystem that makes sexual assault so predictable, explaining how physical spaces, alcohol, peer groups and cultural norms influence young people's experiences and interpretations of both sex and sexual assault. Through the powerful concepts of "sexual projects", "sexual citizenship" and "sexual geographies", the authors offer a new and widely-accessible language for understanding the forces that shape young people's sexual relationships. Empathetic, insightful and far-ranging, Sexual Citizens transforms our understanding of sexual assault and offers a roadmap for how to address it.

How are love, marriage, and desire changing? This collection confronts that question, examining how global cultural flows, changing gender relations, specific economic structures, and state policies are reshaping intimate life around the world. Grounded in cutting edge feminist anthropological theory, these essays discuss how women and men craft courtship, intimacy, and marriage around the world, situating intimate relations in their respective social and economic contexts and exposing the dynamics that are shared cross-culturally, as well as those characteristics that are specific to each site.
In this first comparative ethnographic look at the global transformation toward marital ideals characterized by emotional intimacy, companionship, and mutual choice--discussed here as "companionate marriage"--"Modern Loves" asks how this shift is occurring and explores the factors that promote and hinder it, just who is pushing for these more companionate relationships, and what advantages men and women see in modern love. The contributors analyze the intricate negotiations surrounding love, marriage, and sex in Mexico, India, Papua New Guinea, Brazil, Pakistan, Nigeria, Singapore, and Hong Kong and among Latino youth in East Los Angeles. "Modern Loves" presents the new global approach to kinship studies, examining both the microlevel practices that constitute and bind relationships and the macrolevel forces that shape the landscape of love.
Contributors: Margaret E. Bentley, Selina Ching Chan, Pamela I. Erickson, Jessica Gregg, Jennifer Higgins, Jennifer S. Hirsch, Wynne Maggi, Constance A. Nathanson, Gayatri Reddy, Daniel Jordan Smith, and Holly Wardlow
Jennifer S. Hirsch isAssociate Professor in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University. Holly Wardlow is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto.
"What's love got to do with it? Hirsch and Wardlow answer this question by demonstrating the relevance--indeed, centrality--of the ideologies and practices surrounding romantic love and companionate marriage to the study of social transformation more broadly. The essays compiled in this volume explore the material, structural, and demographic underpinnings of the global shift in marital ideals while also tracing some of the sources of this marital shift in mass media, missionization, and the spread of individualism. The contributors of the chapters provide ethnographically rich examples of the ways in which people living in different societies interpret and act upon these global forces and images in sometimes overlapping and sometimes varying ways. This volume is an important and thoughtful contribution to the study of emotion, gender, kinship, and social change." --Laura M. Ahearn, Department of Anthropology, Rutgers University
"With its rich descriptions of the nuances in romantic love and its lucid analysis of the political economy of conjugal relations, this book will be widely read and loved by anthropologists as well as the concerned public."
--Yunxiang Yan, Department of Anthropology, UCLA
""Modern Loves" offers an overview of current scholarship on love in the context of sexual relationships cross-culturally, and provides a view of the complexity of varied aspects of emotion, social structure, and social change in contemporary sexual relationships. It clearly makesthe case for a political economic understanding of the emergence of ideologies of love, marriage, and courtship as part of expanding global economies."
--Linda-Anne Rebhun, Department of Anthropology, Yale University

The fear of campus sexual assault has become an inextricable part of the college experience. Research has shown that by the time they graduate, as many as one in three women and almost one in six men will have been sexually assaulted. But why is sexual assault such a common feature of college life? And what can be done to prevent it? Drawing on the Sexual Health Initiative to Foster Transformation (SHIFT) at Columbia University, the most comprehensive study of sexual assault on a campus to date, Jennifer S. Hirsch and Shamus Khan present an entirely new framework that emphasises sexual assault's social roots-transcending current debates about consent, predators in a "hunting ground" and the dangers of hooking up. Sexual Citizens is based on years of research interviewing and observing college life-with students of different races, genders, sexual orientations and socioeconomic backgrounds. Hirsch and Khan's landmark study reveals the social ecosystem that makes sexual assault so predictable, explaining how physical spaces, alcohol, peer groups and cultural norms influence young people's experiences and interpretations of both sex and sexual assault. Through the powerful concepts of "sexual projects", "sexual citizenship" and "sexual geographies", the authors offer a new and widely-accessible language for understanding the forces that shape young people's sexual relationships. Empathetic, insightful and far-ranging, Sexual Citizens transforms our understanding of sexual assault and offers a roadmap for how to address it.

Discussions of globalization usually focus on political, economic, and technological transformations, but fail to recognize how we experience these processes in our daily lives, including our most intimate acts and practices. In this volume, anthropologists and sociologists draw on long-term ethnographic research on love, gender, and sexuality in a broad range of regions to discuss how global forces shape marriage, commercial sex, the political economy of intimacy, and lesbian and gay expressions of companionship.

The richly-textured ethnographies provoke a series of questions about emerging vocabularies for friendship and romance; the adoption of cultural forms from faraway places; the emergence of new desires, pleasures, and emotions that circulate as commodities in the global marketplace; and the ways economic processes shape public and private expressions of sexual intimacy.

Discussions of globalization usually focus on political, economic, and technological transformations, but fail to recognize how we experience these processes in our daily lives, including our most intimate acts and practices. In this volume, anthropologists and sociologists draw on long-term ethnographic research on love, gender, and sexuality in a broad range of regions to discuss how global forces shape marriage, commercial sex, the political economy of intimacy, and lesbian and gay expressions of companionship.

The richly-textured ethnographies provoke a series of questions about emerging vocabularies for friendship and romance; the adoption of cultural forms from faraway places; the emergence of new desires, pleasures, and emotions that circulate as commodities in the global marketplace; and the ways economic processes shape public and private expressions of sexual intimacy.