This long-awaited new edition of Frank Mort's classic examines ideas of health and illness and their links to moral and immoral notions of sex, from 1830 to the present day. Includes new studies of eugenics, race hygiene and social imperialism.

This 'state of the art' overview of Foucaldian scholarship in health and medicine assesses the profound impact of Foucault's work and shows how key researchers in the sociology of health and illness are currently engaging with his work.

Postmodernism and poststructuralism have undermined the assumptions upon which established identities have been constructed, such as the concept of stable bodies and stable selves. Sex, gender, sexuality and race are no longer viewed as merely descriptive aspects of experience but also as constructions of identity. Drawing on current debates in postmodern feminism, feminist philosophy of science, anti-racist//postcolonial studies and queer theory, this book considers the way in which discourse fabricates the `ideal' male body, sexual identity and sexual politics. Alan Petersen (...) explores the possibilities of developing new models of identity not so closely linked to the sex//gender system and examines the prospects of creating a new. (shrink)

A Sociology of Sex and Sexuality offers an historical sociological analysis of ideas about expressions of sexual desire, combining both primary and secondary historical and theoretical material with original research and popular imagery in the contemporary context. While some reference is made to the sexual ideology of Classical Antiquity and of early Christianity, the major focus of the book is on the development of ideas about sex and sexuality in the context of modernity. It questions the widespread assumption that the (...) anxieties and fears associated with old sexual mores have been overcome in the late twentieth century context, and asks whether the discourses of Queer sexual politics have successfully fractured the binary categories of heterosexuality and homosexuality. A Sociology of Sex and Sexuality will be of interest to students in the fields of sociology, sexual history, gender studies and cultural studies. (shrink)