Homophobias

What is it about "the homosexual" that incites vitriolic rhetoric and/or violence around the world? How and why do some people hate queers? Does homophobia operate differently across social, political, and economic terrains? Where are the ambivalences in homophobic discourses that can be exploited to undermine its hegemonic privilege? This volume addresses these questions through critical interrogations of sites where homophobic discourses are produced. It provides innovative analytical insights that expose the complex and intersecting cultural, political, and economic forces which are contributing to the development of new forms of homophobia. It is a "call to action" for anthropologists and other social scientists to examine more carefully the processes, politics, histories and contexts of places and people who profess hatred for queerness. The contributors to this volume open up the scope of inquiry into processes of homophobia, moving the analysis of a particular form of "hate" into new, wider sociocultural and political fields. The ongoing production of homophobic discourses is carefully analyzed in a diverse range of sites, past and present - American Christian churches, Greece, India, the Caribbean, New York City, Australia, and Indonesia - in order to uncover homophobias' complex operational processes and intimate relationships to nationalism, sexism, racism, class, and colonialism. The contributors to this volume also critically inquire into the limitations of the term "homophobia" and interrogate and question its utility as a cross-cultural term. Contributors: Steven Angelides; Tom Boellstorff; Lawrence Cohen; Don Kulick; Suzanne LaFont; Martin F. Manalansan IV; David A. B. Murray; Brian Riedel; Constance R. Sullivan-Blum.