This collection of essays on the sexual culture of the Sambia of Papua New Guinea examines: fetish and fantasy; ritual nose-bleeding; the role of homoerotic insemination; the role of the father and mother in the process of identity formation.

This cultural and psychological study of gender identity and sexual development in a New Guinea Highlands society includes initiation rites and socialization studies, and contrasts the Sambia with other societies, including our own. Sambia boys experience ritualized homosexuality before puberty and do not leave it until marriage, after which homosexual activity is prohibited. The implications are developed cross-culturally and contextualized in gender literature.

Because homoerotic relations can be found in so many cultures, Gilbert Herdt argues that we should think of these relations as part of the human condition. This new cross-cultural study of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals around the world, Same Sex, Different Cultures provides a unique perspective on maturing and living within societies, both historical and contemporary, that not only acknowledge but also incorporate same-gender desires and relations.Examining what it means to organize ?sex? in a society that lacks a category for ?sex,? or to love someone of the same gender when society does not have a ?homosexual? or ?gay/lesbian? role, Herdt provides provocative new insights in our understanding of gay and lesbians lives. Accurate in both its scientific conceptions and wealth of cultural and historical material, examples range from the ancient Greeks and feudal China and Japan to the developing countries of Africa, India, Mexico, Brazil, and Thailand, from a New Guinea society to contemporary U.S. culture, including Native Americans. For all of these peoples, homoerotic relations emerge as part of culture?and not separate from history or society.In many of these groups, loving or engaging in sexual relations is found to be the very basis of the local cultural theory of ?human nature? and the mythological basis for the cosmos and the creation of society. The mistake of modern Western culture, Gilbert contends, is to continue the legalization of prejudice against lesbians and gays.In this light, the book addresses the issue of ?universal? versus particular practices and reveals positive role models that embrace all aspects of human sexuality. Finally, it offers knowledge of the existence of persons who have loved and have been intimate sexually and romantically with the same gender in other lands through divergent cultural practices and social roles.The most important lesson to learn from this cross-cultural and historical study of homosexuality is that there is room for many at the table of humankind.

This book contains the work of seven leading anthropologists on the subject of ritualized homosexuality, and it marks the first time that anthropologists have systematically studied cross-cultural variations in homosexual behavior in a non-Western culture area. The book as a whole indicates that contemporary theories of sex and gender development need revision in light of the Melanesian findings. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1984. This book contains the work of seven leading anthropologists on the subject of ritualized homosexuality, and it marks the first time that anthropologists have systematically studied cross-cultural variations in homosexual behavior in a non-Western culture

Intimate Communications is the first systematic effort to explore and interpret erotic experience and gender identity in a cross-cultural perspective. This is a diologic work that emphasizes the need for exact descriptions of people's statements, feelings, and fantasies, presenting data from individual interviews with the Sambia of Papua New Guinea. Using the ethnographic methods of anthropology informed by the clinical techniques of psychoanalysis, Gildbert Herdt and Robert J. Stoller explore the culture and erotics of the Sambia and the role of subjectivity in ethnographic research.

This unique study of boy-inseminating rituals among the Sambia of New Guinea challenges our deepest assumptions about the role of culture in understanding homosexuality and gender-identity development.

Publisher Description

MySearchLab provides students with a complete understanding of the research process so they can complete research projects confidently and efficiently. Students and instructors with an internet connection can visit www.MySearchLab.com and receive immediate access to thousands of full articles from the EBSCO ContentSelect database. In addition, MySearchLab offers extensive content on the research process itself—including tips on how to navigate and maximize time in the campus library, a step-by-step guide on writing a research paper, and instructions on how to finish an academic assignment with endnotes and bibliography. Designed to introduce readers to a broad range of relevant ideas and theories and to encourage critical thinking on a variety of sexuality and gender topics, this collection of articles, classic and current, addresses the relationships between sexuality, gender, and culture. The readings include descriptions of variations in sexual and gender ideologies, expressions of sexuality, gender diversity, and global issues. Gay rights, transgendered movements, intersexed awareness, female genital mutilation, male circumcision, AIDS, sex tourism, and the sex.com explosion on the internet are all current issues addressed.

In this ambitious new book, Henrietta Moore draws on anthropology, feminism and psychoanalysis to develop an original and provocative theory of gender and of how we become sexed beings. Arguing that the Oedipus complex is no longer the fulcrum of debate between anthropology and psychoanalysis, she demonstrates how recent theorizing on subjectivity, agency and culture has opened up new possibilities for rethinking the relationship between gender, sexuality and symbolism. Using detailed ethnographic material from Africa and Melanesia to explore the strengths and weaknesses of a range of theories in anthropology, feminism and psychoanalysis, Moore advocates an ethics of engagement based on a detailed understanding of the differences and similarities in the ways in which local communities and western scholars have imaginatively deployed the power of sexual difference. She demonstrates the importance of ethnographic listening, of focused attention to people’s imaginations, and of how this illuminates different facets of complex theoretical issues and human conundrums. Written not just for professional scholars and for students but for anyone with a serious interest in how gender and sexuality are conceptualized and experienced, this book is the most powerful and persuasive assessment to date of what anthropology has to contribute to these debates now and in the future.

Amazonia and Melanesia are half a world in distance, yet their cultures bear similarities in the areas of sex and gender. This work looks at ways in which sex and gender are elaborated, obsessed over, and internalized.