Module 4: Sex, Gender and Sexuality

Geneva, June 12/13, 2008

Organizer: Dr. Fenneke Reysoo, IUED (from 01.01.08 IHEID), Geneva

This module will introduce students to the debate on how the cultural construction of sexuality articulates the relationships between sex, gender and sexuality. A part from the early referential works on sexuality in non-Western societies by a.o. Bronislaw Malinowski and Margaret Mead, the topic had its comeback with the emergence of feminist critical theory, with the development of homo-, lesbian and queer studies and with the widespread interest for preventing HIV-AIDS. A short historical overview of this large field will give a contextual background to the main focus of the course.

Indeed, the main focus addresses more specifically the different meanings given to sexuality and gender, with the idea in mind that "gender is expressed through sexuality (...) and that the first step in studying sexuality is to differentiate it from gender (...)" (Pat Caplan, 1987: 2). Doing so it will be clear that the issue of sex, gender and sexuality touches upon the understanding of symbolic, moral and social boundaries and how these are produced and reproduced for political objectives. The politics of sex - once a unthinkable connection - and the politics of the body are expressions of new processes in our globalized world, not only in the more applied field of controlling the demographic transitions (population growth and ageing), of reproductive and sexual rights, and of the connection between morality and sexuality in HIV-AIDS prevention development programmes and projects, but also in the realm of interpretive anthropology of understanding the changing identities of emerging new social categories, especially adolescent/young women and men.

Module structure
1  Introduction: historical and theoretical overview of sex, gender and sexuality debates within anthropology (brief overview)
2  Cultural discourses on sex, gender and sexuality, as markers of moral and social boundaries
3  Moving femininities and masculinities: bodily transactions and love strategies in a market economy
4  Politics of sex (in the broader realm of development)

Leading international scholars will be invited to stimulate the reflections and debates. Some of the themes will be further worked out during the International Gender Colloquium "Chic, chêque, choc. Transaction autour des corps et stratégies amoureuses contemporaines" to be held Octobre 11 and 12, 2007 at the IUED, Geneva (see also www.genre-dev.org/actualités).

Appetizer readings:
Biaya, T.K. 2001, Les plaisirs de la ville: masculinité, sexualité et féminité à Dakar (1997–2000), African Studies Review, Vol. 44(2), pp. 71–85.
Caplan, Pat (ed), 1987, The Cultural Construction of Sexuality, London/New York: Tavistock Publications.
Adams, V. & S.L. Pigg, 2005, Sex in Development. Science, Sexuality and Morality in Global Perspective, Durham & London: Duke University Press.

Contact: Fenneke.Reysoo@iued.unige.ch