Introduction: Framing sexuality studies in East Asia

Authors

Vera Mackie, University of WollongongFollow
Mark McLelland, University of WollongongFollow

RIS ID

93415

Publication Details

Mackie, V. and McLelland, M. (2015). Introduction: Framing sexuality studies in East Asia. In M. McLelland and V. Mackie (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Sexuality Studies in East Asia (pp. 1-14). Oxford: Routledge. 2014

Additional Publication Information

ISBN: 9780415639484

Abstract

Over the last two or three decades, sexuality studies has come to be seen as a distinctive field of academic inquiry. What is sometimes referred to as the 'new sexuality studies' is distinguished from earlier paradigms which looked at human sexuality through the prisms of biology, medical science, psychoanalysis, psychology and what was known as 'sexology' (Weeks 2003). By contrast, in current ways oflooking at sexuality, the cultural meanings, imaginaries and identities associated with sex and sexuality are seen to be just as important as behaviours and practices. In the introduction to the first issue of the journal Sexualities in 1998, Ken Plummer put forward this view of sexuality studies.