Consent (Transformations)

This book considers the concept of consent in different contexts with the aim of exploring the nuances of what consent means to different people and in different situations. While it is generally agreed that consent is a fluid concept, legal and social attempts to explain its meaning often centre on overly simplistic, narrow and binary definitions, viewing consent as something that occurs at a specific point in time.

This book examines the nuances of consent and how it is enacted and re-enacted in different settings (including online spaces) and across time. Consent is most often connected to the idea of sexual assault and is often viewed as a straight-forward concept and one that can be easily explained. Yet there is confusion among the public, as well as among academics and professionals as to what consent truly is and even the degree to which individuals conceptualise and act on their own ideas about consent within their own lives.

Topics covered include: consent in digital and online interactions, consent in education, consent in legal settings and the legal boundaries of consent, and consent in sexual situations including sex under the influence of substances, BDSM, and kinky sex. This book will appeal to students and scholars interested in issues of consent from the social sciences, gender theory, feminist studies, law, psychology, public health, and sexuality studies.

Laurie James-Hawkins is the Social Science Faculty Dean for Undergraduate Education, a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Sociology, and Deputy Director for the Centre for Intimate and Sexual Citizenship (CISC) at the University of Essex. She is a Sociologist of health and gender, and her research interests include sexual consent, reproductive health, contraception, abortion, gender, sexuality, and hookup culture among emerging adults. In the last several years she has been studying the impact of alcohol on university student definitions of sexual consent. Her recent publications include "Just one shot? The contextual effects of matched and unmatched intoxication on perceptions of consent in ambiguous alcohol-fuelled sexual encounters."

Róisín Ryan-Flood is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Centre for Intimate and Sexual Citizenship (CISC) at the University of Essex. Her research interests include gender, sexuality, kinship, digital intimacies, and feminist epistemology. She is the author of Lesbian Motherhood: Gender, Sexuality and Citizenship (2009), and co-editor of Secrecy and Silence in the Research Process (2010) and Transnationalising Reproduction (2018). She is also co-editor of the journal Sexualities: Studies in Culture and Society.