Culture, Health and Sexuality: An Introduction

The last twenty years have seen a growth in multi-disciplinary work in the area of sexuality, culture and health. What was once a set of specialist concerns has been steadily mainstreamed. Alongside this, a broader interest has developed in ‘social’ and 'cultural’ factors relating to sexuality and sexual health, from family planning and STI management to gender and intimate partner violence and the technologisation of sex.

This book offers a research-based overview of key topics relevant to social and cultural perspectives on sexuality and sexual health. Beginning with an extended introduction and divided into six sections, it looks at culture, sex and gender, sexual diversity, sex work, migration and sexual violence. Each section opens with an editorial discussion which places the theme, and the chapters that follow, in a contemporary context. Six additional substantive chapters can be accessed online at www.routledge.com/cw/aggleton.

Including cutting-edge conceptual and empirical material from around the world, this is a key resource for students in, and across, a variety of academic disciplines in the social and health sciences. It is especially suitable for readers from sexuality studies, gender studies, development studies, anthropology and sociology as well as those with public health and social work backgrounds.

Peter Aggleton is Scientia Professor of Education and Health in the Centre for Social Research in Health at UNSW Australia. He is an Adjunct Professor in the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society at La Trobe University, Australia, and holds visiting professorial positions at the UCL Institute of Education in London and at the University of Sussex, UK.

Richard Parker is Professor of Sociomedical Sciences and Anthropology, and Director of the Center for the Study of Culture, Politics and Health at Columbia University, New York, USA, where he is also a member of the Committee on Global Thought.

Felicity Thomas is a Senior Research Fellow in the European Centre for Environment and Human Health at the University of Exeter Medical School, UK.