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East Asian Sexualities: Modernity, Gender and New Sexual Cultures
This book paints a vivid picture of women's active involvement in reshaping intimate and public sexual life in East Asia. In bringing together exciting new feminist research on sexuality from East Asia and making it available to a wider audience, East Asian Sexualities unsettles stereotypes, rectifies lack of awareness and demonstrates that East Asia matters.
The chapters address the diversity and variety of everyday sexual lives and sexual politics in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea and Japan. They range from workplace sexual cultures, trans-national sexual relations, the conditions of sex-work and the emergence of new sexual desires, cultures and movements. The contributors highlight the gendered and sexual consequences of globalization and rapid social change. In doing so, they engage with western debates on late modernity while also exploring the contested understandings of modernization and westernization in the East. This is a collection which illuminates the local situations in which women's sexual lives are lived and offers fresh perspectives on global issues.
The chapters address the diversity and variety of everyday sexual lives and sexual politics in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea and Japan. They range from workplace sexual cultures, trans-national sexual relations, the conditions of sex-work and the emergence of new sexual desires, cultures and movements. The contributors highlight the gendered and sexual consequences of globalization and rapid social change. In doing so, they engage with western debates on late modernity while also exploring the contested understandings of modernization and westernization in the East. This is a collection which illuminates the local situations in which women's sexual lives are lived and offers fresh perspectives on global issues.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published October 15, 2008
28 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 25, 2025
Serie de artículos que plantean distintas perspectivas sobre las relaciones entre la sexualidad y el mundo laboral en un sentido amplio (desde la prostitución y el trabajo sexual, hasta el caso y la utilización estratégica del capital sexual en el ámbito laboral), y las políticas de la intimidad en los distintos países del Este asiático.
Lo interesante de la compilación es que las autoras son ellas mismas asiáticas, en muchos casos trabajando para instituciones occidentales, lo que las sitúa en una intersección entre ambas formas de percibir los fenómenos. De alguna forma, son intérpretes, traductoras culturales.
Llegué a este libro deambulando por los estantes de adquisiciones recientes de la biblioteca, y lo saqué de la estantería 2024. Fue un poco sorprendente cuando al llegar a casa me encontré con que era de la década pasada (2008). No obstante, creo que en buena medida los análisis se mantienen vigentes.
Dos artículos me llamaron particularmente la atención (ambos pertenecientes a la primera sección): "The Making of Sekuhara: Sexual Harassment in Japanese Culture", por Muta Kazue, y "Beyond sex work: An Analysis of Xioajies' Understandings of Work in the Pearl River Delta Area, China", por Ding Yu y Ho Sik-ying.
El primero aborda lo endémico del acoso sexual en la cultura laboral japonesa, profundizando en la rápida adopción del término sekuhara -derivado de la voz inglesa "sexual harrasment"- y su estiramiento conceptual hasta abordar las más diversas prácticas. Es interesante cómo la autora recupera la voz de las trabajadoras para delinear un ambiente laboral que penaliza a quienes alzan la voz por perturbar la paz / armonía. Por otro lado, el segundo de los artículos refleja la tensión existente entre la autopercepción de las xioajies chinas y el concepto -marcadamente occidental- de trabajo sexual. ¿Cómo reducir lo que para esas mujeres es un estilo de vida, y una serie de servicios que exceden con mucho al mero sexo? Las reacciones de las entrevistadas son más elocuentes que cualquier explicación teórica del etnocentrismo implícito en pensarlas como trabajadoras sexuales.
Lo interesante de la compilación es que las autoras son ellas mismas asiáticas, en muchos casos trabajando para instituciones occidentales, lo que las sitúa en una intersección entre ambas formas de percibir los fenómenos. De alguna forma, son intérpretes, traductoras culturales.
Llegué a este libro deambulando por los estantes de adquisiciones recientes de la biblioteca, y lo saqué de la estantería 2024. Fue un poco sorprendente cuando al llegar a casa me encontré con que era de la década pasada (2008). No obstante, creo que en buena medida los análisis se mantienen vigentes.
Dos artículos me llamaron particularmente la atención (ambos pertenecientes a la primera sección): "The Making of Sekuhara: Sexual Harassment in Japanese Culture", por Muta Kazue, y "Beyond sex work: An Analysis of Xioajies' Understandings of Work in the Pearl River Delta Area, China", por Ding Yu y Ho Sik-ying.
El primero aborda lo endémico del acoso sexual en la cultura laboral japonesa, profundizando en la rápida adopción del término sekuhara -derivado de la voz inglesa "sexual harrasment"- y su estiramiento conceptual hasta abordar las más diversas prácticas. Es interesante cómo la autora recupera la voz de las trabajadoras para delinear un ambiente laboral que penaliza a quienes alzan la voz por perturbar la paz / armonía. Por otro lado, el segundo de los artículos refleja la tensión existente entre la autopercepción de las xioajies chinas y el concepto -marcadamente occidental- de trabajo sexual. ¿Cómo reducir lo que para esas mujeres es un estilo de vida, y una serie de servicios que exceden con mucho al mero sexo? Las reacciones de las entrevistadas son más elocuentes que cualquier explicación teórica del etnocentrismo implícito en pensarlas como trabajadoras sexuales.
July 1, 2016
This is a very interesting read, especially for readers that want to have an introduction on gender and sexuality in East Asia. It touches a lot of subjects: from "sexual work" to women and lesbian movements' problems in finding common ground to how changes have been happening or not in East Asia in these last years.
The book brings a good group of authors, with different backgrounds and knowledge, who touch on different aspects of those topics in different countries: Japan and lesbian couples, South Korea lesbian movement and the hierarchical (patriarchal) culture of the country, Taiwan and China's women's perceptions of each other in relation to businessmen from Taiwan that go to work to China, migrants that go to other countries and do housework... It is all quite fascinating, and a subject we all should know way more about.
The writing style fluctuates. In general, all the authors have a very easy to follow and understand style, and their ideas come across clearly. On the other hand, the level of writing comes and goes, the English level (or maybe the editing) comes and goes too, and some of the ideas are all over the place. It is also quite superficial, so for a more in depth understanding, it would be needed to read quite a lot more. Some authors just introduce some ideas or data, but don't go much further away, which would be nice, but would probably mean a whole book just for every topic.
To finish, that a book that has in its title East Asian Sexualities goes and talks basically about women's situations says a lot about the society we live in, about who is privileged and who is not, and what kind of changes have actually occurred in the last decades.
6.5/10
The book brings a good group of authors, with different backgrounds and knowledge, who touch on different aspects of those topics in different countries: Japan and lesbian couples, South Korea lesbian movement and the hierarchical (patriarchal) culture of the country, Taiwan and China's women's perceptions of each other in relation to businessmen from Taiwan that go to work to China, migrants that go to other countries and do housework... It is all quite fascinating, and a subject we all should know way more about.
The writing style fluctuates. In general, all the authors have a very easy to follow and understand style, and their ideas come across clearly. On the other hand, the level of writing comes and goes, the English level (or maybe the editing) comes and goes too, and some of the ideas are all over the place. It is also quite superficial, so for a more in depth understanding, it would be needed to read quite a lot more. Some authors just introduce some ideas or data, but don't go much further away, which would be nice, but would probably mean a whole book just for every topic.
To finish, that a book that has in its title East Asian Sexualities goes and talks basically about women's situations says a lot about the society we live in, about who is privileged and who is not, and what kind of changes have actually occurred in the last decades.
6.5/10
October 1, 2015
I mean, I thought this was terribly interesting. I loved how well indexed the references for all these essays were and the discourse on modernity and sexual agency in female migrant workers was particularly interesting, mostly because its been overlapping a lot with what i've been writing about in my lit analysis on the classic of poetry.
Mmm...my favorite summary lines were in the introduction:
"Sexualities are situated; they appear and are always lived within national, political, racial-ethnic and gender frames"
and
"Although an expanding body of literature has examined the experience of female migrant workers in Asia, their sexuality - intimate behaviors, erotic desires, and sexual identities = is still under-explored terrain. Most of the existing literature looks at sexuality as a site of labor control and discipline, a marker of racialized differences and ethno-national boundaries, or a discursive field in which migrants negotiate moral identities between the imposed images of prostitution and sainthood. Martin Manalansan has therefore sharply criticized a tendency in migration studies to relate sexuality to control and violence and fail to see migrants as active agents who possess sexual desire and erotic practice."
unrelated, but my academic life is still spiraling downward jfc i need a nap and a prescription refill
Mmm...my favorite summary lines were in the introduction:
"Sexualities are situated; they appear and are always lived within national, political, racial-ethnic and gender frames"
and
"Although an expanding body of literature has examined the experience of female migrant workers in Asia, their sexuality - intimate behaviors, erotic desires, and sexual identities = is still under-explored terrain. Most of the existing literature looks at sexuality as a site of labor control and discipline, a marker of racialized differences and ethno-national boundaries, or a discursive field in which migrants negotiate moral identities between the imposed images of prostitution and sainthood. Martin Manalansan has therefore sharply criticized a tendency in migration studies to relate sexuality to control and violence and fail to see migrants as active agents who possess sexual desire and erotic practice."
unrelated, but my academic life is still spiraling downward jfc i need a nap and a prescription refill
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews