Sex goes global.

Author's Rating:

Pros: Readable, interesting thesis, lots of examples.

Cons: None for me.

The Bottom Line: 
A timely, informative and provocative read. I highly recommend this book.

Author's Review
Dennis Altman is a Professor at the school of Sociology, Politics and Anthropology in Melbourne Australia. He has been active in the global gay/lesbian movement and involved in the politics of HIV/AIDS for the past decade. His readings on gender and reproductive rights have also made him a committed supporter of feminism. In Global Sex, Altman examines and connects what he terms the "dominant preoccupations of current social science and popular debate" namely, globalization and sexuality. He argues that we need to develop a "political economy of sexuality." To do so, according to Altman, we must abandon the prior tendency to view sexuality as private and politics, economics and culture as public. In so doing, Altman echoes the refrain of second wave western feminism -- "The personal is political."

Altman opens his book with a preface wherein he recounts two sexual scandals that were receiving a lot of international attention at the time he was writing this book. One was in Malaysia, the other in the United States. He also makes passing reference to the highly publicized cell-phone conversation wherein Prince Charles stated that he wished he could be Camilla Parker-Bowles tampon. Camparing Anwar's (Malaysia) trial to Clinton's ordeal (United States), Altman says:

At the same time the attacks on Anwar for his alleged sexual misbehavior reflected a perculiarly Malaysian version of the same punative moralism applied against Clinton, a set of views that Jeremy Seabrook referred to as "an alliance of frozen Victorian colonial morality and Islamic rhetoric, allied to an orgiastic consumerism." (px)

Altman points out that these two scandals were linked by the invocation of certain standards of sexual propriety and the presence of a global media. I was living in the Caribbean at the time the Clinton scandal broke and, having no TV in my home, learned about it in a restaurant frequented by locals. Their whoops of laughter drew my attention to the TV in the restaurant, which was tuned to CNN where the scandal was unfolding for an international audience.

Altman attempts to make sense of two intertwined threads -- the preoccupation with sexuality and the processes of globalization at work in the world today.

The book is divided into ten chapters. Chapter One, Introduction: Thinking about Sex and Politics addresses the ways that globalization affects the ways in which sexuality is "understood, experienced and regulated." Chapter Two The Many Faces of Globalization asks "what's new about globalization"? His answer, a change in the meanings of time and space and a constant tension between the "local" and the "global." The rest of the book looks more closely at these tensions. Chapter Three Sex and Political Economy examines sexuality in the context of wider social forces, the "socioeconomic factors within which sexual acts and identities occur" (p 34). This means we must be aware of class, gender and race but also of the role of the state. Altman attempts to marry the social theories of Marx and Freud to assist in this project. In Chapter Four The (Re)Discovery of Sex Altman examines the politicization of sex using the work of thinkers like Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes to help tease out the significance of his examples many of which are taken from the globalization of popular culture. In Chapter Five, Imagining AIDS and the New Surveillance Altman observes that the spread of the international AIDS pandemic has led to countless interventions and research projects with sex at their core, fuelling new debates about sexuality. He also takes a look at the international trade in sex and drugs and international development projects that have contributed to the conditions that make people vulnerable to HIV/AIDS. Chapter Six, The Globalization of Sexual Identities looks at the ways that international HIV/AIDS awareness projects have led to the diffusion of certain gay/lesbian identities and enabled the emergence of "global subcultures." Chapter Seven, The New Commercialization of Sex: From Forced Prostitution to Cybersex looks at the ways in which sex is interrelated with the global economy. Chatper Eight, Sexual Politics and International Relations examines how the concern with human rights has come to include sexuality and gender. Chapter Nine Squaring the Circle: The Battle for "Traditional" Morality revisits the argument that one of the effects of globalization is a resurgence of traditionalism pitted against (American) immorality. Chapter Ten Conclusion: A Global Sexual Politics? outlines Altman's suggestions for a new theoretical model that links sexuality and globalilzation.


Overall Altman's book is very readable, filled with anecdotes and examples and supported by a wide ranging and impressive list of academic support.