Rethinking Sex

This volume of essays sharply questions current knowledge and ideas about sexuality, social theory, and public policy research on sexuality. The contributors, internationally recognized scholars and activists from Australia, examine the dominant research models from the United States and Western Europe and propose a new perspective, one sensitive to the social construction of sexuality and its research and to variation in sexual practices across cultures. Addressing the debates over sexual conduct from contraception to AIDS prevention, "Rethinking Sex" provides a systematic examination of the social dimensions of sexuality. Social theory, public policy analysis, and historical and survey research are applied to issues ranging from AIDS and gay identity to perceptions of women's sexuality and relations between the state and private sexual behavior. It includes an author note: R. W. Connell is presently a visiting professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The author or co-author of eleven other books, he was 1991-1992 Professor of Australian Studies at Harvard University. He has been Professor of Sociology at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, since 1976. G. W. Dowsett is Research fellow in Sociology in the School of Behavioural Sciences at Macquarie University. He currently works as Assistant Head of the AIDS Research Unit at Macquarie University, part of the National Centre for HIV Social Research, and is a former Vice-President of the AIDS Council of New South Wales.