Sexualizing Governance and Medicalizing Identities: The Emergence of                `State-Centered' LGBT Health Politics in the United States

Epstein, Steven

doi:10.1177/1363460703006002001

Cited by 59 publications

(43 citation statements)

References 36 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…While there is a rich social scientific literature that documents queer protest movements (Shilts, 1987;Denenberg, 1997;Epstein, 2003), we would argue that the everyday work of sustaining social change for LGB communities has typically been unnoticed. By conceptualising actions within daily life as forming part of progressive struggles for social justice, some might argue that this will lead to a dilution of activism.…”

Section: Discussion and Conclusion: Towards A Queer Theory Of Everydamentioning

confidence: 99%

Queerying activism through the lens of the sociology of everyday life

Fish

King

Almack

2018

The Sociological Review

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The approaching 30 th anniversary of the introduction of the 1988 Local Government Act offers an opportunity to reflect on the nature of lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) activism in Britain.The protests against its implementation involved some of the most iconic moments of queer activism. Important though they are, these singular, totemic moments, give rise to, and are sustained by small, almost unobtrusive, acts which form part of LGB people's everyday lives.In this paper, we aim to contribute to a re-thinking of queer activism where iconic activism is placed in a synergetic relationship with the quieter practices in the quotidian lives of LGB people. We interrogate a series of examples, drawn from three studies, to expand ideas about how activism is constituted in everyday life. We discuss the findings in relation to three themes: the need to forge social bonds often formed a prompt to action; disrupting the binary dualism between making history and making a life; and the transformative potential of everyday actions/activism. The lens of the sociology of everyday life i) encourages a wider constituency of others to engage in politics; ii) problematizes the place of iconic activism.Keywords: everyday life; quotidian activism; queer politics; equality; rights. Monk and Barker, 2015). Yet despite these legal protections, social change for sexual minorities is uneven, partial, complex and contested: witness, for example, the rise in homophobic hate crime in the wake of the EU referendum vote (Townsend, 2016) or the rolling back of LGBT rights in the USA following the election of President Trump (Siddiqui, 2017). In this paper, we aim to contribute to a re-thinking of queer activism 1 where iconic activism is placed in a synergetic relationship with the quieter practices in the quotidian lives of LGB 3 people. As Abrahams (1992; 327) has noted, this approach could enhance inquiry into the connections between 'daily life and structural and institutional systems of power relations'. Introducing the sociology of everyday lifeUsing the lens of everyday life to interrogate activism is a contested endeavour. Sarah Pink argues that everyday life and activism are often studied in isolation from each other (2012; 4).While activism takes place in public -it is explicit, explosive and political -the everyday is associated with the private, the hidden and often the banal. Piotr Sztompka (2008) It is this location at the juncture between individual daily lives and the structural context in which they are lived which makes the sociology of everyday life such a useful lens to explore small-scale activisms. Quotidian activism quietly, but powerfully, works alongside the explicit, political moments in our history. As Neal and Murji (2015; 811) argue, 'the realm of the everyday brings the structure-agency knot directly into view, but more than this it brings close the immediacy and intensity of being in and part of social worlds'. This location enables 4 exploration of how people make sense of society's norms and values an...

show abstract

Section: Discussion and Conclusion: Towards A Queer Theory Of Everydamentioning

confidence: 99%

Queerying activism through the lens of the sociology of everyday life

Fish

King

Almack

2018

The Sociological Review

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…One cannot account for the peculiar power of biomedical knowledge without accounting for the ways that it has also worked to erase certain geographical differences. Medical research that accepts race as a reporting category, for example, can imply that the differences between races have to do with biological inheritance and are not, say, a consequence of geographical origins or patterns of endogamy (Epstein 2004). Lifestyle factors that depend in part on poverty could well influence health, but social groups have to submit to a form of ethnic medicalization to get attention from medical research sponsored by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).…”

Section: Vital Discoursesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Drug testing in the United States tended to use all-male cohorts of college students to test the efficacy and safety of drugs, but then approve those drugs for use in all populations. To get women added to drug testing programs in 1993, the argument used was that women are biologically different from men (Epstein 2003). In figuring such differences between men and women as biological, however, such arguments address, as Epstein (2003) points out, neither nonbiological causes of ill health (violence, stress, poverty) nor the nonmedical dimensions of the failure of health care for women (the sexism, patriarchy, and ignorance of some medical professionals).…”

Section: Vital Discoursesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To get women added to drug testing programs in 1993, the argument used was that women are biologically different from men (Epstein 2003). In figuring such differences between men and women as biological, however, such arguments address, as Epstein (2003) points out, neither nonbiological causes of ill health (violence, stress, poverty) nor the nonmedical dimensions of the failure of health care for women (the sexism, patriarchy, and ignorance of some medical professionals). Pertinent differences are too often understood as rooted in biology and not in social or geographical context.…”

Section: Vital Discoursesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Vital Geographies: Life, Luck, and the Human Condition

Kearns¹,

Reid-Henry

2009

Annals of the Association of American Geographers

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Life has been problematized anew by recent social change and scientific innovation. There are important and little studied geographical dimensions to any such understanding of "the politics of life itself," however. A geographical perspective involves, first, highlighting the spatial aspects of both states and capital, two rather neglected dimensions of vital politics. Elaborating the geographical constitution of vital politics entails further describing the related powers of knowledges and practices. Reflecting on the geographical dimensions of longevity and health leads directly to a recognition of the ethical implications of the geographical luck of birth and residence. Taking up this ethical challenge requires specifying at least six components of geographical justice: culpability, fairness, care, state failure, human rights, and solidarity with environmental and social justice. Key Words: biomedicine, care, health, inequality, justice, longevity, medical ethics. Otra vez, la vida adquiere dimensión problémica en virtud del cambio social y la innovación científica. Sin embargo, aunque existen importantes dimensiones geográficas para comprender "las políticas de la vida misma," muy escaso es el estudio hecho sobre el particular. Una perspectiva geográfica a este respecto implica, primero que todo, destacar los aspectos espaciales tanto de los estados como de sus capitales, dos expresiones de las políticas vitales hasta ahora muy marginadas. Elaborar la constitución geográfica de la política vital demanda describir con mayor profundidad los poderes relacionados de conocimientos y prácticas. El reflexionar sobre las dimensiones geográficas de longevidad y salud lleva directamente a un reconocimiento de las implicacioneséticas de la casualidad geográfica del lugar de nacimiento y residencia. Para asumir estos retoséticos se requiere especificar por lo menos seis componentes de justicia geográfica: culpabilidad, equidad, cuidado, falla del estado, derechos humanos y solidaridad con la justicia ambiental y social. Palabras clave : biomedicina, cuidado, salud, desigualdad, justicia, longevidad,ética médica. L ife is being politicized in new and novel ways today, especially in Western societies and especially with regard to some of the possibilities wrought by recent and rapid developments in the biological sciences. A growing number of geographers, anthropologists, and sociologists are exploring such "vital" issues as the social implications of neuroscience or the political and legal vortex surrounding regenerative medicine (Fischer 2003;N. Brown and Webster 2004;Wainwright et al. 2006). So, too, are they analyzing how life is being revalued (Collier and Ong 2005;Sunder Rajan 2006;Waldby and Mitchell 2007). Such nonphilosophical accounts of the politics of life (that is, accounts that are based primarily on ethnographic or sociological investigation rather than on a purely philosophical reflection) concern what we might call the form of life itself and how various technologies reconfigure it. Such work cons...

show abstract

“…A growing literature has taken up and critiqued the idea of sexual citizenship, although much of that work is restricted to critical, theoretical debate. The concept has been used to consider the governance of sexual practice (Waites 2005) and the enduring effects of biomedical definitions of sexual difference (Epstein 2003). While the idea of sexual citizenship is seen to provide the basis for challenges to heteronormativity, critics have also pointed out that in some articulations, it is gender blind and can unreflexively combine identity categories such as gay men, lesbians and transgendered people (Richardson 2000).…”

Section: Beyond Altruism/transgressionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The ‘loss of community’ and other problems for sexual citizenship in recent HIV prevention

Davis

2007

Sociology Health & Illness

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Increases in reported unsafe sex among gay men have been explained as resistance to HIV prevention, or most recently, with the idea that a hyper-individualisation of sexual action contributes to the loss of sexual community. This turning in HIV prevention has come to focus on the sexual action of gay men with HIV through the frames of: sexual transgression, sometimes called 'barebacking'; and altruism. Adopting the perspective of sexual citizenship in connection with qualitative interviews, this paper considers how gay men with HIV account for their sexual practice in light of the dual discourse of transgression/altruism. The paper will argue that gay men with HIV are deeply aware of what transgression/altruism implies for their identities and sexual relations, indicating the continued salience of community for sexual practice. Further, in the circumstances of blaming in relation to the moral labour of safer sex, gay men with HIV are trying to work out a co-operative practice for HIV prevention based on self-care, a moderated altruism and the voluntary action of sexual partners.

show abstract

Sexualizing Governance and Medicalizing Identities: The Emergence of `State-Centered' LGBT Health Politics in the United States

Cited by 59 publications

References 36 publications

Queerying activism through the lens of the sociology of everyday life

Queerying activism through the lens of the sociology of everyday life

Vital Geographies: Life, Luck, and the Human Condition

The ‘loss of community’ and other problems for sexual citizenship in recent HIV prevention

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About