Out in Public

Out in Public addresses, and engages us in, the new and exciting directions in the emerging field of lesbian/gay anthropology. The authors confront the uneasy relationships between lesbian/gay anthropology and applied/public anthropology, whose practitioners have long insisted on a more objective, detached and apolitical approach to problem-identification and practical problem-solving. The book focuses on the authors' engagements in the everyday lives of lesbian/gay people, and describes the strategies that they, as public anthropologists, have used to promote effective intervention and change in LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transsexual] communities. They report with candor on issues such as minority or transgressive sexualities and genders that have increasingly become central to political discourses both in the West and in the developing world. They illustrate how these developments occur not in isolation from one another, but as part of dialogues that are intensified by globalization and transnational flows of people and information. Readers will be intrigued by the complex intellectual, political, and theoretical developments that mark this developing field in anthropology. The authors of Out in Public offer a deeper conversation about the meaning of sexuality, subjectivity and culture.