Fornicating with nuns in fifteenth-century Bologna

The article opens with the prosecution in 1432 of a spicer for abducting a nun. This is first of all presented as the story of a trial: the formation of the indictment, the defence tactics, the deposition of witnesses, and only then are the experience of the nun, and the gender relations in the event, examined. This leads to numerous contexts: legal (the development of the law on sexual relations with professed nuns); judicial (similar cases in late fourteenth-/fifteenth-century Bologna); monastic (the unstable history of convents); social (the place of the nunnery in the local sexual economy); and historiographic (Ruggiero's ‘culture of illicit sexuality’).     

Canada in a global economy

This paper questions the neoliberal understanding of globalization as a coherent and progressive force representing the apotheosis of late capitalism. Here, globalization is seen as a contested and sometimes even chaotic process, which needs to be interpreted in the context of the local geographies and histories in which it is embedded. Viewed as a socio-economic process, globalization is characterized by a recurring interplay between local and global interests, implying that Canada's relations with the global economy have been socially constructed in diverse ways, at different times, in different places. Five distinct relations are examined here, each one being linked to a well known historical figure, as follows: the ecological depletion of resources (John Cabot); technological dependence (Alexander Graham Bell); continental integration (C.D. Howe); cultural deterritorialization (Walt Disney); and the new geometries of power (Conrad Black). Each of these five relations has found distinctive local expression.     

Western leveraged pedagogy of Central and Eastern Europe: discourses of homophobia,tolerance, and nationhood

This article focuses on the relations between the two geo-temporal categories – Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and West/Europe – in discussions about sexual politics, homophobia, tolerance, and nationhood. It contributes to the existing literature about homonationalism and sexual nationalisms by introducing CEE to the debate's geographical loci, so far mostly invested in West/Europe and its relations to Islam. It argues that it is important to consider CEE in sexual nationalism debates because of its framing as the European (homophobic) Other in the emerging discourses of ‘homoinclusive Europe’. This article introduces the concept of leveragedpedagogy, which captures the specificity of the West/Europe – CEE discourses of sexual liberation, advancement, and backwardness. Leveraged pedagogy is a hegemonic didactical relation where the CEE figures as an object of the West/European ‘pedagogy’, and is framed as permanently ‘post-communist’, ‘in transition’ (i.e. not liberal, not yet, not enough), and homophobic. Such ‘taking care of’ CEE, it is argued, is a form of cultural hegemony of the Western EUropean liberal model of rights as the universal.     

Three statistical methods for sex determination in extant and fossil caprines: assessment of the Rupicapra long bones

Sex determination of fossil remains in archeopaleontological contexts is a necessary step in order to gain insights in archaeological and paleobiological parameters such as prey selection and sexual dimorphism. Species with higher sexual dimorphism are more reliably sexed while the sex determination of less dimorphic animals is not attempted. In this study, we compared the accuracy of three different methods in the sex determination of a modern known-sex sample of chamois (Rupicapra pyrenaica parva) from the Cantabrian range (Northern Iberian Peninsula), which is a small-sized ungulate with low sexual dimorphism when compared to other animals in which sex determination has been attempted (i.e., Ursus spelaeus, Capra pyrenaica). The three methods applied were mixture analysis (MA), cluster analysis (CA) and principal component analysis (PCA). Within CA we applied three different analysis: one agglomerative hierarchical method (AH) and two optimal partitioning methods (k-means and robust k-means); and within PCA we applied normal and robust variants of the analysis.     

Masturbation and Discourse on Female Sexual Practices in Early Modern Japan

Much of the discourse on female sexual practices in early modern Japan centred on masturbation, usually with a dildo, deemed necessary for a woman's mental and physical health when the male member was unavailable. References to female same‐sex relations suggest that they too made sense in situations where men were absent. Some sex manuals treated female sexual arousal within the context of conjugal relations, while a text written for wives in polygamous marriages places female sexual practice at the service of male interests. The texts analysed here show not only that early modern Japanese held different attitudes toward sex than their western counterparts, but also that they could hold multiple attitudes at the same time.     

The nation and the city: urban festivals and cultural mobilisation

This article attempts to map the relations between nation‐building processes in 19th‐century Europe and city cultures with their urban sociability. Three patterns are surveyed: [1] the modern‐national assimilation of medieval and early‐modern city cultures (sample case: Orléans and the French cult of Joan of Arc); [2] the modular replication across cities of urban festivals as cultural mobilizers (sample case: the spread of Floral Games festivals in Southern France and Northern Spain); [3] the reticulation of city‐based practices into a nationwide and nation‐building network (sample cases: the role of choral societies in German cultural nationalism; and its transnational knock‐on effect in the Baltic Provinces). By choosing the city as our social focus and placing it (or rather, its ideal‐type ‘Urbania’) alongside Gellner's ideal‐types of ‘Megalomania’ and ‘Ruritania’, we can avoid the finalism of studying regionalist and nationalist movements in the analytical framework of the post‐Versailles state system, and we gain a better understanding of the granulated, localized social basis of such movements and the translocally homogenizing role of culture.     

Innocence and experience: sexuality among young people in modern France, c. 1750-1950

Prying into the sex lives of young people in the past has alwaysproved a challenging exercise. Historians have often ended uprelying on the testimony from adult observers or on the quantitativeevidence provided by illegitimacy rates. This article adoptsa more direct route by drawing on first-hand accounts of earlysexual experiences written by French people in diaries, childhoodreminiscences and autobiographies. As a preliminary, it analysesthe way various authorities depicted young people as sexual(or non-sexual) beings, and the state of sex education in Francebefore the mid-twentieth century. It then considers the waypeople depicted their first stirrings of sexuality during childhoodand adolescence. Finally, it examines evidence from the ‘egodocuments’ on sexual relations in the run-up to marriage.     

从墓志看唐代妇女崇道的原因

唐代社会崇道之风盛行,很多妇女信奉道教,或是出家做女道士,或是在家修习道教。由于每个人具体生活经历不同,她们崇道的原因也不同。本文从外在原因、心理因素及女性独立意识三个方面分析了唐代妇女崇道的原因。指出唐代妇女之所以崇道,除了受当时广泛流行的崇道之风影响之外,还有许多具体而现实的原因。这些原因既包括消极的从众心理,也包括女性对人生积极的追求。     

All things go in pairs,or the sharks will bite: the antithetical nature of Fijian chiefship

Via an historical-cum-ethnographic analysis of the history of chiefship in the vanua (country) of Sawaieke, central Fiji, this essay argues against the prevailing view that Fijian social relations are fundamentally hierarchical. Rather social relations in general and chiefship in particular are predicated on complementary and opposing concepts of equality and hierarchy, such that neither can become, in Dumont's terms, ‘an encompassing value’. This radical opposition between equality and hierarchy, Hegelian in form, is fundamental to Fijian dualism, so it pervades Fijian daily life and informs, for example, sexual relations, kinship, chiefship and notions of the person. ‘The household’ is the basic kinship unit and while relations within households are hierarchical, relations across households are those of balanced reciprocal exchange, epitomised in the relation between cross-cousins as equals and affines. The analysis shows that Fijian chiefship — past or present — cannot, as ‘value’, encompass the pervasive antithesis between hierarchy and equality. Rather its efficacy and its continuity require that hierarchy and equality remain in tension with one another as opposing, and equally important, concepts of social relations.     

Early medieval regulations concerning marital sexual relations

During the early middle ages the Christian Church demonstrated an interest in regulating the expression of marital sexual relations. The regulations focused on the form of the sexual behaviour but particularly on its frequency. There is a growing body of regulations forbidding marital intercourse during such times as the major liturgical seasons, on particular days of the week, and before communion, among others. While some of these regulations may have been motivated by the procreative teaching regarding marital relations, others point to a fundamental difficulty of reconciling sexual behaviour with the ideals of Christian living.     

Treating His Imperial Majesty's Warts: British Policy towards Iran 1977–79

Analysis of British policy towards Iran during the shah's final years has tended to be the preserve of those who formulated it. In general, it has focused on the extent to which British policymakers predicted the events of the Iranian revolution (published accounts by British policymakers include: Anthony Parsons, The Pride and The Fall: Iran 1974–1979 (1984); David Owen, Time to Declare (1991); Ivor Lucas, A Road To Damascus: Mainly Diplomatic Memoirs from the Middle East (1997), and “Revisiting the Decline and Fall of the Shah of Iran” (2009)). This article is different in both its sources and scope. Unlike any other published study on Anglo-Iranian relations, it relies on government records recently released in the National Archives. Instead of focusing on the British response to the Iranian revolution, it seeks to account for the strength of the shah's leverage and illustrate its consequences during one of the most important periods in Iran's history.     

Cultural Hybridity,Magical Realism,and the Language of Magic in Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist

Sister Francisca de la Concepción (Mother Castillo), a Neogranadine nun, articulated multiple, powerful discourses in her works Mi vida and Afectos espirituales. In what I call a "hegemonic confessional discourse," visible throughout her mystical works, the Spanish-American colonial nun affirmed the Iberian colonization and Catholic evangelization of the New Kingdom of Granada by accepting and supporting the Spanish's violent and discriminatory hegemony.

I will defend the aforementioned thesis by analyzing Mi vida and Afectos espirituales, using the construction of Otherness and an explanation of various mystical processes, and by scrutinizing Mother Castillo's social, economic, political, and religious views, as well as her Catholic orthodox, white, traditional perspective.     

The implications of information and communication technologies for sexualities and sexualised violences: Contradictions of sexual citizenships

A key aspect of globalisation, glocalisation and transnationalisation is the development of information and communication technologies (ICTs). Such technologies have major implications for sexualities and sexualised violences, and raise profound implications, contradictions and challenges for sexual citizenship. These implications include the affirmation of sexual citizenship, with the creation of new forms of sexual communities; and the denial of sexual citizenship, with the production of new opportunities for pornography, prostitution, sexual exploitation and sexual violences. The article goes on to focus particularly on the contradictory implications of ICTs for sexual citizenship. These include the simultaneous development of more democratic and diverse sexual communities, and sexual work and sexually violent work; movements beyond the exploiter/exploited dichotomy; complex relations of non-exploitative and sexual exploitation, commercialisation of sex, and enforcement of dominant sexual practices; blurring of the social, sexual–social, sexual and sexually violent, and of the sexually ‘real’ and sexually ‘representational’; closer association of sex with the ‘visual’ and the ‘representational’; increasing domination of the virtual as the mode(l) for non-virtual, proximate sociality, and possible impacts of the virtual on increased non-virtual, proximate sociality, even greater possibilities for ‘pure relationships’; shifts in sexual space and sexual place; development of new forms of transnational sexual citizenship, within shifting transpatriarchies. Contradictions between the scale of global material sex economies and the representation and reproduction of the sexual through ICTs appear to be increasing.     

Plastic fantastic? Problematising post-feminism in erotic retailing in England

Sex shops in England have traditionally been perceived as masculinised consumption spaces, located at the margins of both the city and the clock (in decaying urban zones, hidden from view and frequented under the cover of darkness). Recent decades have witnessed the emergence of fashion conscious and female-orientated ‘erotic boutiques’, keen to disassociate themselves away from negative stereotypical representations of sex shops, through marketing themselves as stylish, fun, acceptable and safe, and, above all, empowering spaces for women to explore their sexuality. This article considers how erotic boutiques offer a post-feminist sexual address to women through claims of female empowerment, an embrace of traditional femininity and an endorsement of the aestheticisation of the female body. More specifically, I explore the post-feminist tensions between female sexual subjectivity and objectivity, by unpacking, and reflecting on, the relations between erotic boutiques and the space of the body. This is achieved by an analysis of how the products and services (and how they are marketed and displayed) promote idealised representations of female bodily sexual pleasure, adornment and knowledge that can apparently be obtained by the consumption of specific products and commodified sexual knowledges. The article consequently considers and questions a seeming inextricable entwinement of post-feminist sexual empowerment with sexual consumerism.     

GIs and “Jeep girls”: sex and American soldiers in wartime China

ABSTRACT

This article examines how sex affected the larger politics of the Sino–US alliance during World War II. By early 1945, Chinese from across the social spectrum resented the US military presence, but just one issue sparked a violent backlash: sexual relations between American soldiers (GIs) and Chinese women. Two interrelated, patriarchal narratives about sex emerged that spring. Starting in March, government-backed newspapers began criticizing “Jeep girls,” an epithet coined to describe the Chinese women who consorted with American servicemen. Rumors also circulated that GIs were using Jeeps to kidnap “respectable” women and rape them. Each narrative portrayed women’s bodies as territory to be recovered and inextricable from national sovereignty. These narratives resonated widely, turning Jeep girls into the catalyst through which all variables causing resentment against the US military presence intersected and converged. With Japan on the ropes, China’s allied friends now stood in the way of irreversibly consigning foreign imperialism to the past. Sexual relations were not the Sino–US alliance’s seedy underside, but the core site of its tensions.     

Flirtatious geographies: clubs as spaces for the performance of affective heterosexualities

This article addresses the (hetero)sexualized, sensuous and affective nature of straight club spaces in Singapore. By attending to the theoretical intersections between affect studies and feminist perspectives, I argue that straight clubs are sites for the performances of affective heterosexualities that may and may not end up re-inscribing asymmetrical gendered power relations. In so doing, I hope to contribute to the growing literature on affectual geographies by expounding on the numerous technologies of affect which are being deployed in order to incite, transmit and sustain (hetero)sexual desires between bodies. Flirtatious (hetero)sexual practices thus give rise to, and are a result of, the political manipulation of intensely felt affects. Furthermore, I suggest that we should not overlook how becoming (hetero)sexual ‘feels like’ because these ‘feelings’ work to crystallize (hetero)sexual spaces and subjectivities. Nonetheless, we must also be careful not to discount the salience of ‘heterosexuality’ as a representational device that serves to codify and categorize sexual desires between bodies.     

Intimate Consumption and New Sexual Subjects Among the Sambia of Papua New Guinea

This article examines the transformation of sexual meanings, attitudes, norms, and practices surrounding depletion and pollution across decades (1974–2010) among the Sambia of Papua New Guinea. In the premodern village, all sexual intercourse, whether with boy‐initiates or women, was ritualized and ultimately controlled by the men's secret society. Intimate consumption refers traditionally to a symbolic complex of beliefs, concepts, emotions, and ritual experiences involving sexuality, bodily health, social relationships, and gendered politics. But it also covers sexual anxieties corresponding to the transfer and loss of bodily fluids via the perceived depletion and pollution of self and body. For adult men, the sense of intimate consumption requires repeated substance replenishment and purification. Intimate consumption made oral and vaginal sex highly rule‐bound, taboo laden, and intensely regulated in terms of the meaning, scope, duration, and intended goals of sexual exchange. Pacification, colonization, out‐migration, Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) Christianity, and primary schooling in the Sambia Valley over a period of decades instigated social transformations that challenged and wore down this system of sexual regulation. Thus, the transition from ritual to non‐ritual practices, i.e., more individualistic sexual relationships, highlight narratives of change in the Sambia sexuality. With the demise of ritual initiation in the 1980s and 1990s, and the appearance of HIV and SikAids in the Sambia Valley, explicit ritual sexual techniques were no longer socialized. Modernity (in the sense of a set of policies, attitudes, and rules introduced through institutions such as the government community school) and SDA church sociality influenced both the pace and form of this sexual transformation. Among the greatest changes was the expansion of female agency and sexual autonomy, and personal decision‐making vis‐à‐vis especially marriage and also romance, courtship, and sex. Notably, oral sex, once universal and mandatory, largely disappeared from Sambia intimate relations. Today, spousal intimacy reveals a different set of more ‘modern’ meanings and behaviors compared to two generations ago, e.g., more mutualistic and companionate. Intimate consumption remains a worry for certain Sambia young men and women today however, influenced in part by the rise of the HIV pandemic, mobility, and the absence of normative narratives of sexuality in villages and town settlements. This creates public spaces wherein new sexual subjects have emerged in the villages and urban settlements within the Sambia Valley and in settlements throughout PNG.     

Let me count the ways: canonists and theologians contemplate coital positions

The fascinated horror that characterized treatments of sexual problems by medieval Churchmen is particularly evident in their attempts to provide guidance for Christians concerning the intimate details of marital relations. Christian moralists, canonists, and theologians from the patristic period onward commonly maintained that only one posture was appropriate and natural for human sexual intercourse. This article examines the efforts of successive generations of Christian teachers to account for this belief and to discourage variations from the prescribed coital position. The article concludes with a brief discussion of some survivals of medieval sex law in modern U.S. statutes and decisions.