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Anthropology, the first of the social science disciplines to take
sexuality--and particularly homosexuality--seriously as a field of
intellectual inquiry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
has achieved a new impetus in the post-Stonewall era. |
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Margaret Mead
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Pre-Independence Sub-Saharan African Cultures exhibited varying
levels of tolerance and differences in the expression of male and
female same-sex eroticism. |
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Ruth
Benedict (1887-1948) rose to the top of her profession, though
she was among the first American women to study anthropology. |
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Berdaches
or, more correctly, two-spirit persons, are male and female
Native Americans characterized by gender variation sanctioned
by supernatural dreams and visions. |
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Cultural Identities are the focus of a growing body of
scholarly and other work that challenges the "naturalness," and even
the political necessity, of a unitary gay and lesbian identity. |
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Ethnographic
Literature,
the description of indigenous non-European peoples by Euro-Americans,
has been a safe way for writers to discuss homosexuality as a normal,
non-pathological behavior. |
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The
Indonesian Archipelago is home to a great range of
non-normative sexualities and genders, but "gay" and "lesbi" are
Western terms that have been transformed by Indonesians. |
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Professional Ethnographers began conducting research on glbtq
issues beginning in the 1960s. Most are spurred by the premise that
studies of diverse sexualities are crucial in understanding human
behavior and culture. |
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The Hijras--men
who dress and act like women--have been a presence in India for
generations, maintaining a third-gender role that has become
institutionalized through tradition. |
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Laud
Humphreys (1930-1988), a sociologist and gay activist, used
ethnographic methods, the traditional tools of anthropology, in his
controversial study, Tearoom Trade
(1970). |
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"Indigenous Culture" is a term that has been important in the
history of anthropology's analysis of same-sex relations, though
anthropologists now reject the concept. |
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Margaret
Mead (1901-1978) was one of the most prominent and widely
admired American anthropologists of her generation. Though she was
bisexual, she chose to keep her sexuality a secret. |
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Mediterranean Homosexuality has been oversimplified by literary
and historical explorations undertaken primarily by northern Europeans.
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Edward Westermarck (1862-1939), a Finnish sociologist,
anthropologist, and moral philosopher, wrote a number of classic books
on sexuality and sexual mores. |
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Related Special
Features |
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India
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Photo
Credits:
The photograph of Margaret Mead courtesy Library of Congress
Prints and Photographs Division. |
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