The Construction of Homosexuality

Front Cover
University of Chicago Press, 1990 M08 15 - 635 pages
"At various times, homosexuality has been considered the noblest of loves, a horrible sin, a psychological condition or grounds for torture and execution. David F. Greenberg's careful, encyclopedic and important new book argues that homosexuality is only deviant because society has constructed, or defined, it as deviant. The book takes us over vast terrains of example and detail in the history of homosexuality."—Nicholas B. Dirks, New York Times Book Review
 

Contents

1 Theorizing the Prohibition against Homosexuality
1
Before Homosexuality
23
Homosexual Relations in KinshipStructured Societies
25
Inequality and the State Homosexual Innovations in Archaic Civilizations
89
Early Civilizations Variations on Homosexual Themes
124
Sexual Asceticism in the Ancient World
184
Feudalism
242
The Construction of Modern Homosexuality
299
The Rise of Market Economies
347
The Medicalization of Homosexuality
397
Bureaucracy and Homosexuality
434
Gay Liberation
455
Under the Sign of Sociology
482
References
501
Index
615
Copyright

Repression and the Emergence of Subcultures
301

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