A01=Japonica Brown-Saracino
Author_Japonica Brown-Saracino
bisexual
california
Category=JBSD
Category=JBSJ
cities
community
cruising
dating
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
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eq_society-politics
feminism
geography
greenfield
history
homosexuality
identity
integration
ithaca
lesbian
lgbt
lgbtq
lgbtqia
longtimers
maine
massachusetts
migration
new york
nonfiction
place
politics
portland
pride
queer
san luis obispo
sexuality
social change
sociology
urban
Product details
- ISBN 9780226361116
- Weight: 539g
- Dimensions: 16 x 23mm
- Publication Date: 13 Dec 2017
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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We like to think of ourselves as possessing an essential self, a core identity that is who we really are, regardless of where we live, work, or play. But places actually make us much more than we might think, argues Japonica Brown-Saracino in this novel ethnographic study of lesbian, bisexual, and queer individuals in four small cities across the United States. Taking us into communities in Ithaca, New York; San Luis Obispo, California; Greenfield, Massachusetts; and Portland, Maine; Brown-Saracino shows how LBQ migrants craft a unique sense of self that corresponds to their new homes. How Places Make Us demonstrates that sexual identities are responsive to city ecology. Despite the fact that the LBQ residents share many demographic and cultural traits, their approaches to sexual identity politics and to ties with other LBQ individuals and heterosexual residents vary markedly by where they live. Subtly distinct local ecologies shape what it feels like to be a sexual minority, including the degree to which one feels accepted, how many other LBQ individuals one encounters in daily life, and how often a city declares its embrace of difference.
In short, city ecology shapes how one "does" LBQ in a specific place. Ultimately, Brown-Saracino shows that there isn't one general way of approaching sexual identity because humans are not only social, but fundamentally local creatures. Even in a globalized world, the most personal of questions who am I? is in fact answered collectively by the city in which we live.
Japonica Brown-Saracino is associate professor of sociology at Boston University. She is the author of A Neighborhood That Never Changes, also published by the University of Chicago Press, and editor of the Gentrification Debates.
