A01=Roger N. Lancaster
Author_Roger N. Lancaster
biological explanations
Category=JBCC1
Category=JBSF
Category=JHMC
Category=JMU
Category=PSAJ
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_science
eq_society-politics
expose
gay and lesbian
gender and sexuality
gender norms
gender roles
heterosexual fables
history of sexuality
human nature
journalists
lgbtq
men and women
nature
nonfiction
popular culture
primetime sitcoms
science
scientific studies
scientific theories
scientists
sex
sexual desire
sexual normalization
sexual orientation
sexual politics
sexual relationships
social history
social relations
social sciences
textbooks
Product details
- ISBN 9780520236202
- Weight: 590g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 01 May 2003
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Roger N. Lancaster provides the definitive rebuttal of evolutionary just-so stories about men, women, and the nature of desire in this spirited expose of the heterosexual fables that pervade popular culture, from prime-time sitcoms to scientific theories about the so-called gay gene. Lancaster links the recent resurgence of biological explanations for gender norms, sexual desires, and human nature in general with the current pitched battles over sexual politics. Ideas about a 'hardwired' and immutable human nature are circulating at a pivotal moment in human history, he argues, one in which dramatic changes in gender roles and an unprecedented normalization of lesbian and gay relationships are challenging received notions and commonly held convictions on every front. "The Trouble with Nature" takes on major media sources - the "New York Times", "Newsweek" - and widely ballyhooed scientific studies and ideas to show how journalists, scientists, and others invoke the rhetoric of science to support political positions in the absence of any real evidence.
Lancaster also provides a novel and dramatic analysis of the social, historical, and political backdrop for changing discourses on 'nature', including an incisive critique of the failures of queer theory to understand the social conflicts of the moment. By showing how reductivist explanations for sexual orientation lean on essentialist ideas about gender, Lancaster invites us to think more deeply and creatively about human acts and social relations.
Roger N. Lancaster teaches anthropology and cultural studies at George Mason University, where he directs the Cultural Studies Ph.D. program. He edited (with Micaela di Leonardo) The Gender/Sexuality Reader (1997) and is the author of Life Is Hard: Machismo, Danger, and the Intimacy of Power in Nicaragua (California, 1993), which won the C. Wright Mills Award and the Ruth Benedict Prize.
