Brazil is growing economically and, as one of the BRICs, claims to have created 40 million new middle-class persons during the past decade. Participation among lower-income neighbourhoods has been a part of politics in Porto Alegre since the early 1990s, and in most neighbourhoods basic needs have now been met. Middle-class identities unite people across space and different neighbourhoods, and identity politics is emerging, focused on issues of race, gender, and sexual orientation. This means that individual identities can be explored and provided for. The result is the growth of more vocal identity-based groups, while governments have a greater capacity to engage with their needs. Políticas Públicas engages with more groups than ever. Locally, more globalised cultural models and identity classifications have emerged, adapted to the cultural specificities of Rio Grande. LGBT identities are integral to this. These groups seem to be riding the wave of middle-class power, nationally. Locally, they are building on the cultural receptivity of the State as being liberal and cosmopolitan with which to engage. This is a heartland for LGBT political mobilisation and of public engagement with participatory politics. This research explores how participatory spaces are used, asking what they are; their claims; who uses them; what sort of identities are invoked in them; and what social and institutional relationships of knowledge and voice/power are at play. In answering these questions, the research utilises a range of methods including an ethnographic suite of tools to engage with a range of local groups, both within and outside of participatory settings. This establishes the world views and motives of different groups and individuals within these groups, revealing diversities among those defined as LGBT. In turn, this has enabled understanding of the minutiae of the local social worlds and through so-doing makes an original contribution to the furtherance of existing academic knowledge.

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Cuba, once understood to be a highly homophobic country, has been lauded internationally for its attention to sexual diversity rights since 2008. This Thesis examines and analyzes the development of the normalization of attitudes towards sexual diversity in revolutionary Cuba. This includes the evolution of homophobia in Cuba, the Federation of Cuban Women’s development of sexual education, the establishment of the Nation Centre for Sexual Education (CENESEX), and how these elements engage with the island’s view of health. In particular, the thesis focuses on two main questions: how did attitudes towards sexual diversity evolve in Cuba? And what does this evolutionary process tell us about the Revolution?

This thesis examines the character of queer political activism in Accra, Ghana. It asks what are the key modes of organising, types of action, and political practices that characterise queer activism in this setting. It further considers how ‘universalist’ models of LGBT rights connect (and disconnect) with local forms of queer politics and explores the lived experience of working class queer men, or sasoi. Methodologically, the study is based on thirteen months of ethnographic research. Theoretically, it draws on Foucault’s work on subjectivity, Deleuzean theorising on becoming, and Gramsci’s concept of cultural hegemony. The thesis begins by examining the subjective, linguistic, and embodied practices of saso activists. Here, it invokes Deleuze to conceptualise these as ‘becomings’, that is, as productive and emergent practices of difference. The study then looks at the politics of the LGBT rights CBO, CEPEHRG, delimiting how the political economy of development, heteronormativity, and homophobia mediate their work. Finally, the thesis sets out the political practices of saso community networks and considers how activists experience peer education programmes predicated on voluntarism. This analysis reveals a dislocation between the agendas and modes of operation of global development actors and the needs and priorities of working class sasoi.

This thesis explores the translation of post human ontologies into a relational epistemological approach, taking the case study of men who have sex with men’s (MSM’s) digital sexual practices. It reports the findings from a connective ethnography, utilising a mixture of digital observation and insider-ethnographic accounts, to explore the inter-relationship between media as MSM engage in digital sexual practices. The main aim driving this study was to explore how social practices – in this case MSM’s digital sexual practices – could be researched differently, and what a different perspective brings to the study of such practices, and to the practices themselves. Though the literature exploring MSM’s use of digital media to engage in sexual activities is diverse, to date it has been dominated by anthropocentric methodologies and analyses e.g. through a focus on human meaning making and representation. Taking the example of MSM’s digital sexual practices therefore provided a body of literature that formed a counterpoint from which to explore the knowledge produced by different methodologies. The choice of post humanism as a way of enacting this difference – specifically the conceptual frameworks of assemblages (Deleuze and Guattari 2000, 2005) and networks (Latour 2005), or what I term “network-assemblages” – was therefore strategic. It countered the anthropocentricism dominating the field of MSM’s digital sexuality research, and also afforded the materiality of these practices greater agency in the research process. The contribution of this thesis is twofold. Firstly, it adds methodologically to the social sciences through the application of a post human ontology/epistemology to empirical research. By mapping linkages between venues as they form a network-assemblage, and by examining a single venue within this as a relational web of concepts, words, and things, it demonstrates different ways through which post human relational ontologies can be actualised in the study of phenomenon. Secondly this thesis contributes original insight into MSM’s digital sexual practices themselves. Specifically however, it explores the influence of capitalism on emergent forms of digital sexual enunciations, taking the case study of MSM’s commercial sex activities. Furthermore, it highlights the different ways in which sexuality is actualised within digital materiality; as aesthetic values, as sets of systems, as flows of words and images, and finally as lived territories.

This thesis consists of an anthropological investigation of discourses and practices associated with premarital sexuality in the context of contemporary urban Turkey. Grounded in thirteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in Istanbul, this thesis draws on the experiences of local women – and to some extent, local men – threading on their concerns and experiences about virginity and premarital sex while exploring the relationship between sexual moralities and the city, controversies on the theme of abortion, the relationship between contraceptive choices and sexual moralities, the normativity of marriage and the respective construction of the marriageable subject, and the centrality of perceptions about the hymen in articulating processes of social reproduction. Through an exploration of these realms of experience, the thesis argues that an ethnographic approach to sexual moralities in the context of Turkey benefits from an historical approach to the events of the foundation of the republic. I suggest that the rhetoric of territorial loss, territorial partition and defence of actual and symbolic frontiers is a crucial part of processes of socialisation of new generations into contemporary identities, and is relived in people’s perceptions of the rupture of the hymen. Thus, the hymenocentric approach to virginity in Turkey conflates history and a politics of belonging in terms of a mereographic nexus of part/ whole, manifested in dilemmas of belonging as ‘part of’ (family, neighbourhood, city, and nation) or as ‘apart from’ (family, neighbourhood, city, and nation). This, I suggest, allows younger generations into an embodied mimetic experience of the initial dramas posed at the foundation of the republic.

Applying a queer Muslim feminists lens, this thesis interrogates ways in which a heterosexual world-view appropriates the domain of sexuality within two specific Muslim contexts. The study focuses on, is informed and enriched by the experiences of Queer Muslim women who navigate within the contextual spaces they inhabit, multiple sites which ultimately propel them to question and contest the heterosexual norms that they are expected to repeatedly perform in the name of religion. Through their questioning, they name the various challenges they experience and the strategies they employ in navigating realms of family, state and society, as well their relationship with the Divine. This study, both foregrounds and contributes to understanding Muslim queer women's subjectivity in the production of religious meaning. More succinctly, this thesis contributes to appreciating how Queer Muslim women understand their existence in the face of religious and societal criticism, and how their experiences can serve as the threshold from which to formulate ethically and theologically enriched considerations deeply rooted in the Qur'ān. By looking at two specific contexts, namely Malaysia and Lebanon, this thesis carefully uncovers multiple sites of oppression, layer by layer. The purpose is to lay bear the political personality of states, which often employ religion to coerce those it deems different and thus a threat, in this case to standards of sexual morality. In direct tension with the two nation-states in question, are alternative fringe actors who occupy contested middle spaces. It is from these crucial middles spaces i.e. spaces of potential friction and tension that subliminal spaces for dialogue and discussion then arise. Finally, remaining within an Islamic frame of reference, this thesis takes a nuanced route via Queer Theology, to argue that alternative queer sexual subcultures need not be a source of fear, or threat, or condemnation, but can quite possibly and realistically live alongside a diverse range of sexual subjectivities, ethically and conscientiously, no more, no less than anyone who defines or sees themselves as Muslim.

Contemporary Indian sexual identities are constructed out of the multiple effects of tradition, modernity, globalisation and colonialism. The nation as we understand it is constructed on the basis of a commonality which ‘binds’ its citizens, and also banishes and expels those who do not conform to this commonality. Within this logic of disenfranchisement I firmly place the Indian queer male. This thesis examines the online ‘queer’ male community in India that has been formed as a result of the intersection and ruptures caused by the shifting political, media and social landscapes of urban India. Through multi-sited ethnography looking at the role of language, class, intimacy and queer activism, this thesis explores the various ways through which queer men engage with digital culture that has become an integral part of queer lives in India. Through this approach, this thesis makes a significant contribution to knowledge. Widely available scholarship has explored the historical, literary and social debates on queer sexualities in India. To reach a more holistic understanding of contemporary Indian queer sexualities it is necessary to engage with the digital landscape, as India’s global power stems from its digital development. By looking at the multiple ways that the queer male community engages with the digital medium, I illustrate the multifaceted, complex and sometimes contradictory ways in which this community understands, accesses and performs their sexual identities within both the context of the nation and their local space. This thesis combines textual and visual analysis along with ethnographic data collected through field research in India using multiple research sites including online forums and digital spaces such as Planet Romeo, Facebook groups and Grindr as well as engaging with individuals in offline spaces (New Delhi, Kolkata, Barasat). Studying digital queer spaces across several research sites especially a cross-ethnic and cross-social comparison is unusual in this field of study and produces new insights into the subjects explored.

This thesis employs an approach of discourse analysis on male homosexuality in postwar Japan from the viewpoint of the tense relations between Japanese cultural nationalism and the globalisation/Westernisation, along with the shifts of discourses of sexuality in the United States and the UK. Through analysing the discourses of sexuality in post-war Japan, I will theoretically indicate the historical and political relationship between problems of gender and sexuality, and national problems such as national identity between Japanese and Western cultures, ideal image of the nation, and its modern development. Firstly, I argue the works of Mishima Yukio (1925-1970), who is one of the representative writers in post-war Japan, especially famous for his gaythemed works and far-right political activism including his attempt of coup d'état. Then, I explore the political dynamics of gay shame in Japan, focusing on Togo Ken (1932-2012), a pioneer of Japanese gay activism who had challenged national elections since 1971 as an openly homosexual candidate. Next, I discuss how the AIDS crisis has changed the discourses of sexuality and the sense of national and cultural borders in Japan. I then discuss the Japanese homonormativity in the 2000s, analogous to Lisa Duggan's new homonormativity in the US context. Finally, I analyse Japanese ‘LGBT' political phenomena under the transnational influence of the Obama administration's LGBT-friendly policy in the contemporary Japan, and point out problems under the influences of ‘global' LGBT activism in contemporary Japanese society.

This thesis provides a new direction to studies of “gay masculinity”, examining the impact a consumerist approach has had on the two bestselling “gay” lifestyle(s) magazines between 1991 and 2011: 'Attitude' and 'GT' (previously known as 'Gay Times'). In both magazines over the period covered, the desire for a “successful” identity as understood through neo-liberal discourse is demonstrated through textual analysis of the aspirational discourse and images (re)presented in both publications, specifically assessing the importance placed on signifiers of consumerism and celebrity role models. In selecting the most-read lifestyle(s) magazines in Britain over the period under study, I was able to understand how mainstream forms of “gay masculine” identity had increasingly been underpinned by discourse pertaining to consumerism as opposed to campaigns against perceived homophobia and inequality. In arguing that a neo-liberal binary of “success” and “failure” has become increasingly prevalent since 1991, with signifiers (re)constructing the former as aspirational, this thesis also notes that 'Attitude' and 'Gay Times' have remained uniquely directed at an explicitly “gay” audience, with emphasis being placed on homonormative forms of “success” being an easily attainable norm.