Ambiguous pleasures : sexuality and middle class self-perceptions in Nairobi / Rachel Spronk.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Spronk, Rachel.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Yuppies--Sexual behavior--Kenya--Nairobi.

Yuppies.

Sexology--Kenya--Nairobi.

Sexology.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (322 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New York : Berghahn Books, 2012.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Among both male and female young urban professionals in Nairobi, sexuality is a key to achieving a 'modern' identity. These young men and women see themselves as the avant garde of a new Africa, while they also express the recurring worry of how to combine an 'African' identity with the new lifestyles with which they are experimenting. By focusing on public debates and their preoccupations with issues of African heritage, gerontocratic power relations and conventional morality on the one hand, and personal sexual relationships, intimacy and self-perceptions on the other, this study works out t

Contents:

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Hip and ambitious in Nairobi

Conceiving sexuality

Interfaces of pleasure and anxiety

Structure of the book

The study of sexuality

Sexuality research in Kenya

Health approaches to sexuality

Sexuality research in the context of AIDS in Africa

The dynamics of sexuality: the focus of this study

Anthropology and sexuality

The social construction of sexuality, and its limits

Sex as embodied experience

Historicising sexuality

Methodological aspects of sexuality research

Researching sex and sexuality: research places and practices

Researching sex and sexuality: collection and validity of data

An unmarried with partner, non-Kenyan, white female young professional

Young professionals: emblems of social transformation

Sexuality and societal transformations

Gender and sexuality in colonial times

Gender and sexuality in postcolonial times

Social transformation and moral anxiety

The young and ambitious in Nairobi

Classifying young professionals

Hesitations about ethnicity and issues of belonging

Living independently and single

Nightlife and dating

Young urban professionals and the formation of a contemporary identity

Explorers of a modern identity

Young professionals' position towards customary ways of living

'Westernization'

Africanness

Conclusion

Society in flames: sexuality in the context of AIDS

AIDS as a context of life

Africanist perspectives on AIDS and sexuality

Policies of the government and nongovernmental organizations

The definition of 'risk groups'

The medicalization of sexuality

Christian perceptions of AIDS and sexuality

The remoralization of sexuality

Sexuality and contemporary lifestyles

AIDS as the disease of 'immorality'

The public emergence of the intimate

Intimacy as part of lifestyle

Ambiguous pleasures: sexual desire, career, and femininity

Female sexuality in Nairobi, Kenya and beyond

Pamela, Martha, Njeri, Tayiani and Dorcas

The importance of dating

'Playing hard to get'

To give and to receive sexual pleasure

Chastity and the realization of sexual pleasure

Boundaries of sexual pleasure

Between sexual allure and limited availability

Appropriating sexual pleasure

Sexual pleasure and conventional expectations

Communicating ambiguity

Embodying transformations

Ambiguous pleasures: sex, riches and masculinity

Male sexuality in Nairobi society, Kenya and beyond

Alex, Eric, Tom, Maurice and Ongeri

Men's sexual debut

Circumcision as constitutive to masculinity

Sex as a skill-being a 'good lover'

Love in relation to sexual drive

Sex and having 'arrived'

Moving between sexual prowess and restrained potency

Sexual desire as a physical craving

Balancing too much and too little sex

The waning dominant patriarchal ideology

Accommodating change

Sign of the times: media and the therapeutic ethos of romantic love

Romantic love and the twin spheres of consumption and mass media

Representing romantic love: films, television and advertisements

Television

Advertising

The privileging of the image

The manifestations of romantic love: music

Practicing romantic love: dating

Practices of mediation: magazines

The therapeutic discourse on relationships

Sign of the times: imaginations and practices of romantic love versus 'Westernization', or the perils of modernity

Conclusion: sexuality and its ambiguous pleasures

Researching sexuality in Africa

The pleasures and anxieties of sexuality

Middle-class lifestyles and self-perceptions

Sex and sophistication - self and embodiment.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786613717405

9781280876097

1280876093

9780857454799

085745479X

OCLC:

811501627