Sex, Technology and Public Health

by Davis, Mark E

• ISBN13: 9780230525627
• ISBN10: 0230525628
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-01-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

"This book explores the connections between sexual practice, the internet, bio-technologies, and public health. Online dating and social networking websites have been linked with new possibilities for intimacy and sexual relating. Viagra and other forms of sexuopharmacy are said to be altering the experience of sexual practice and pleasure. There are public health concerns that these uses of technology are associated with the transmission of sexually transmitted infections, including HIV. At the same time, public health is exploiting such technologies for its own purposes. With reference to research concerning the implications of the internet and bio-technologies for sexually transmitted infections and HIV and the concept of sexual citizenship, this book contributes to a critical public health for the intersections of sexual practice and technology."--BOOK JACKET.

Author Biography

MARK DAVIS is Lecturer in Sociology in the Department of Sociology, Monash University, Australia. He has published articles and book chapters addressing the technological mediations of sexual life and public health.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Introduction	p. 1
The rise of the technosexuals	p. 2
Sexuality, technology and public health	p. 6
Defining public health	p. 11
Technosexual citizenship?	p. 15
Overview	p. 18
Technologies and Sexual Citizenship	p. 22
Questing avatars	p. 25
Viagra cyborgs	p. 32
Technosexual citizenship as relational ethics	p. 38
Internet-Mediated Sexual Practices	p. 48
E-dating as a sexual health risk	p. 49
Techno-determinism and cyber-perversity	p. 51
E-dating as reflexive practice	p. 58
Narcissism and other challenges	p. 66
HIV Bio-Technologies and Sexual Practice	p. 75
The advent of effective HIV treatment	p. 77
The treatment optimism narrative	p. 81
Reflexive HIV treatment	p. 85
Hyper-technologisation and sexual cultures	p. 91
Innovation and Imperative	p. 98
Gift and contagion	p. 101
Altruism	p. 108
Risk and its forensic turning	p. 112
Technological Visibilities	p. 122
Technology and visibility	p. 125
Spectacular risk, ethnographic media and forensic research	p. 128
The politics of technosexual transgressions	p. 134
The Reshaping of Public Health	p. 143
Authority and public health	p. 145
Medicalisation and de-medicalisation	p. 148
Democratic health care?	p. 153
Dialogical public health	p. 156
Conclusion	p. 163
Self-animation	p. 164
Governing through danger/cure	p. 167
The passing of 'public' health	p. 170
Bibliography	p. 173
Index	p. 189
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