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Families We Choose : Lesbians, Gays, Kinship.

By: Material type: TextTextSeries: Between Men~Between Women: Lesbian and Gay StudiesPublisher: New York : Columbia University Press, 1997Copyright date: ©2005Edition: 2nd edDescription: 1 online resource (287 pages)Content type:
  • text
Media type:
  • computer
Carrier type:
  • online resource
ISBN:
  • 9780585380902
Subject(s): Genre/Form: Additional physical formats: Print version:: Families We Choose : Lesbians, Gays, KinshipDDC classification:
  • 306.87
LOC classification:
  • HQ76.3.U5 W48
Online resources:
Contents:
Intro -- Contents -- Preface to the PB Edition -- Acknowledgments -- One -- Two -- Is "Straight" to "Gay" as "Family" is to "No Family"? -- Deck the Halls -- Kinship and Procreation -- From Biology to Choice -- Three -- Disclosing Sexual Identity -- Categorical Understandings (or, It's All Relative) -- Family - Which Family? -- Conditional Love -- Discursive Locations -- Taking Identity, Talking Kinship -- Selection and Rejection -- Four -- Five -- Building Gay Families -- Substitute for Biological Family? -- Friends and Lovers -- From Friendship to Community -- Deliberating Difference -- Six -- The Looking-Glass Other -- Power "Differentials," Relationship "Roles" -- Untitled -- Narcissism, Kinship, and Class Convictions -- Couples Versus Community -- Reflections on Metaphor -- Seven -- The Lesbian Mother as Icon -- Male-Female Revisited, Insemination and AIDS -- Of Death and Birth -- Blood Relatives Respond -- Parents and Persons -- Eight -- Assimilation or Transformation -- Common Ground -- The Big Picture -- Reengineering Biogenetics -- Appendix -- Notes -- References -- Index.
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Holdings
Item type Current library Call number Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Ebrary Online Books Ebrary Online Books Colombo Available CBEBK600012
Ebrary Online Books Ebrary Online Books Jaffna Available JFEBK600012
Ebrary Online Books Ebrary Online Books Kandy Available KDEBK600012
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This classic text, originally published in 1991 and now revised and updated to include a new preface, draws upon fieldwork and interviews to explore the ways gay men and lesbians are constructing their own notions of kinship by drawing on the symbolism of love, friendship, and biology.

Intro -- Contents -- Preface to the PB Edition -- Acknowledgments -- One -- Two -- Is "Straight" to "Gay" as "Family" is to "No Family"? -- Deck the Halls -- Kinship and Procreation -- From Biology to Choice -- Three -- Disclosing Sexual Identity -- Categorical Understandings (or, It's All Relative) -- Family - Which Family? -- Conditional Love -- Discursive Locations -- Taking Identity, Talking Kinship -- Selection and Rejection -- Four -- Five -- Building Gay Families -- Substitute for Biological Family? -- Friends and Lovers -- From Friendship to Community -- Deliberating Difference -- Six -- The Looking-Glass Other -- Power "Differentials," Relationship "Roles" -- Untitled -- Narcissism, Kinship, and Class Convictions -- Couples Versus Community -- Reflections on Metaphor -- Seven -- The Lesbian Mother as Icon -- Male-Female Revisited, Insemination and AIDS -- Of Death and Birth -- Blood Relatives Respond -- Parents and Persons -- Eight -- Assimilation or Transformation -- Common Ground -- The Big Picture -- Reengineering Biogenetics -- Appendix -- Notes -- References -- Index.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2018. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

  • Between Men

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Part of the new series entitled ``Between Men-Between Women: Lesbian and Gay Studies,'' this book demands--and deserves--thorough and careful reading. With weighty prose, Weston, an anthropology professor, writes that gays and lesbians, long seen as exiles from kinship ties, are choosing to create their own families. Arguing that these ``chosen'' families cannot be understood apart from the ``straight'' families in which gays and lesbians grew up, she draws on interviews to describe gays' relationships with their straight families. Weston places her interpretation in perspective with historical and legal background information and extended quotations from interviewees. She avoids the cold statistics characteristic of similar studies, so her book may appeal to lay readers no longer satisfied with pop-psych sentimentality. A well-documented work for gay studies collections.--Eric Bryant, ``Library Journal'' (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

CHOICE Review

A significant contribution to theories of cultural evolution. Weston, a lesbian anthropologist, did participant-observer fieldwork among gay people in San Francisco in the mid-1980s, with additional in-depth interviews of 80 of the gays. She concludes that among the people she studied the concept of "family" has evolved from its previous restricted reference exclusively to a heterosexual couple and their biological offspring (along with grandparents, aunts and uncles, etc.), to a more generic reference to any collection of people (including the previous kinds of family) who are committed to each other in a mixture of social, emotional, and financial ways. Weston makes insightful analyses of the historical context out of which the present gay social networks and concepts evolved, and relates these analyses to the broader field of cultural evolution and the social construction of reality. A useful resource for classes on theory and social movements, freshman through graduate level.-R. W. Smith, California State University, Northridge

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