From Moral Ambivalence to Differential Congruence: Transnational Pathways to the Global Queer in India

• In Event: 380 - Section on Sociology of Sexualities Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 06. Identities

Abstract

We build upon the extant scholarship on sexuality in India. Through in-depth interviews of self-identified gay men, lesbians, and queer individuals in India, we explicate three transnational pathways—namely, diasporic experiences, transnational workplaces, and global mass-media— through which they appropriate western notions of sexuality. Consistent with Sewell’s institutional perspectives (1992), we find that these pathways make the schema of “moral ambivalence” toward homosexuality in India intersect the schema of “sexual exuberance” in the North, especially in the U.S. and Europe. As result of these interactions, the English- speaking, metropolitan-dwelling, and western-influenced lesbian and gay people in India—whom we call as the “global queer”-- deploy their sexuality through the schema of “differential congruence” whereby their psychological self of internalized gay identity integrates with their social selves in their family, coworkers, and close friends differently in each setting. In consistence with scholars that studied sexuality elsewhere in the global South (e.g. Boellstorff 2005; Johnson 1997), we argue that sexuality in India, too, cannot be understood through the static notions of indigenous cultures and that the globalization of cultures play influential role in constructing sexuality.

Author

• Apoorva Ghosh, University of California-Irvine