Lesbian/Gay Studies in the House of Anthropology

Abstract

As the Roaring Twenties drew to a close, Goldenweiser completed one of the few reviews then written of the sparse anthropological literature on sexuality. Homosexuality appeared midway through his account, in the guise of yet another sub rosa aspect of sex (64:61). Sub rosa means literally, under the rose; secret, clandestine, in a way that discourages disclosure. Throughout the first half of the century, most allusions by anthropologists to homosexual behavior remained as veiled in ambiguity and as couched in judgment as were references to homosexuality in the dominant discourse of the surrounding society. Not until the late 1960s did the anthropological texts destined to become classics in lesbian/gay studies begin to be published. The same sociohistorical conditions that facilitated the development of a gay movement in the United States, combined with the efforts of a hardy few who risked not only censure but their careers, allowed homosexuality to move to the center of scholarly attention. Though the field of lesbian/gay studies in anthropology has been slower to develop than its counterparts in literary studies or history, by the 1990s ethnographic analyses of homosexual behavior and identity, gender bending, lesbian and gay male communities, transgressive sexual practices, and homosociality were flourishing. For a field that has been constituted through a set of stigmatized categories derived from Anglo-European societies, achieving legitimacy assumes an

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