Queer Theory

Queer theory and ethnography have a productive relationship. Queer theory has questioned the stability of nonnormative sex and gender based identities particularly gay and lesbian. Emerging out of late twentieth century debates on the historicity and contextual nature of sex and gender, queer theory claims that important of power relationships in shaping normative meanings, practices and institutions around sex and gender. Ethnographic studies provide culturally particular illustrations of how nonnormative sex and gender identities are negotiated, evaluated, practiced, and transformed. Ethnographic studies on queer immigrants, uses of the internet and new media, queer activism and the role of race in sex and gender identities have enabled new cutting edge discussions that extend and complicate ideas from queer theory. More ethnographic research is needed to look into the roles of labor and class in sex and gender identities, and how new identity categories such as transgender circulate transnationally and cross-culturally.