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This paper is located within work in urban studies about the significance of contact with difference as a means for reducing prejudice and achieving social change. Recent approaches, influenced by theories of affect, have emphasised non-conscious everyday negotiations of difference in the city. In this paper it is argued that such approaches lose sight of the significance of the subject: of the reflective judgements of ‘others’ made by individuals; of our ability to make decisions around the control of our feelings and identifications; and of the significance of personal pasts and collective histories in shaping the ways we perceive and react to encounters. Rather, this paper uses a biographical approach focusing on interviewees’ narratives of encounter. Through its attention to processes of mobility and emplacement, it contributes to debates about when contact with difference matters by highlighting the importance of everyday social normativities in the production of moral dispositions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The transmission and contestation of putative transcendent moral values has been relatively under-represented in geographers' thinking about globalisation and transnationalism. This paper does so through an analysis of how a new moral geography is being produced by debates over homosexuality in one transnational religious network: the Anglican Communion, a major international Christian denomination that has been significantly divided in recent years over the issue. The paper begins by outlining the beliefs articulated by Anglicans who claim an 'orthodox' position on homosexuality, the threat that 'orthodox' Anglicans perceive from the international dissemination of progressive values about lesbian and gay equality and the transnational dynamics of the debate. The second half of the paper reflects on the impact of these transnational debates on the local lived experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Christians drawing on empirical research in England, the USA, South Africa and Uganda. The paper concludes by arguing that understanding why and how particular moral certainties are promoted as transcendent causes matters because challenging such processes are crucial in the struggle over the shape and meaning of social relations in the twenty-first century. In doing so, the intention is to reinvigorate the field of moral geographies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the drafting of Uganda's anti-homosexuality bill in 2009, considerable attention has been paid both in Uganda and across the African continent to the political and social significance of homosexual behaviour and identity. However, current debates have not adequately explained how and why anti-homosexual rhetoric has been able to gain such popular purchase within Uganda. In order to move beyond reductive representations of an innate African homophobia, we argue that it is necessary to recognise the deep imbrication of sexuality, family life, procreation and material exchange in Uganda, as well as the ways in which elite actors (including government officials, the media and religious leaders) are able to manipulate social anxieties to further particular ends. We employ a discourse analysis of reporting in the state-owned newspaper New Vision, first considering how the issue of homosexuality has been represented in relation to wider discourses regarding threats to public morality and national sovereignty. Then, through fieldwork undertaken in Uganda in 2009, we explore three key themes that offer deeper insights into the seeming resonance of this popular rhetoric about homosexuality: constructions of the family, the nature of societal morality, and understandings about reciprocity and material exchange in contemporary Ugandan society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]