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Copyright of Cuadernos de Historia Contemporanea is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Drawing on evocative autoethnographic accounts of cruising for sex in public, this article examines the cruising subculture within gay culture as a voluntary risk-taking leisure activity and thereby a form of edgework. Moreover, this article seeks to push the theoretical conceptualization of edgework beyond the gendered interpretations associated with the theory by using queer theory to re-examine the order/chaos binary along the heterosexual/homosexual edge of sexual identity. By queering edgework, cruising becomes a voluntary risk-taking leisure activity that both shatters and reifies sexual identity along this heterosexual/homosexual edge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the article, the author discusses the use of community-based participatory action research (CBPAR) in the study of human sexuality, particularly paraphilias. Also cited are the principles used in health-based research, the various factors affecting community health, and an analysis of sexual practices by focusing on campus cruising.

This article explores the shape of queer sexual habits and gendered forms of desire along the Jerusalem light rail, a route whose role in normalizing Israeli occupation and colonialism has been hotly contested during its construction and since its opening in 2011. Analyzing how this infrastructure can invite both colonial and sexual relations, which slip and slide into one another, the author argues that the train provides a shared setting to cruise for both security dangers and enticing strangers. The light rail--the national and security interests that went into producing it, the eventual material shape it took, and how it altered the colonial landscape--has entwined forms of surveillance, suspicion, and sexuality, deeply affecting how individuals gauge, judge, sense, watch, and seduce one another. Ideology, in other words, haunts pleasure as it lurks within and through built environments, the exact environments wherein sex rouses and arouses the senses. Danger and desire become kindred. Offering an ethics of cruising, the essay unravels how sexual, colonial, and racialized sensibilities take shape in tandem, sometimes through a single look or glance, to argue for abandoning the idea that cruising is always an idealized pursuit of pleasure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I challenge a focus in digital anthropology on the integration of media into everyday life. Korean queer men's experience on geosocial applications suggests that integration is not a neutral methodology but is rather a locally negotiated concern, a management of the connection between spaces. I use the example of the sauna to illustrate that the urban structure of Seoul is frequently orientated around semipublic rooms or bang that are imagined as insulated from the rest of society. The rise of geosocial cruising applications, with their tendency to connect and unite arenas that should be kept apart, have resulted in anxiety over the exposure of men to an uncontrollable totality of social relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the book "The Sexual Outlaw: A Non-Fiction Account, with Commentaries, of Three Days and Nights in the Sexual Underground," by John Rechy. Particular focus is given to how Rechy's work relates to documentary form and LGBT politics. Additional topics discussed include his 1963 novel "City of Night," the notion of cruising and the history of gay men in the U.S.

This essay looks to cruising (i.e., searching for and engaging in sex in public and quasi- public spaces) in order to reexamine our understanding of sartorial extravagance, masculinity, urbanism, and sexuality in the early modern period. Attending to aspects of Ben Jonson's Every Man Out of His Humour (1599) that seem at odds with the play's satiric aims, this essay queries critical assumptions that the play and early modern culture speak univocally and unequivocally in condemnation of extravagant male dress. In Jonson's representations of extravagantly dressed men finding pleasures in urban spaces otherwise hostile to their practices, there are traces of utopian fantasies about and longings for queer public sexual culture. The historicism this essay proposes is "cruisy" not only because it offers a reading of representations of cruising, but also because it derives its methodology from those representations. The essay demonstrates that by thinking through the relationship of cruising to historicity, spatiality, and textuality, queer readers of early modern culture can forge forms of historicist engagement with literary texts that also speak to twentieth and twenty-first century issues involving the politics of sexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Encounters between strangers, as different users of public spaces, are one of the core subjects for discussion in relation to orders in the public space. The empirical material presented in this article illustrates power relations in public spaces of Sweden, which gives a specific national and nationalist framing. This article is based on interviews with 19 Muslim women, all of whom wear the hijab. The aim of this article was to illuminate the neglected violence Muslim women are exposed to and to investigate violent public encounters from the point of view of female Muslim citizens. This recounting of encounters strives to understand the ‘lived experiences of pain’ [Ahmed, S. (2001). The organisation of hate. Law and Critique, 12, 360] and what hate isdoingin terms of the effects of hate crimes. First, the concept of affect and economy of hate is elaborated on, after which the meaning of violence is developed in relation to place and space. By showing how frequent such gendered and Islamophobic violence is, in its different forms, while at the same time being largely an overlooked form of violence, the empirical material implicates that such acts of everyday violence work to establish and maintain a hegemonic social, spatial and political order. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The National HIV/AIDS Strategy emphasizes the importance of bringing prevention to the most at risk populations. Interventions targeting all men who have sex with men (MSM) fail in that respect because only a minority engages in behavior that is likely to lead to HIV infection. Previous studies have shown that MSM who seek male sexual partners in more than one venue type (e.g., bathhouse, cruising area, online) are most likely to engage in unprotected anal intercourse (UAI), compared to men who only meet partners in any one of these setting types or who do not use venues. The present study reports differences in prevalence of UAI among MSM by their use of venue sites to meet sexual partners. A probability sample of 459 bathhouse patrons completed exit surveys. In the 3 months before the current bathhouse visit, 63.5 % visited a bathhouse (not including the visit at which they were recruited), 46.7 % visited a cruising area, 46.5 % used online cruise sites to find sex partners, and 30.9 % reported UAI. While UAI was associated with online cruise site use, prevalence of UAI with men met online was relatively low. The odds of UAI among men who used all three venues were significantly higher compared to men using zero [odds ratio (OR) = 4.4; 95 % confidence interval (CI) 1.6, 12.1)] one (OR = 5.3; 95 % CI 2.2, 12.8) or two venues (OR = 4.3; 95 % CI 1.9, 9.6). The findings suggest that prevention would benefit from screening for venue use to help identify men with the greatest behavioral risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented which reviews the books "Home to Harlem" and "Banjo" by author Claude McKay. Topics discussed include the author's view on the theme and writing style employed by author Claude McKay in writing the two books, the author's comprehensive analysis on the characters and situations presented in the two books, and the author's view on the concept of "cruising".

Highlights: [•] Gay men’s cruising in public space has its emancipatory potentials. [•] But hetero- and homosexuality are not mutually opposed ontologically, but co-constitutive. [•] Homosexuality identity arising from cruising may be constituted by heteronormativity. [•] A trope of abnormality is analysed to snapshoot the working of heteronormativity. [•] The tope of abnormality is embedded in the construction of closeted sexual identities. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

'Cruising' is popularly known among LGBT subjects as actions targeted towards sexual purposes, ranging from flirtation to sexual acts themselves. In this paper we observe that there are some codes of behavior related to 'cruising', and that it draws up a specific geography that organizes specific places, ways and urban circuits. The 'cruising', beyond a simple enjoyment and an exercise of desire, is linked to the transgression of a set of institutions and heteronormative materialities. Such actions are spatial experience singularities as well as they organize unique spatialities. They exist in different urban contexts, and, in this paper, we analyze some case studies gathered in the cities of Presidente Prudente (SP) and Vitória da Conquista (BA), Brazil. We seek to develop here a phenomenical study on 'cruising', whose data refer to the researcher's experience in the actions and contexts highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the public park as a garden of justice: at once a concrete, geographical place and a more intangible space constituted by struggles between different spatial definitions. The case of the article is Ørstedsparken, a public park in the centre of Copenhagen which is a wellknown homosexual cruising site. In recent years, the municipality has cut down vegetation in the park in order to regulate and/or prevent cruising. The article proposes that this targeting of homosexual cruising in the park may be a surrogate way to impose heteronormativity upon those who fall outside of this norm. It is further suggested that exposing the men who retreat to public parks to have sex may be a way to reduce the insecurity which, according to the writings on spatial justice by Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, comes with the transient nature of space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For many men in modern Western societies it is not uncommon to have anonymous same-sex acts in cruising places with a varying frequency depending on their biographical history. Specific identities of men cruising for same-sex acts (cruisers) in a park located in a northern Italian city were investigated. In this study, 57 men were interviewed by three different methods (as individuals, in couples, and one focus group of friends). A pragmatic approach was followed throughout the analysis of the data, drawing from a number of analytic strategies, including constant-comparative, typographic, and narrative methods. Queer theory and queer historiography were also blended into the examinations of the men's lives. Cruisers’ identities consisted of three elements: senses, or what individuals felt or perceived about themselves and their contexts; experiences, or what and how they behaved or acted; and sensibilities, or the meanings ascribed to selves and their lives concerning their senses and experiences, in juxtaposition to what they perceived as the normative values of the contexts of which they were a part. Six identity types among cruisers were delineated, providing evidence of different ways nonheterosexual men identify in cruising places. If researchers understand these nuances of cruisers’ identities, it can help to prevent extrapolations from only the visible elements or actions of this population. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In recent years, the local authorities in London's historic Bloomsbury district have carried out a number of refurbishments of the area's public squares. These landscaping schemes have typically been labelled 'historical restorations' in attempts to predetermine the evaluation criteria as 'historic' rather than political, social and aesthetic. Focusing on Russell Square and Bloomsbury Square, this paper illustrates how the 'restorations' were selective: the introduction of gates and railings and the removal of planting were not primarily designed to restore these historical gardens, but reflect a surveillance-friendly ideal of urban space, specifically introduced to displace the men who used these squares for cruising. Through a detailed review of archival material from both mainstream and gay media, I illustrate the shifting forms of policing and landscaping in Bloomsbury's squares, while also highlighting how homonormative capital has colluded with the regulation of public space in this part of London. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on two research projects to explore how spaces of public male sex work come into being through commercial and public sexual practices. Utilizing a blended methodology of ethnography, participant observation, interview materials, map making and photography, the article explores an area known for commercial and non-commercial sexual encounters between men in a city in the UK. It makes conceptual arguments about the material and discursive significance of walking in the making, and continued existence of ‘red light district’ spaces. Specifically, we will look at how men engaged in sex work (those described to be ‘doing business’) and other men seeking non-commercial sexual liaisons recognize the potential for sexual encounters in the space through environmental and embodied signifiers. We also discuss how patterns of walking and waiting mediated by this reading of the environment contribute to the emergence and persistence of a ‘beat’ space. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Previous researchers discussing cybersexuality have been fascinated with the body-less-ness of cybersex. They have focused on the textual productions and (re)formations of the self that are allowed in this space independent of the body. Thus, the cyber becomes the space of transformation and fluidity of the self while the 'real' becomes the site of the material, concrete and unchanging body. I posit that dichotomous thinking about the cyber and the real and the text and the body produces an errant concept of the body. Cybersex is rarely a disembodied experience. Text-making cannot create itself free from the constraints of linguistic communities of practice in the 'real' world. I challenge the notion that cybersexuality is a sexuality without the body and that the body in the 'real' world is stable. I focus specifically on how gay men describe the experience of the anus and anal sex as a means to better understand how the body becomes a site for linguistic marking and reference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Yotam Reuveny's novel "Night Diary" was one of the first texts in Hebrew literature that engaged with the issue of HIV/AIDS. This groundbreaking text defied basic social concepts and cultural conventions of the time and opened the door to much more complex public discourse about homosexuality and gay identity in a context in which homosexuality was still illegal in Israel. Although generally overlooked, "Night Diary" is a sophisticated and ingenious text, which employs allusions and other literary techniques in order to offer comfort and solace to oppressed people. The novel stages gay cruising as an empowering act in a time of HIV/AIDS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past few years, researchers have begun to explore the use of the personals section on Craigslist.org as it applies to the sexual behaviors and partner accrual of men who have sex with men (MSM). Yet, the exact ramifications of such a free sexual advertisement service on MSM's sexual health and sexual risk-taking behaviors are just being documented. As such, we surveyed 535 men by responding to their sexual ads placed on Craigslist.org to assess their sexual health and sexual health behaviors. Using Self-Efficacy Theory as our foundation, we posited that MSM who placed more ads and reported more success from these ads would also report more negative health behaviors (e.g., lowered condom use) and sexually transmitted diseases. Testing confirmed this hypothesis. This study has two important implications. (1) The behavior of Internet cruising, on its own, insufficiently impacted MSM health. It was the interaction of number of ads (self-efficacy) and the success of those ads (outcome-efficacy) that ultimately contributed to negative health behaviors. (2) MSM may have had different intentions for cruising. The anti-theoretical tendency for some men to continually place high numbers of ads while also reporting very low success suggested that the outcome of merely placing the ads might be sufficiently erotic for some men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors explore the political and social changes in sex work in Germany from the 1950s to the present. The article uses a theoretical framework in which sociological reconstructions of events are analyzed as interactional webs conditioned by shifting relations of dominance and agency. The interpretation of events focuses on how public policy that moved prostitution from public space had implications not only for public space, but also contained gender and class-specific components. Prostitutes who were initially 'unpleasantly' conspicuous in the streets of the city increasingly disappeared from the eyes of the public. This disappearance was the result of purposive and far-reaching spatial policy. In the context of 'traditional localization' on the one hand and increasing public policy pressure on the other, prostitution concentrated more and more in a few, narrowly limited urban areas. This new spatial situation brought about shifts in power between the various groups involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to demonstrate the significant role children play in new suburban communities, and in particular, the extent to which their circuits of sociability contribute to social cohesion in the suburbs. The discussion is located within the field of sociology of childhood, which argues that children are active agents who help to create and sustain social bonds within their neighborhoods. Drawing on focus group discussions and short essays by children on “The place where I live,” we paint a picture of how suburban life is interpreted and experienced from a child's perspective. We argue that children develop a particular suburban sensibility that structures their view of their estate, the wider neighborhood, and the metropolitan core. Although children express considerable degrees of satisfaction with suburban life, they are critical of the forces that increasingly limit their access to suburban public space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a new approach to the geographies of cruising and public homosex. For some time, social scientists have contended that, in those semi-public spaces where men meet each other for sex, actions speak louder than words and men's competency in using the space is more important that the (sexual) identities they claim in other aspects of their lives. This paper extends that argument in a new direction through an engagement with recent theorizations of affective geographies and more-than-representational approaches to spatial practices. Through a series of short vignettes of cruising encounters on city streets, in public toilets and in urban green spaces, this paper examines how public homosex is enacted and performed in relation to both human and non-human bodies, objects and the environment in which it takes place. The encounters described in the paper draw attention to the complex choreography of gestures through which cruising is performed and sexual engagement is negotiated ethically. I contend that the site-specific, performative nature of these sexual encounters suggests a more contingent sexuality arising from the interaction of bodies in specific environments and exceeding the boundaries of reified sexual identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revue d'Etudes en Agriculture et Environnement is the property of Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Public places have been transformed through the ubiquity of mobile phones, global positioning systems and wireless networks. This article examines the design considerations for a locative media site at an Australian urban university. It focuses on the contributions such a site may make to the urbanscape and perceptions of place. It explores how locative media can become a tactic of resistance and performance in postmodern urban public spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the link between venues for meeting sex partners and sexual risk behavior is critical to developing and placing effective sexual health education and HIV prevention services. Non-monogamous gay and bisexual men ( n = 886) were surveyed in New York and Los Angeles about the venues that they met recent sex partners: bathhouses, private sex parties, gay bars/clubs, the gym, via public cruising, and the Internet. Bars/clubs, bathhouses, and the Internet were the most endorsed venues for meeting partners. Men having met a majority of their partners (i.e., “preference”) via these three venues were compared/contrasted. Those having preference for bars/clubs were dissimilar from men with preference for bathhouses or the Internet on multiple levels (e.g. age, number of sex partners, temptation for unsafe sex). However, these men were proportionally similar in whether they had engaged in a recent episode of unprotected anal intercourse (UAI). Logistic regressions predicting UAI suggested venues might not play a role in differentiating men who had preference for bars/clubs, bathhouses or the Internet. Additional regression analyses utilizing all six venues to predict UAI suggested other person-factors such as identity as a barebacker and temptation for unsafe sex better explain UAI. This research suggests HIV prevention and educational campaigns targeted within venues need also address socio-psychological person-factors in addition to environmental/venue contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on interview data of gay men who have had their behavior in public spaces scrutinised by agents of the law for signs deviance, this article explores the historical characteristics of police animosity towards such conduct in Australia. This entails examining encounters between police and gay men who pursue desire in 'beat' (or 'cottage' to the use the UK term) spaces. Exploring why these outlaw gay male subjects are so abject and troubling to the law, the discussion documents how law's desire to regulate gay men plays out in the masquerade of 'plain-clothes' agent provocateur operations where police entrap gay men by mimicking gay bodily appearances, gestures and mannerisms. This article also examines how police regulation of gay desire functions as a form of violence that delimits expressions of same sex desire in public spaces. A key theme that underpins the analyses in this paper is that the policing of desire in "beat" spaces helps produce qualities of illicitness and dangerousness and that this, in turn, fuels the circuit of desire at play between gay men and agents of the law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarly investigations of men's same-sex anonymous sexual encounters have traditionally focused on identifying such behaviors as deviant and/or dangers to public health. Scholars have examined the structure and processes of such interactions, and typically presented the cruising process as one characterized by silence and a reliance on non-verbal communications. Drawing on law enforcement and court documents pertaining to a sample of 127 cases of men arrested for cruising activities, this study highlights the role that verbal exchanges and conversation play in such endeavors. Findings reveal that silence is not a contextual norm and conversation serves multiple purposes in the activities of men seeking men for anonymous, public-location sexual activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Just as the creation of the information society has allowed for the expansion in e-commerce and online communication, so too has it allowed for the expansion of online sites and communities that support minority sexual practices and activities. One such activity is the cottaging phenomenon, which involves men seeking sexual satisfaction in public lavatories with other men. Like many other groups, participants in this online community have embraced the emerging technology, utilising message boards and online discussion to offer advice, spread awareness of locations, arrange sexual meetings in the physical world and share cautions and warnings. Such sites can be and are additionally used for law enforcement purposes both as a surveillance tool and as a means of preventing the criminal practice of cottaging taking place. This article will seek to consider these technological and sociological developments alongside the emerging law in this area together with an exploration of how these technological developments have changed the operation of this phenomenon in the physical world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the space-time dynamics of sexual encounters in city neighborhoods associated with sex work and cruising. The data were collected as part of a multisite, longitudinal ethnographic study conducted in major cities of southern France. The results suggest that there is a continuous interaction between these sexualized public spaces and urban planning. Urban planners, however, are not the only actors shaping the location and the use of the space. Participants create a dialectical movement from night normative worlds to occult practices interwoven with daytime activities. They also create subtle social rules governing actors and their practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The principles of community-based participatory research were applied to an exploratory sexual health study that examined "cruising for sex" among men on a college campus. In the context of a study seeking a broad interpretation of the health implications of cruising, and when faced with methodological challenges, the researchers found these principles to provide invaluable guidance. A review of the research process is offered and the manner in which the principles of community-based participatory research were operationalized for this study is described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To religious and social conservatives, gay male sexual culture signifies masculine libido incarnate, the dangerous antithesis of family and community. The gay cruising arena of unencumbered, recreational sex certainly does disrupt conventional family norms and practices. At the same time, however, it also generates bonds of kinship and domesticity. In particular, the unfettered pursuit of masculine sexuality facilitates opportunities for individual social mobility and for forging rainbow kinship ties that have not yet attracted much attention from scholars or activists. Los Angeles is home to the second largest and likely the most socially diverse, yet comparatively understudied population of gay men on the planet. Cruising culture, combined with the greater fluidity of gay male gender conventions, allows gay men to engage more frequently than is common in intimate encounters those cross-conventional social borders. While the majority of these may be fleeting and anonymous, the sheer volume of gay erotic exchanges outside the customary bounds of public scrutiny and social segregation provides opportunities to form more enduring socially heterogeneous attachments.

The article identifies the level of HIV-transmission among men who sought male partners while cruising, or while searching for anonymous sex. The term cruising here refers to activities geared toward the search for and negotiation of sex with a stranger. It was found that, when a prospective partner was thought more likely to be HIV infected, the cruiser looked elsewhere. When the prospective partner was thought less likely to be HIV infected, he was often preferred as a partner. For some respondents, partner screening was a risk-reduction strategy used in addition to safer sex practice. For others, it was occasionally the only strategy replacing safer sex practices entirely. Several respondents who used interrogation asked prospective partners if they had been previously tested for AIDS and if the results were positive or negative. However, even verbal declarations of HIV status are not above reproach. A person may not only be unaware of his status, but there is a real possibility that he or she may lie.

Discusses the debate over disagreements between an organization known as Sex Panic! and several gay male writers in the U.S. Extent to which the organization's detractors are willing to go in vilifying the group; Debate about how gay people should live their lives; Failure of Sex Panic! to elaborate the connections between a crackdown on gay male cruising and a broader range of anti-sexual attitudes.

This paper examines the normative and cultural structure of settings used by men who have sex with men to locate, negotiate, and consummate casual, same-sex sexual encounters. Based on in-depth interviews with men who frequent such locations throughout the Midwest, this paper describes and explains the rituals of such men and how ‘cruising’ (seeking sexual partners, often in public places) behaviors are learned and put into practice. The ways that sexual encounters are negotiated are explored and explained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]