ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book introduces readers to a wide and exciting range of sexualities research currently being conducted by scholars who have, in one way or another, engaged with the European Sociological Association Sexuality Research Network in recent years. It examines the challenges, limitations and opportunities afforded to theorising sexualities. The book adopts a new materialist perspective which shifts the location of sexuality away from bodies and individuals toward the affective flow within assemblages of bodies, things, ideas and social institutions that produce 'sexual' capacities. It discusses a theoretical lens on the ordinariness of same-sex sexualities. The book explains how the emerging State 'demography of homosexuality' contributes to circulating neo-liberal homonormative discourses, which, McDermott argues, firmly places the white, middle-class, male, gay, adult on the centre-stage of sexual citizenship and marginalises those who are queerer, female, black, younger and poorer.
