Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
4.4 SEXUALITIES
AND DEVELOPMENT
Sexualities, Poverty and Development
Sexuality is often perceived as a private affair that has little to do with
development (Corrêa and Jolly, 2008). Some regard sexuality as a dis-
traction from the 'real issues' of development - how can we talk about
people's intimate private relationships when people's basic needs are
not being addressed? Sexuality is not explicitly mentioned in the
Millennium Development Goals and is often seen as an 'add-on' rather
than as integral to the development concerns of poverty and marginali-
zation (Corrêa and Jolly, 2008: 5). Sexuality does represent, however,
an implicit focus of many development interventions and targets, such
as improving women's reproductive health and reducing the incidence
of early pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases including HIV, and
gender-based violence.
Mainstream development agencies, such as the World Bank, concep-
tualize sex and sexuality predominantly as a depoliticized health
issue - a problem to be prevented and/or improved through medical
intervention (Camargo, 2006). In common with approaches to other
questions of the body, such as disability (see Chapter 4.3), medical dis-
courses have dominated the development agenda in relation to sexual-
ity. Feminist and post-structuralist perspectives that emerged in social
theory from the 1970s onwards, however, argue against the notion of a
'natural' body and suggest that our bodies are constructed through dis-
courses, social systems and cultural norms. Geographers have argued
that bodies are constituted through space at a range of scales and have
emphasized that the interconnections between bodies and places are
political (Longhurst, 2005).
The shift towards multidimensional understandings of poverty within
development policy and practice (see Chapters 1.1 and 1.4) enables a
greater engagement with questions of the body and sexuality. Strongly
influenced by Sen's (1999) concepts of development as 'freedom', and
