Worldly Power and Local Alterity

Abstract

Since the 1990s, queer anthropology has described sexuality and gender in relation to a transnational scale. A transnational approach expands the classic anthropological view of cultural difference manifest in insular societies to consider the effects of global forces on queer being. This chapter provides an overview of key strands of transnational queer anthropology. Focusing on the ways that transnational analysis departs from twentieth-century culture concepts, it highlights ethnographic explorations of the connection of queer life to territory and geopolitics and evaluates attempts to decenter the West in accounts of queer worlds especially in the Global South. Even with new approaches to location, transnational queer anthropology continues to depend on alterity.