Sexualidad, Salud y Sociedad

REVISTA LATINOAMERICANA

ISSN 1984-6487 / www.sexualidadsaludysociedad.org

Nº 4 (2010)

Editorial

With this issue of Sexuality, Health and Society, we celebrate the Journal’s first year of existence. During the past 12 months we have published 29 articles and 7 book reviews, offering the thoughts and findings of 52 researchers to an audience of scholars, students, activists and policymakers. The authors come from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, in Anthropology, Sociology, Political Science, Collective Health, Communication, Demography, Law, Philosophy, Social Psychology, and History. Some show a long track in the field, while others are just starting their careers. Also, using different angles and methodologies to address topics around the Journal’s focus, their articles refer to the realities of a significant number of countries in the region (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay).

Looking back at the summaries of these four first issues, we are convinced that Sexuality, Health and Society has accomplished its main goal: becoming a space open to the intersection of plural perspectives and ways to address sexual matters in Latin America. This intersection has not only taken place among the articles published with each issue, but also within them, where sexualities are seen under the light of different dimensions of social life: rights, health, kinship, generation, public policy, religion and moralities, social movements, sociability, markets. Those articles come yet in addition to others dedicated to reflect upon our approaches to the coalescence of sexuality, the body, and gender, as well as upon the research methods developed in this field.

This issue broadly maintains those features. In it, together with relatively new topics, such as virtual sex, cross-dressing, male sex clubs, and sexually transmitted disease among “women who have sex with women”, old debates are brought under new light. Such is the case with the text on public policy regarding conjugal violence in Peru, the one on youth sexuality in northwestern Brazil, and the one on (homo)sexuality in Uruguayan prisons during that country’s last dictatorship. We would also like to highlight the two excellent book reviews published in this issue. In pursuance of the general criteria leading the selection of works to be reviewed, not only they describe recent, important productions from the field, but also open “windows” to think about the location of a Latin American reflection in a broader horizon.

Finally, we would like to remember that, during this first year, more than 160 people – including authors, editors, editorial advisors, peer-reviewers, and designers – have collaborated with the Journal. We hereby thank publicly all those who participated in this collective effort. We hope that this journal continues to be, as proposed in its first issue, a means for the dissemination of a knowledge that is both academically solid, and relevant from a social and political point of view.