CEVI-WP 09-06

Sexuality, Globalization and Ethics: Some Relections
Tom Claes

Abstract

 In his pioneering work Global Sex (2001), Dennis Altman argues that globalization deeply influences our understandings of and attitudes to sexuality. However, the very notion of globalization itself sparks heated controversy. Different types of globalization theories single out different processes and markers of globalization and hence point to different markers of globalised sexualities, often leading to different evaluations of this emerging ‘global sex.’ But the ante, so it seems, is upped, for morality and ethical thought are fundamentally embedded in the ways of life they are practiced in. If globalization has fundamentally restructured human ways of living and is deeply affecting our worldview, then we will have to think through our old and, perhaps, tired (sexual) ethics. A sexual ethics of globalization, therefore, has to be complemented by a critical study of ethics and morality under the conditions of globalization itself.  Only then a global sexual ethics can emerge.

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