Review: Playing the Field

Abstract

The magnetic appeal of the sexually charged sphere of "taboo" -this fantasy mix of the erotic and exotic-has not exactly waned in subsequent decades, as a casual glance at almost any contemporary fashion magazine will attest. Nor has the charge of this encounter been limited to popular culture: indeed the sexuality of Others has been a mainstay of the scholarly discipline of cultural anthropology. But it is only in academic circles that the draw of the "erotic-exotic" is being "problematized" for what it reveals about Western cultural notions of sex, self, and relations of power. The ongoing rethinking of anthropology, especially, has finally begun to confront a certain smoldering disciplinary taboo: sex in the field.