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The Global Emergence of Gay and Lesbian Politics: National Imprints of a Worldwide Movement, edited by Barry D. Adam, Jan Willem Duyvendak, and Andre Krouwel. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999. 381 pp. $59.95 cloth. ISBN: 1-56639-644-1. $22.95 paper. ISBN: 1-56639-645-x.
This collection provides the most comprehensive overview of national gay and lesbian movements available to date, with portraits of gay and lesbian political organizing in 16 countries across the five continents. The cases include usual suspects, such as Australia and Britain, but also movements in less frequently considered countries, such as Brazil, Romania, and Japan.
The appearance of such a broad survey is good news for social movement theorists, who have tended to heap attention on a few social movements while ignoring many others. The new terrain provides fresh ground for testing established theoretical ideas (say, regarding the importance of political opportunity structuresin many countries, dictators have been able to ice even the possibility of a lesbian and gay movement). The new terrain also highlights the significance of some more recent theoretical ideas (including those placing identities at the forefront of concern-as contributor Brown points out, the constitution of persons known as "gays" and "lesbians" is the first condition for the rise of an Argentinean movement). What's more, the collection is good news for lesbian and gay studies, which has tended to be much richer in abstract ideas...