The World We Have Won is a major study of transformations in erotic and intimate life since 1945. We are living in a world of transition, in the midst of a long, unfinished but profound revolution that has transformed the possibilities of living our sexual diversity and creating intimate lives. This book provides a balance sheet of the changes that have transformed our ways of being, from welfarism to the Pill, and women’s and gay liberation, from globalization, consumerism and individualization to changing patterns of family life and new forms of intimacy. Some commentators, across the political spectrum, respond to these challenges with a deep cultural pessimism or moral conservatism. This book rejects such views and proposes an alternative perspective. Building on many years of innovative research, Jeffrey Weeks analyses the long term trends and the more immediate contingencies that have shaped sexuality and intimacy. He argues that this is a world we are increasingly making for ourselves, part of the long process of the democratization of everyday life. Unless we grasp this we cannot understand the problems and anxieties, but also the opportunities and hopes, in this world we have won.

This highly controversial and readable book will prove an enlightening challenge to a wide range of readers. It will also appeal to both undergraduate and postgraduate students taking modules in sexuality, gender, intimacy and family studies across a range of disciplines including sociology, history and cultural studies.

The Author

Jeffrey Weeks works at London South Bank University where he has been Professor of Sociology, Executive Dean of Arts and Human Sciences, and Director of SPUR: the Social Policy and Urban Regeneration Research Institute. He has an international reputation for his work on the history and social organization of sexuality and intimate life. Recent books include Making Sexual History (2000), Same Sex Intimacies (with Heaphy and Donovan, 2001) and Sexuality (second edition, 2003).