ARTICLES + ESSAYS
I have published articles in the top journals of my discipline and award-winning books with prestigious university presses, including Chicago, NYU, Princeton, and Oxford.
I have received scholarly distinctions in Canada (Canada Research Chair in Urban Sexualities, an endowed professorship), the Netherlands (Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in Amsterdam), the United States (Princeton Society of Fellows), and the United Kingdom (London School of Economics).
Ghaziani, Amin and Seth Abrutyn. 2024.
“Renewal Without Replication: Expanding Durkheim’s Theory of Disruptions via Queer Nightlife.” British Journal of Sociology.
Gay bars are closing in large numbers around the world, but institutional loss provides only a partial narrative for evaluating the larger field of nightlife. Drawing on 112 interviews, we argue that bar closures disrupted the field and consequently encouraged the visibility of alternate nightlife forms, called club nights. Unlike the fixed and emplaced model of bars, club nights are episodic and event‐based occasions that are renewing nightlife without replicating the format of the gay bar. By detailing the phenomenology of club nights, we develop a new Durkheimian theory of disruptions that explains how and why some members of a community are motivated to renew rather than replicate existing institutional structures. We bring our framework to organization, sexuality, and nightlife studies—subfields that seldom engage with Durkheim—while subjecting a foundational social theory to an empirical case that can push it forward in important ways.
Keywords: disruptive events, Durkheim, gay bars, idiopolitics, nightlife, organizational change
Yang, Tori Shucheng and Amin Ghaziani. 2024.
“Retheorizing Intersectional Identities with the Study of Chinese LGBTQ+ Migrants.” Social Problems.
Intersectionality has transformed our understanding of how multiple axes of power mutually shape social inequalities. However, significant questions arise when applying the theory’s macro-level structural insights to identities on experiential, interactional, and situational levels. In this article, we retheorize intersectionality as a processual outcome. Drawing on in-depth interviews with skilled Chinese LGBTQ+ migrants in North America (n = 50), we detail three challenges that arise when individuals negotiate multiple identities across shifting interactions in national contexts: conflicts, disidentification, and indetermination. Each theme captures how individuals actively reconfigure identities while maintaining a continuous experience of mutual constitution. Instead of cohering into a unity, even one that is greater than the sum of its parts, our findings suggest that intersectionality is in an ongoing process of making, unmaking, and remaking.
Keywords: identity, intersectionality, social psychology, migration, sexuality
Ghaziani, Amin. 2024.
“Emplaced Bars and Episodic Events: Reflections on Nightlife Forms.” Mediapolis: A Journal of Cities and Culture 9(2).
Amin Ghaziani argues that the closure of gay bars disrupted the field of nightlife and encouraged the visibility of other forms of fellowship called “club nights.” Ghaziani calls for conceptual plurality in how we think about nightlife forms and proposes a strategy for studying episodic and event-based scenes.
Keywords: London, queer nightlife, gay bars, club nights
Ghaziani, Amin and Andy Holmes. 2023.
“Distinguishing But Not Defining: How Ambivalence Affects Contemporary Identity Disclosures.”
Theory and Society 52: 913-945.
Coming out, or the disclosure of a minority identity, features prominently across disciplines, including several subfields of sociological research. In the context of sexuality, theoretical arguments offer competing predictions. Some studies propose that coming out is increasingly an unremarkable life transition as the stigma associated with non-heterosexualities attenuates, while others posit entrenched discrimination. Rather than testing these theories or providing incremental evidence in support of one position, we use 52 in-depth interviews with recently-out individuals to explain how identity disclosures in the present moment can validate plural possibilities. Our findings show that ambivalence is the core narrative which animates the contemporary coming out process. Respondents identify three interpretive frameworks that structure their experience of sexuality as at once incidental and central: generational differences, identity misrecognitions, and interfacing with institutions. We also detail a fourth theme, intersectionality, which shows the analytic limits of ambivalence in the coming out process. These patterns suggest more broadly that sexuality, like ethnicity, may provide symbolic resources—“distinguishing but not defining”—in the service of crafting a modern sexual self.
Keywords: closet, coming out, identity disclosures, symbolic sexuality, post-gay
Ghaziani, Amin. 2022.
“Belonging in Gay Neighborhoods and Queer Nightlife.” Pp. 540-50 in Seidman, Steven, Nancy Fischer, and Laurel Westbrook (Eds.) Introducing the New Sexuality Studies (4th edition). New York: Routledge.
Research on belonging is often based in the context of globalization, nationalism, and citizenship, or else on the experiences of racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, and colonial subjects. The history, struggles, and perspectives of LGBTQ+ people are absent from this narrative. In this essay, I use urban gay districts in the United States and underground queer club nights in the United Kingdom to show how our drive to form meaningful social attachments occurs as we interact with people in particular places. Evidence from the first case, gay neighborhoods, shows why belonging still matters in these iconic places, despite declarations of their decline. Queer nightlife draws attention to the specter of not belonging, or un-belonging. I use this second case to examine the effects of exclusion as queer, trans, Black, Indigenous, and people of color respond to racism with creativity and cultural entrepreneurship. I leverage both cases, neighborhoods and nightlife, to propose a programmatic vision for the emplacement of belonging: Our sense of belonging is intimately connected to place.
Keywords: belonging, gayborhoods, nightlife
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Ghaziani, Amin. 2021.
“People, Protest and Place: Advancing Research on the Emplacement of LGBTQ+ Urban Activisms .”
Urban Studies 58(7): 1529-1540.
There is a vibrant literature on LGBTQ+ urban geographies, as well as established traditions in sociology and political science on collective action, but research infrequently brings these interdisciplinary fields of sexualities, social movements and urban studies together to explore the emplacement of LGBTQ+ urban activisms. In this article, I use contributions from this special issue of Urban Studies to propose two pathways, conceptualised as analytic shifts, that can advance the field: (1) scalar shifts (modulating from a national and structural focus of mobilisation to local, grounded and quotidian acts and interactions between activists); and (2) spatial shifts (using conventional and queer methods to study spatial plurality and the commensurability of places where people protest). Together, these proposals form an integrative framework for the study of LGBTQ+ urban protest and placemaking.
Keywords: activism, social movements, placemaking, gaybourhoods, cities, queer methods
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Ghaziani, Amin. 2021.
“Why Gayborhoods Matter: The Street Empirics of Urban Sexualities.”
Pp. 87-113 (Chapter 4) in Bitterman, Alex and Daniel B. Hess (Eds.) The Life and Afterlife of Gay Neighborhoods: Renaissance and Resurgence. New York: Springer (The Urban Book Series).
Urbanists have developed an extensive set of propositions about why
gay neighborhoods form, how they change, shifts in their significance, and their
spatial expressions. Existing research in this emerging field of “gayborhood studies”
emphasizes macro-structural explanatory variables, including the economy (e.g.,
land values, urban governance, growth machine politics, affordability, and gentrification),
culture (e.g., public opinions, societal acceptance, and assimilation), and
technology (e.g., geo-coded mobile apps, online dating services). In this chapter, I
use the residential logics of queer people—why they in their own words say that
they live in a gay district—to show how gayborhoods acquire their significance on
the streets. By shifting the analytic gaze from abstract concepts to interactions and
embodied perceptions on the ground—a “street empirics” as I call it—I challenge
the claim that gayborhoods as an urban form are outmoded or obsolete. More generally,
my findings caution against adopting an exclusively supra-individual approach
in urban studies. The reasons that residents provide for why their neighborhoods
appeal to them showcase the analytic power of the streets for understanding what
places mean and why they matter. The entire book is available open-access here.
Keywords: urban sexualities, gayborhood studies, street empirics
Ghaziani, Amin. 2019.
“Culture and the Nighttime Economy: A Conversation with London’s Night Czar and Culture-at-Risk Officer.”
Metropolitics 12 November.
Amin Ghaziani describes the high closure rate of LGBTQ nighttime venues in London, and the city’s recognition of these venues’ intertwined economic and cultural significance. Read the article online here.
Keywords: culture, economics, nighttime venues, London, night czar
Stillwagon, Ryan and Amin Ghaziani. 2019.
“Queer Pop-Ups: A Cultural Innovation in Urban Life.”
City & Community 18(3): 874-95.
Research on sexuality and space emphasizes geographic and institutional forms that are stable, established, and fixed. By narrowing their analytic gaze on such places, which include gayborhoods and bars, scholars use observations about changing public opinions, residential integration, and the closure of nighttime venues to conclude that queer urban and institutional life is in decline. We use queer pop-up events to challenge these dominant arguments about urban sexualities and to advocate instead a “temporary turn” that analyzes the relationship between ephemerality and placemaking. Drawing on interviews with party promoters and participants in Vancouver, our findings show that ephemeral events can have enduring effects. Pop-ups refresh ideas about communal expression, belonging, safety, and the ownership of space among queer-identified people who feel excluded from the gayborhood and its bars. As a case, pop-ups compel scholars to broaden their focus from a preoccupation with permanent places to those which are fleeting, transient, shortlived, and experienced for a moment. Only when we see the city as a collection of temporary spaces can we appreciate how queer people convert creative cultural visions into spatial practices that enable them to express an oppositional ethos and to congregate with, and celebrate, their imagined communities.
Keywords: gayborhoods, gay bars, queer spaces, pop-ups, ephemerality
Ghaziani, Amin and Matt Brim. 2019.
“Queer Methods: Four Provocations for an Emerging Field.”
Pp. 3-27 in Ghaziani, Amin and Matt Brim (Eds.) Imagining Queer Methods. New York: NYU Press.
Queer studies is pivoting toward questions of research design, data, and analysis. However, efforts among scholars to bring into dialogue the notions of “queer” with “methods” has unearthed a paradox: the former celebrates fluidity, ephemerality, and unstable classificatory systems while the latter is defined by order and disciplinary techniques. What productive avenues of inquiry exist between these seemingly orthogonal elements? And what inferential and interpretive possibilities arise at its nexus? This chapter offers four provocations for the emerging field of queer methods: how to identify new types of data (“queer methods”); how to modify existing protocols to better resonate with queer theoretical frameworks (“queering methods”); how to challenge methodological norms of coherence, generalizability, and reliability (“queering methodology”); and how to outline the pedagogical implications of queer methods (“queer pedagogy”). These provocations satisfy the dual mandates for queer methods: to outline the conditions of queer world-making and to clarify, but not over-determine, the conditions that make those lives more livable.
Keywords: queer methods, queer studies, queer theory, methodology
Ghaziani, Amin. 2019.
“Cultural Archipelagos: New Directions in the Study of Sexuality and Space.” Special Symposium on “Queer Urbanisms” in City & Community, 18(1): 4-22.
Research on sexuality and space makes assumptions about spatial singularity: Across the landscape of different neighborhoods in the city, there is one, and apparently only one, called the gayborhood. This assumption, rooted in an enclave epistemology and theoretical models that are based on immigrant migration patterns, creates blind spots in our knowledge about urban sexualities. I propose an alternative conceptual framework that emphasizes spatial plurality. Drawing on the location patterns of lesbians, transgender individuals, same-sex families with children, and people of color, I show that cities cultivate “cultural archipelagos” in response to the geo-sexual complexities that arise from within-group heterogeneity. Rather than inducing spatially singular or scholastic outcomes, as some scholarship predicts, subgroup variations produce diverse yet distinct types of queer spaces. The analytic frame of cultural archipelagos suggests more generally that we cannot categorize urban or social worlds using simple binaries such as “the gayborhood” versus all other undifferentiated straight spaces. Thinking in terms of plurality provides a more generative approach to advance the study of sexuality and space.
Keywords: urban sexualities, gayborhoods, archipelagos
Ghaziani, Amin. 2019.
“Sexual Meanings, Placemaking, and the Urban Imaginary.”
Pp. 226-34 in Hall, John R.; Laura Grindstaff, and Ming-Cheng Lo (Eds.) Routledge Handbook of Cultural Sociology. New York: Routledge.
There is a well-developed literature on neighborhoods, as well as one on sexual identities and communities, but little research brings these two subfields together to explore the relationship between sexuality and the city. In this chapter, I suggest that urban sociology can meet the sociology of sexualities through culture. I use the reasons straight people provide for wanting to live in a gay district as an opportunity to reflect on how sexuality informs our imaginations of place. By examining residential logics, scholars can conceptualize “the city” as a culturally saturated site where neighbors negotiate the meanings and material significance of their sexuality alongside their sexual differences from others
Keywords: gayborhoods, heterosexuality, placemaking, residential logics
Ghaziani, Amin and Kelsy Kretschmer. 2019.
“Infighting and Insurrection.” Pp. 220-35 in Snow, David A.; Sarah A. Soule; Hanspeter Kriesi; and Holly J. McCammon (Eds.) Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Social Movements. Oxford, UK: John Wiley & Sons.
Conflict is inevitable and imperative for theoretical understandings of social movements. This chapter reviews the vast literature on infighting with a focus on its causes and consequences. Existing scholarship frequently conflates infighting with factional splits and defines it as a pathology for political organizing. By identifying this pattern in published research, the review emphasizes the diverse forms that conflict can take and its variable effects on mobilization. Although conflict within social movements appears largely destructive, it also is at times generative. Infighting helps activists define the boundaries of membership, concretize a shared culture and strategic vision, and negotiate new collective identities. The chapter concludes by using field theory to reconceptualize the relationship between infighting and insurrection. Future researchers should link interpersonal dynamics among activists with a view of social movements as nested in strategic action fields.
Keywords: conflict, defections, factions, field theory, infighting, schisms
Ghaziani, Amin. 2018. “Queer Spatial Analysis.” Pp. 201-215 in Compton, D’Lane; Kristen Schilt; and Tey Meadow (Eds.) Other, Please Specify: Queer Methods in Sociology. Berkeley: University of California Press.
In this chapter, I use my experience with studying gayborhoods as an opportunity to reflect on five methodological problems: (1) how to sample hidden populations; (2) how to interview like an ethnographer; (3) how to bring demographic statistics into conversation with cultural meanings; (4) how to move beyond binary conceptions of the city; and (5) how to identify indicators of queer spaces. These five conundrums collective capture the spirit of “queer methods,” a provocative new subfield emerging in sociology and beyond.
Keywords: gayborhoods, methodology, queer methods
Brodyn, Adriana and Amin Ghaziani. 2018.
“Performative Progressiveness: Accounting for New Forms of Inequality in the Gayborhood.” City & Community 74(2): 307-29.
Attitudes toward homosexuality have liberalized considerably, but these positive public opinions conceal the persistence of prejudice at an interpersonal level. We use interviews with heterosexual residents of Chicago gayborhoods—urban districts that offer ample opportunities for contact and thus precisely the setting in which we would least expect bias to appear—to analyze this new form of inequality. Our findings show that acceptance does not displace discrimination; it recrafts it into subtler forms.
Keywords: gayborhoods, placemaking, discrimination, inequality
Ghaziani, Amin and Ryan Stillwagon. 2018. “Queer Pop-Ups.”
Contexts 17(1): 78-80.
Ryan and I consider innovative forms of queer placemaking–pop-up parties–that are redrawing the landscape of urban nightlife.
Keywords: gayborhoods, nightlife, placemaking, ephemerality
Ghaziani, Amin. 2017. “The Closet.” Contexts 16(3): 72-73.
How many Americans do you think are gay or lesbian? Take a minute, think about it, and take your best guess.
Keywords: methods, methodology, gender and sexuality, metrics, LGB, homosexuality
Brim, Matt and Amin Ghaziani. 2016. “Introduction: Queer Methods.”
WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly 44(3-4): 14-27.
Queer studies is experiencing a methodological renaissance. In both the humanities and the social sciences, scholars have begun to identify research protocols and practices that have been largely overshadowed by dramatic advances in queer theory. We enrich these conversations by presenting pioneering work on queer methods in sociology, performance studies, African American studies, lesbian cultural studies, critical psychology, African studies, statistics, transgender and queer studies, media and digital studies, history, and English, as well as poetry and fiction.
Keywords: queer theory, queer methods, methodology
Ghaziani, Amin. 2016. “Cycles of Sameness and Difference in LGBT Social Movements.” Annual Review of Sociology 42: 165-83.
Research on LGBT movements has accelerated in recent years. We take stock of this literature with a focus on a central recurring debate among activists: Should we embrace what makes us unique and protest the heteronormative assumptions of existing institutions like marriage? Or should we assert our common humanity with heterosexuals and integrate into societal structures, work with our straight allies, and demand that the government stay out of our lives?
Keywords: protest cycles, turning points, gay liberation, lesbian feminism, queer activism, marriage equality
Ghaziani, Amin. 2015. “The Radical Potential of Post-Gay Politics in the City: A Reply to Molotch, Deener, Tavory, and Pattillo.” Environment and Planning A 47(11): 2409-2426.
My book There Goes the Gayborhood? was the subject of an Author Meets Critics panel at the 2015 ASA meetings in Chicago. The buzz surrounding the session inspired a symposium in Environment and Planning A. Contributors include Harvey Molotch, Andrew Deener, Iddo Tavory, and Mary Pattillo.
Keywords: gay neighborhoods, sexuality, cities, post-gay
Ghaziani, Amin. 2015. “Gay Enclaves Face Prospect of Being Passé: How Assimilation Affects the Spatial Expressions of Sexuality in the United States.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 39(4): 756-771.
Same-sex households were less segregated in the U.S. in 2010 than they were in 2000. The statistics that demographers use to arrive at this conclusion are descriptive and disembodied. How do gays and lesbians explain in their own words why they wish to live in other parts of the city? In this article, I bring existing economic wisdom into dialogue with a cultural and political perspective about how our shifting understandings of sexuality also affect the decisions we make about where to live and socialize.
Keywords: gay neighborhoods, assimilation, sexuality, gentrification, culture
Ghaziani, Amin. 2015. “The Queer Metropolis.” Pp. 305-330 in DeLamater, John and Rebecca F. Plante (eds). Handbook of the Sociology of Sexualities. New York: Springer.
The queer metropolis has developed across three periods of time. During the closet era (1870—World War II), “scattered gay places” like cabarets and public parks were based in bohemian parts of the city. Distinct gay neighborhoods formed during the coming out era (World War II—1997), and they flourished in the “great gay migration” that ensued following the Stonewall riots. Today’s post-gay era (1998—present) is characterized by an unprecedented societal acceptance of homosexuality. Many existing districts are “de-gaying” (gays and lesbians are moving out) and “straightening” (heterosexuals are moving in) in this context. This chapter reviews research on the dynamic relationship between sexuality and the city across these three periods.
Keywords: gay neighborhoods, sexuality, cities, closet era, coming out era, post-gay era
Ghaziani, Amin. 2015. “Lesbian Geographies.” Contexts 14(1): 62-64.
When we think about gay neighborhoods, many of us are not immediately imagining lesbians. But like gay men, lesbians also have certain cities, neighborhoods, and small towns in which they are more likely to live. In this essay, I explain why this happens.
Keywords: culture, gender, gayborhoods, lesbians, geography
Ghaziani, Amin. 2014. “Measuring Urban Sexual Cultures.” Theory and Society 43(3-4): 371-93.
How can we measure the presence of distinct urban sexual cultures in a so-called “post-gay era” if those ways of life are defined by the suppression of cultural distinctions? How do we measure minority cultures that are merging into the mainstream? In this article, I inquire into how we can study the shifting geographic profile of a historically marginalized group as it experiences positive change in public opinion.
This piece was inspired by a “Measuring Culture” conference that John Mohr and I organized at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver in 2012. Theory and Society published our papers in a special double issue of the journal (vol 43, issues 3-4, 2014). It houses an extraordinary collection of articles written by some of the finest sociologists of culture. Click here to access the articles.
Keywords: culture, measurement, post-gay, sexualities, urban sociology
Mohr, John and Amin Ghaziani. 2014. “Problems and Prospects of Measurement in the Study of Culture.” Theory and Society 43(3-4): 225-46.
What is the role of measurement in the sociology of culture? In this introductory essay for our special issue on “Measuring Culture,” John and I argue that we have a recurring need to reinvent measurement, we need to carefully think through linkages between qualitative and quantitative methods of analysis, and our theorizing necessarily precedes our efforts at measuring.
Keywords: culture, measurement, qualitative and quantitative methods, philosophy of science, S.S. Stevens, Paul Lazarsfeld,Emst Cassirer
Ghaziani, Amin and Delia Baldassarri. 2011. “Cultural Anchors and the Organization of Differences: A Multi-method Analysis of LGBT Marches on Washington.” American Sociological Review 76(2): 179-206 (lead article).
Is culture coherent? Is political dissent divisive? This lead article moves beyond binary answers of coherent or incoherent and unifying or divisive. Content, historical, and network analyses of public debates on how to organize four lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Washington marches provide evidence for an integrative position. Rather than just describe consistencies or contradictions in the planning process, we contend that the key analytic challenge is to explain the organization of differences. We propose one way of doing this using the mechanism of a “cultural anchor,” a notion that addresses one of the biggest unanswered questions in the sociology of culture and provides insight into how activists can fabricate unity amid inevitable infighting.
This piece won the 2012 Best Article award from the Collective Behavior / Social Movements section of the American Sociological Association. It also received an Honorable Mention for the 2012 Clifford Geertz Best Article award from the Sociology of Culture section.
Keywords: culture, coherence, social movements, sexualities, networks
Ghaziani, Amin. 2011. “Post-Gay Collective Identity Construction.” Social Problems 58(1): 99-125.
This piece considers how historical changes in the meaning of sexuality affect the ways in which activists construct their collective identity. Consistent with conventional wisdom, LGBT activists construct collective identity using an oppositional “us versus them” framework during those times when they strategically deploy their differences from heterosexuals. But what happens when activists seek to emphasize their similarities to straights, as they are motivated to do during a post-gay moment?
Keywords: collective identity, sexuality, post-gay, culture, social movements.
Ghaziani, Amin. 2010. “There Goes the Gayborhood?” Contexts 9(3): 64-66.
Lesbian and gay residential patterns are shifting today. A recent flurry of media reports captures popular anxieties that urban enclaves long considered “gay neighborhoods” are disappearing as more straights move in and fewer gays express interest in residing in or relocating to them. How are gay neighborhoods changing in today’s post-gay era? What do we make of headlines that cry, “There Goes the Gayborhood?”
Keywords: gay neighborhoods, gayborhoods, post-gay, cities
Ghaziani, Amin. 2009. “An ‘Amorphous Mist’? The Problem of Measurement in the Study of Culture.” Theory and Society 38(6): 581-612.
“Culture” is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language. It is therefore no surprise that Gary Alan Fine provocatively characterized culture in 1979 as “an amorphous, indescribable mist which swirls around society members.” But then how do you measure mist? My article is premised on the observation that sociological studies of culture have made much progress on conceptual clarification of the concept, but they have remained comparatively quiescent on questions of measurement. I offer one measurement mechanism that can remedy the problem of culture-as-mist. I call this a “resinous culture framework.”
Keywords: culture, measurement, resinous, infighting, social movements
Brown-Saracino, Japonica and Amin Ghaziani. 2009. “The Constraints of Culture: Evidence from the Chicago Dyke March.” Cultural Sociology 3(1): 51-75.
Drawing on an ethnographic study of the Chicago Dyke March, this article focuses on an instance in which a movement’s ideology and identity contradict in order to advance the theoretical question of how culture “works,” that is, how activists use meaning-systems to influence what others think and how they behave. We introduce new perspectives about the conditions under which cultural elements work more or less effectively in the execution of a political demonstration.
Keywords: culture, gender, identity, ideology, sexuality, social movements, lesbians
Ghaziani, Amin and Gary Alan Fine. 2008. “Infighting and Ideology: How Conflict Informs the Local Culture of the Chicago Dyke March.” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 20(1-4): 51-67.
Although the study of local cultures has become established in sociology, it often ignores the contested nature of how culture emerges and is negotiated in the context of small groups. To this end, we address the concept of infighting, a subtype of conflict, as it operates within a small group framework. Building on an ethnographic study of the Chicago Dyke March, we demonstrate the ways in which infighting highlights competing ideologies that may remain implicit in the absence of such conflict. We elaborate four analytic processes through which this occurs: infighting emphasizes the multivocality of meaning; it highlights cultural heterogeneity; it draws our attention to an equilibrium between inclusion and exclusive group boundaries; and it unmasks how planning proceeds amidst power struggles.
Keywords: infighting, culture, idioculture, sexuality, social movements, lesbians
Ghaziani, Amin and Marc J. Ventresca. 2005. “Keywords and Cultural Change: Frame Analysis of Business Model Public Talk, 1975-2000.” Sociological Forum 20(4): 523-559.
Keywords chronicle and capture cultural change by creating common categories of meaning against diverse local usages. We call this the “global-local tension.” To test competing theories of this tension, we employ frame analysis of more than 500 journal abstracts over a 25-year period, tracking spread of the economic keyword “business model.”
Keywords: keywords, cultural change, frame analysis, business model, Digital Economy
Ghaziani, Amin and Thomas D. Cook. 2005. “Reducing HIV Infections at Circuit Parties: From Description to Explanation and Principles of Intervention Design.” Journal of the International Association of Physicians in AIDS Care 4(2): 32-46.
Circuit parties are weekend-long, erotically charged, drug prevalent dance events attended by up to 25,000 self-identified gay and bisexual men who socialize and dance nonstop, sometimes for 24 hours or longer. Although these parties started originally as part of the gay community’s response to raise HIV/AIDS awareness and to build community and cultural identity, they may have become a site for transmitting HIV across geographical regions and socioeconomic groups of gay and bisexual men. This article proposes a 5-by-5 causal model matrix for reducing HIV infections, along with evaluable principles of intervention, at circuit parties.
Keywords: HIV/AIDS, intervention, circuit parties, club drugs, sexual behavior
ESSAYS
Ghaziani, Amin. 2019. “Greetings from the Gayborhood–and Beyond.” Next City, June 4.
How can we describe the world-making practices and cultural homes of queer people? In my op-ed, I argue that we must unreservedly recognize the gayborhood–but also broaden our vision beyond it to the “cultural archipelagos” in our midst.
Ghaziani, Amin. 2018. “What we really mean when we talk about acceptance of gay people.” Los Angeles Times, June 10, p.A25.
When we talk about acceptance related to sexual diversity, what is really being offered? If you’re gay, how far does being found “morally acceptable” by 2/3 of your fellow Americans get you?
Ghaziani, Amin. 2014. “The Gendered Metropolis.” Gender & Society blog.
Why do gay men and lesbians sometimes make different decisions about where to live?
Stombler, Mindy; Dawn M. Baunach; Wendy Simmonds; Elroi J. Windsor; and Elisabeth O. Burgess. 2014. “Spotlight on Research: An Interview with Amin Ghaziani.” Pp. 491-94 in Sex Matters: The Sexuality and Society Reader (4th edition). New York: Norton.
In this interview, I talk about who I am, what I do, and why I love doing it.
Ghaziani, Amin. 2012. “How the Militant Movement Began.” Gay and Lesbian Review 19(1): 11-14 (lead essay).
Frank Kameny, who died October 2011 at the age of 86, staged the first national demonstration for “homosexual” rights in 1965. In this essay, I recover a 2003 interview with the late activist.
Ghaziani, Amin. 2010. “The Reinvention of Heterosexuality.” Gay and Lesbian Review 17(3): 27-29.
Jonathan Ned Katz’s famous heterosexual history stopped at 1982. What has happened since then?
Ghaziani, Amin 2009. “Out of the Classroom at Princeton.” Gay and Lesbian Review 16(5): 28-29, 31.
A queer theory-inspired protest that my students and I organized tests the limits of free speech on Princeton University’s campus. What is the role of the campus in classroom demonstrations?
Ghaziani, Amin 2005. “The Circuit Party’s Faustian Bargain.” Gay and Lesbian Review 12(4): 21-23.
The quest for ultimate bliss—both chemical and communitarian—has never been easier. Or riskier.
Ghaziani, Amin 2005. “Breakthrough: The 1979 National March.” Gay and Lesbian Review 12(2): 31-32.
It was the first time local LGBT groups across the United States acted as one.
AMIN GHAZIANI, Ph.D.