Sociology of homosexuality in twenty-first-century China

Abstract

This review provides a critical exploration of four key books in sociology of homosexuality published in mainland China since 2000, namely Wei Wei’s Going Public (2012), Queering Chinese Society (2015), Xiaoxing Fu’s Space, Culture and Performance 2012, and Qingfeng Wang’s Homosexuality Studies 2017. We identify three important themes from the books: space, family, and identity. Based on this, we demonstrate two characteristics of the sociology of homosexuality in twenty-first-century China, with its focus on the theoretical potentials of the Chinese case and its combination of sociological perspectives and multidisciplinary approaches.