Challenging criminalisation in the Commonwealth: theorising legacies and colonialities in LGBTIQ movement strategies

Waites, M. (2023) Challenging criminalisation in the Commonwealth: theorising legacies and colonialities in LGBTIQ movement strategies. In: Beasley, C. and Papadelos, P. (eds.) Living Legacies of Social Injustice: Power, Time and Social Change. Series: Social Justice. Routledge: London. ISBN 9781032318905 (doi: 10.4324/9781003311928-15)

Abstract

The British Empire’s criminalisation of sexual acts between men, and sometimes between women, has left an enduring legal legacy in most Commonwealth states, but colonial power relations also influence the structure of transnational struggles for human rights by LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex) and queer movements. This chapter offers an analysis of the politics of sexual orientation, gender identity, sex characteristics and human rights in the Commonwealth that is distinctive among analyses of colonial influences for considering both the conceptual prisms of legacies and colonialities. Decolonial perspectives that conceptualise coloniality are engaged alongside argument that living legacy serves an additional analytical purpose. The chapter provides an up-to-date overview of the criminalisation facing sexual and gender minorities in Commonwealth states. An original analysis then identifies ongoing forms of power, in relation to the Commonwealth organisation and associated civil society. Discussion draws on empirical research from the London Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting’s Peoples Forum (2018). The chapter offers an analysis conceptualising power and change for queer politics in the Commonwealth context, informed by decolonial thought while also engaging wider social theories of post-industrial societies to problematise decolonial characterisations of contemporary Eurocentrism. The analysis challenges critical dismissals of the Commonwealth by theorising the value of a multi-sited and strategic politics.

• Item Type: Book Sections
• Keywords: Colonialities, legacies, Commonwealth, criminalisation, queer, LGBTIQ.
• Status: Published
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Waites, Dr Matthew
• Authors: Waites, M.
• Subjects: D History General and Old World > D History (General) > D204 Modern History; H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General); H Social Sciences > HM Sociology; H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman; H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races; J Political Science > JV Colonies and colonization. Emigration and immigration. International migration
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Social and Political Sciences > Sociology Anthropology and Applied Social Sciences
• Publisher: Routledge
• ISBN: 9781032318905