The Great Refusal

The Global Politics of Homosexuality

Jason L. Ferguson

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2026
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Print ISBN:
  9780691279763
  9780691279770
• Subtopic: Gender & The Law
• eBook ISBN:
  9780691296562
• Index: Social Sciences

What happens when the West interferes in the sexual politics of postcolonial Global South nations

Since the end of the Cold War, many Western nations have increasingly sought to integrate gay rights into their diplomacy, foreign policy, and international development programs. In The Great Refusal, Jason Ferguson examines what happens when pro-gay Western forces intervene in the sexual politics of countries around the world, especially in the postcolonial Global South. He finds that these interventions have unintended consequences, as the global clashes with the local. They create tension and divide nation-states from within, undermine local democratic structures and the collective conscience, and, paradoxically, fan the flames of resentment against the West, against gay rights, and against gay people.

Ferguson’s mixed-method and multiscalar account of what he terms the “geopoliticization of homosexuality and gay rights” offers an in-depth analysis of a single case: Senegal, where attempted global intervention exacerbated the very problem it meant to solve. Drawing on a wide range of data, including ethnographies, archival materials, and literature, and moving among global, national, and subnational levels, Ferguson demonstrates how such uninvited interventions ultimately turn homosexuality into a vector through which local populations express their broader resentments against the West. Global interventionism, he argues, has turned same-sex loving people into scapegoats of the twenty-first century.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Editor
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations and Tables
• Preface
• 1. Introduction: World Culture and Its Discontents
• 2. The Fragmented World
• 3. Homosexuality in Senegal
• 4. Pockets of World Society
• 5. The Courts, the Press, and the Will of the People
• 6. Conclusion: Unsettled Times
• Acknowledgments
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• Notes
• References
• Index