Intimate Communications: Erotics and the Study of Culture

by Gilbert Herdt, Robert J. Stoller

The book is an anthropological study of the Sambia people. The author is an anthropologist who worked together with a psychiatrist to try to analyze the erotic life in this culture where the idea of sexual identity is fluid. The experience of the boys is same-sex while the boys are raised separately from the girls. As adults the men are heterosexual and marry. The book tries to determine through interviews with certain individuals whether the situation is more complicated.

467 pages, Hardcover

First published April 15, 1990

About the author

Gilbert Herdt is a cultural anthropologist, Director of the Program in Human Sexuality Studies at San Francisco State University, where he is also Professor of Human Sexuality Studies and Anthropology. His publications include nearly 30 single and edited books, and more than 100 scientific papers.