This book deconstructs the social construction of 'Sadomasochism' via insights into the lived realities of consensual 'SM' practitioners. Through this fascinating ethnographic approach, Andrea Beckmann defamiliarizes 'sexuality' and 'sadomasochism' and exposes their true functional relationship to power. The Social Construction of Sadomasochism thus provides a broadly relevant argument that makes a considerable contribution to contemporary debates about the 'body', 'sexualities', the 'care of self' and the 'postmodernization of intimacy'.