Gay-friendly dance clubs, upmarket bars, and party circuits--such commercial venues evoke the image of a gay globe, but what happens when they are bound to a landscape of disorder, mass poverty, and urban decay? Vividly describing this world of contradictions through the prism of twenty-first-century Manila, Under Bright Lights challenges popular interpretations of the "third world queer" as a necessarily radical figure.

Drawing on ethnographic research, Bobby Benedicto paints a remarkably counterintuitive portrait of gay spaces in postcolonial cities. He argues that...