Winner of the MLA's 2016 Alan Bray Prize for Best Book in GLBTQ Studies How BDSM can be used as a metaphor for black female sexuality. The Color of Kink explores black women's representations and performances within American pornography and BDSM (bondage and discipline, domination and submission, and sadism and masochism) from the 1930s to the present, revealing the ways in which they illustrate a complex and contradictory negotiation of pain, pleasure, and power for black women. Based on personal interviews conducted with pornography performers, producers, and professional dominatrices, visual and textual analysis, and extensive archival research, Ariane Cruz reveals BDSM and pornography as critical sites from which to rethink the formative links between Black female sexuality and violence. She explores how violence becomes not just a vehicle of pleasure but also a mode of accessing and contesting power. Drawing on feminist and queer theory, critical race theory, and media studies, Cruz argues that BDSM is a productive space from which to consider the complexity and diverseness of black women's sexual practice and the mutability of black female sexuality. Illuminating the cross-pollination of black sexuality and BDSM, The Color of Kink makes a unique contribution to the growing scholarship on racialized sexuality.

"Regulating Sex/Work"" From Crime Control to Neo-liberalism?" addresses the rise in sexual commerce and consumption by challenging traditional responses and offering a fresh approach to sex industry regulation Examines different forms of sex regulation by utilizing examples from a range of sex markets in the UK, France, USA, Australia, and IndiaTheorizes the apparent paradox that the increase in punitive approaches to regulating the sex industry is fueling a rise in supply, demand, and diversification of the sex industry

For too long historians have imposed on the literature a homogeneous, pre-determined narrative of Victorian attitudes to prostitution. Attwood argues for a multi-faceted, many-layered representation amongst contemporary Victorian observers, demonstrated using political, medical, feminist, literary and pornographic sources.

Third Sector Organizations in Sex Work and Prostitution is about sex work and prostitution third sector organizations (TSOs): non-governmental and non-profit organizations that provide support services to, and advocate for the well-being of people operating in the sex industries. With a focus on three vast and extremely diverse regions, Africa, the Americas, and Europe, this book provides a unique vantage point that shows how interlinked these organizations' histories and configurations are. TSOs are fascinating research sites because they operate as zones of contestation which translate their understandings of sex work and prostitution into different support practices and advocacy initiatives. This book reveals that these organizations are not external to normative power but participate in it and are subject to it, conditioning how they can exist, who they can reach out to, where, and what they can achieve. Third Sector Organizations in Sex Work and Prostitution is a resource for scholars, policymakers, and activists involved in research on, and work with third sector organizations in the fields of sex work and prostitution, gender and sexuality, and human rights among others.

The State of Sex is a study of Nevada's brothels that situates the nation's only legal brothel industry in the political economy of contemporary tourism. Nevada is part of the "new American heartland," as its pastimes, people, and politics have become more central to the nation. The rise of a service and leisure economy over the past sixty years has propelled sexuality into the heart of contemporary markets. Yet, neoliberal laws in the United States promote business but limit sexual commerce.
How have Nevada's legal brothels survived, while the rest of the country criminalizes prostitution? How do brothels operate? Who works in them? This book brings social theory on globalizing economies, politics, leisure consumption, and emotional labor in interactive service work together with research on contemporary prostitution and sexual commerce. The authors employ an innovative, multi-method sociological approach, combining historical analysis of how the brothels came to be with over a decade's worth of ethnographic research on the current state of the industry.

India has one of the highest numbers of HIV carriers in the world. HIV has remained associated with sex work, and large sums of money provided to fund public health interventions have come from global institutions such as UNAIDS, the World Bank and USAID. In the midst of these processes, however, sex workers and their everyday lives have been hidden behind the rhetorics of control and prevention.

This book offers a detailed analysis of the experiences of sex workers in Chennai. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, it draws out themes of agency; notions of gender and sexuality; and the HIV prevention industry. While the women's experiences are closely knit into the medical discourse regarding sex workers, sex work emerges as a complicated knot of poverty, desire, women's oppression, love, co-option, and motherhood. The author examines how the sex workers actively negotiate the risks of their industry and suggests alternative discourses on women's sexuality, sexual behaviour and desire, arguing that unless the power imbalances affecting women are addressed, such policies and activities will have little impact. She brings attention to the problems of current policies, discourses and attitudes regarding HIV, sexuality and sex work, and shows how new policies could help to reduce vulnerabilities not only for sex workers, but perhaps for all women in India.

Illustrated by in-depth empirical research from Kenya - one of the most popular country destinations in Africa for sex tourism - this book gathers much-needed statistics and data, and then critically examines the features of tourism and the sex trade, contextualizing this in relation to tourism development. It addresses the conditions which generate this 'social problem' and, while not taking a potentially problematic moralistic stance it questions whether this trade is exploitative in nature, particularly in cases of child sex tourism. It then critically evaluates the current policies in place to regulate the sex tourism industry and provides suggestions for future direction.

Sex Working and the Bible interprets stories of biblical prostitution with activist sex workers and incorporates their social theory of prostitution to engage existing liberation and feminist readings. By reading with sex worker rights activists, unique and challenging interpretations were produced. The Sex Worker Outreach Project (SWOP-USA) conducted group readings of four biblical narratives: the story of Rahab in Joshua 2 and 6, the story of Solomon and the two prostitutes of 1 Kings 3: 16-28, the anointing woman traditions (Jn 12: 1-8/Mk 14: 3-9/Mt 26: 6-13/Lk 7: 36-50) and the apocalyptic vision of the whore Babylon in Revelation 17-19. Rahab is read as a rebellious police snitch who sides with the revolutionaries. The story of Solomon's riddle is interpreted as a parody according to sex worker experiences of a corrupt justice system. Anointing woman is explored as a prostitute avatar of the Goddess of love who performs an act of erotic worship with Jesus. The whore Babylon is examined in light of violence experienced by sex workers. This study also demonstrates and challenges interpretive trends that make sex workers invisible in feminist and liberation readings of biblical prostitution. The book concludes with recommendations for an inclusive liberation hermeneutic that engages sex worker standpoints.

Interrogating supply/demand from an inter- and multi-disciplinary perspective, this collection broadens engagement beyond the routine analysis of the locus of violence in prostitution and the validity of the prostitute's consent. A focus on the supply/demand dynamic brings into play a range of other societal, economic and psychological factors such as the social construction of sexuality, the viability of alternative choices for prostitutes and clients, and the impact of regulatory regimes on the provision of sexual services. The factors which underlie each component of the supply/demand dyad are also studied and an examination is made of their dynamic interrelation. The collection emphasizes the importance of rendering policy makers alert to the evidence emerging from empirical studies conducted in different fields of enquiry, in the hope of moving beyond polarity and politics at the local, national and international level.

This is the only such book to be attempted in Australia. It covers over 200 years of history, and includes discussion of sexual exchange in Australia prior to European colonisation. It is relevant to the whole of Australia as well as having a strong international dimension: the content is based on extensive research from archives in all Australian capital cities as well as London and Geneva and draws on oral interviews with women over a period of more than 25 years. It makes extensive use of narratives, individual life stories and the 'voices' of prostitutes to construct an engaging, accessible text.""Selling Sex"" provides the first comprehensive history of prostitution in Australia from before European colonisation to the present, and situates this history within an international context of labour migration and policy formation. It draws on extensive archival research and interviews to chart the ways in which prostitution contributed not just to women's economic survival but also to broader processes of colonisation and nation-building.

This book critically analyzes the sex industry in Israel, using feminist concepts and scholarship to elaborate on the power of prostitution to shape a world in which women are objects for fulfilling men's desires. A comprehensive collection of research-based articles that examine prostitution, trafficking in women and pornography from divergent disciplinary angles, it reveals the interconnectedness of these three aspects of the sex trade which objectifies, commercializes and exploits human - and in particular women's - sexuality. Showing these practices to be embedded in a capitalist and patriarchal oppressive context that is accommodated by state institutions, this volume rejects the argument that it is possible to choose prostitution, and that feminist pornography is possible. With case studies including the conspicuous context of migration that attracts sex traffickers, the liberal discourse introduced by cinema, the media and the arts that serve to legitimate prostitution and pornography, the chauvinist-macho culture that perceives and treats women as sex objects, and the issues of male prostitution and men as clients, Prostitution, Pornography and Trafficking in Women: Israel's Blood Money constitutes a study of Israel as a unique context in which the sex trade can prosper, in spite of geographical, religious and institutional constraints. As such, it will be of interest to scholars of sociology, anthropology, history, cultural studies and gender and women's studies.

Winner of the MLA's 2016 Alan Bray Prize for Best Book in GLBTQ Studies How BDSM can be used as a metaphor for black female sexuality. The Color of Kink explores black women's representations and performances within American pornography and BDSM (bondage and discipline, domination and submission, and sadism and masochism) from the 1930s to the present, revealing the ways in which they illustrate a complex and contradictory negotiation of pain, pleasure, and power for black women. Based on personal interviews conducted with pornography performers, producers, and professional dominatrices, visual and textual analysis, and extensive archival research, Ariane Cruz reveals BDSM and pornography as critical sites from which to rethink the formative links between Black female sexuality and violence. She explores how violence becomes not just a vehicle of pleasure but also a mode of accessing and contesting power. Drawing on feminist and queer theory, critical race theory, and media studies, Cruz argues that BDSM is a productive space from which to consider the complexity and diverseness of black women's sexual practice and the mutability of black female sexuality. Illuminating the cross-pollination of black sexuality and BDSM, The Color of Kink makes a unique contribution to the growing scholarship on racialized sexuality.

Child prostitution became one of the key concerns of the international community in the 1990s. World congresses were held, international and national laws were changed and concern over "cemmercially sexually exploited children" rose dramatically. Rarely, however, were the children who worked as prostitutes consulted of questioned in this process, and the voices of these children brought into focus. This book is the first to address the children directly, to examine their daily lives, their motivations and their perceptions of what they do. Based on 15 months of fieldwork in a Thai tourist community that survived through child prostitution, this book draws on anthropological theories on childhood and kinship to contextualize the experiences of this group of Thai child prostitutes and to contrast these with the stereotypes held of them by those outside their community.

This book is about the surprisingly neglected area of the regulation of sex. It describes and discusses the ways in which various sexual activities are controlled, regulated and made illegal and/or deviant and illicit. Its primary focus is upon the multiple and complex social controls (laws, statutory regulations, professional/occupational codes, normative frameworks) constructing, constituting and shaping how we 'do' sex, and deals with sex that is both illicit (deviant, illegal) and illegal (criminal, offending). The book challenges the idea that early twenty-first century Britain is increasingly sexually 'liberated' by suggesting that this very 'openness' provides the conditions in which all sexual activities have become increasingly subject to regulation and control. By examining the policies and laws about various sexually activities, and the social conditions underpinning them, alongside existing research and theoretical literature the authors have provided an accessible text on the sociology of sex.

This is a richly detailed account of the way the sex industry works, and one of the few empirical studies that investigates the off street industry in Britain. The book seeks to advance a greater knowledge of the social organisation of the sex industry by uncovering the day-to-day activities of women involved in the indoor markets. What types of occupational risks do women experience in work of this kind? How do these hazards affect their personal lives? A key concern throughout the book is to assess whether women are passive victims of the circumstances of prostitution or whether they understand and calculate their responses to danger. Drawing upon both sociological and criminological theories, and on detailed research in the city of Birmingham, the author addresses these questions by estimating the rationality of those responses and by providing a measure of how women make sense of different risks. Sex Work: a risky business describes how women create complex psychological and emotional techniques to maintain their sanity while selling sex, and goes on to argue that the indoor sex markets in Britain have a distinct 'occupational culture' with a set of social norms, code of conduct and moral hierarchies that make it a high regulated workplace despite its illicit and sometimes illegal nature.

"Sex Work, Mobility and Health in Europe" looks at economic and social restructuring, concerns about infection, and recent policy developments on prostitution in terms of the rights and health of sex workers, freedom of movement and service needs. Major changes have taken place in the sex industry in Europe. Over the past decade we have seen increasing migration and diversification, alongside major shifts in policy towards the industry. There is very little published on sex work in Europe, but a growing demand for information and analyses of the situation today from people working on health, policy, gender and employment.

How should issues of sexuality and power in China be interpreted? Are China scholars really able to translate linguistically and culturally the 'truth' of China? And to what extent do fieldwork and interviews locate a study in the 'real life' of a country and its people? China, Sex and Prostitution is a topical and important critique of recent scholarship in China Studies, feminist studies and social theory. By examining recent literature on sexuality, power and prostitution, this book engages with contemporary debates concerning the application of mainstream theories in contexts other than those in which they were originally formulated. Beginning controversially with a critique of China scholarship since the Cold War, the text moves on to an examination of recent writing on sexuality in China. Through an analysis of government control and policing of prostitution the work highlights the unproductive nature of feminist debates over the most favorable responses to prostitution. It suggests that the very diversity of prostitution businesses and practices that exist in present day China show that it is not possible to characterize 'sex work' as a target for governmental intervention.

Social historians, literary scholars, sociologists, and woman's studies scholars and students will be interested in this first fully annotated bibliography on prostitution in Great Britain. The bibliography features extensive analytical descriptions of 390 published primary and secondary sources directly related to prostitution in the British Isles from Tudor through Victorian times. A lengthy introduction provides an overview of the history of prostitution in Britain, as well as discussing the evolution of the various forms of writing on this subject, thus placing the bibliography in historical perspective. Works covered include government documents, broadsides, pamphlets, diaries, doctoral dissertations, and books, book chapters, and scholarly articles, published through 1992. Annotations include further references to hundreds of other related works. And a detailed subject index permits students and scholars to quickly find relevant works dealing with prostitution and a large number of related subjects, including venereal disease, crime, costume, fictional works and characters, sexuality, the theater, domestic servants, and homosexuality.

Witty nicknames, crude jokes, public nudity and lavish monuments, all of these things distinguished Greek courtesans from respectable citizen women in ancient Greece. Although prostitutes appear as early as archaic Greek lyric poetry, our fullest accounts come from the late second century CE. Drawing on Book 13 of the Athenaeus' Deipnosophistae, which contains almost all known references to Hetaeras from all periods of Greek literature, Laura K. McClure has created a window onto the ways ancient Greeks perceived the courtesan and the role of the courtesan in Greek life.

Witty nicknames, crude jokes, public nudity and lavish monuments, all of these things distinguished Greek courtesans from respectable citizen women in ancient Greece. Although prostitutes appear as early as archaic Greek lyric poetry, our fullest accounts come from the late second century CE. Drawing on Book 13 of the Athenaeus' Deipnosophistae, which contains almost all known references to Hetaeras from all periods of Greek literature, Laura K. McClure has created a window onto the ways ancient Greeks perceived the courtesan and the role of the courtesan in Greek life.

Sex Tourism examines the issues which emerge from sex worker-client interactions and from tourists visiting 'sex destinations'. It is a comprehensive summary of past research by academics and original primary and secondary research by the authors and has examples from Asia, Australasia and the USA.

The authors have generated new models to show different dimensions of sex tourism, which normalise at least some components of the sex industry, and represent a new way of looking at sex tourism by challenging the preconceived perceptions that some people have of sex tourism or confirm the impression of others. Sex Tourism looks at issues of importance to those working in tourism, women's studies, gender studies and social change.

"Sex Work Matters" brings sex workers, scholars and activists together to present pioneering essays on the economics and sociology of sex work. From insights by sex workers on how they handle money, intimate relationships and daily harassment by police, to the experience of male and transgender sex work, this fascinating and original book offers theoretical discussions as well empirical case studies, providing new ways to link theory with lived experiences. The result is a vital new contribution to sex-worker rights. The book will equip any reader with new theoretical frameworks for understanding the sex industry, challenging readers to explore the topic of sex work in new ways, especially its cultural, economic and political dimensions.

Series Information:
Latin American Studies

Prostitution: Prevention and Reform in England, 1860-1914 is the first comprehensive overview of attempts to eradicate prostitution from English society, including discussion of early attempts at reform and prevention through to the campaigns of the social purists.
Prostitution looks in depth at the various reform institutions which were set up to house prostitutes, analysing the motives of the reformers as well as daily life within these penitentiaries.
This indispensable book reveals:
* reformers' attitudes towards prostitutes and prostitution * daily life inside reform institutions
* attempts at moral education
* developments in moral health theories
* influence of eugenics
* attempts at suppressing prostitution.

Trafficking in women and children for the sex trade is a burgeoning industry. In some cases women knowingly enter the world of commercial sex, albeit as an act of economic desperation and propelled by concern for their family. In others, women seeking better conditions and remuneration overseas are deceived by attractive package deals and offers of well-paid jobs, only to be forced into prostitution on their arrival. The victims are women not only from developing countries, but also from eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, who are trafficked to western Europe, Israel, and the United States. The exploitation of children is even more pronounced and involves sex tourism., pornography and the circulation of pornographic images via the Internet and World Wide Web.