The Subject of Prostitution offers a distinctive analysis of the links between prostitution and social theory in order to advance a critical analysis of the relationship of law to sex work. Using the lens of social theory to disrupt fixed meanings the book provides an advanced analytical framework through which to understand the complexity and contingencies of sex work in late modernity. The book analyses contemporary citizenship discourse and the law's ability to meet the competing demands of empowerment by sex workers and protection by radical feminists who view prostitution as the epitome of patriarchal sexual and economic relations. Its central focus is the role of law in both structuring and responding to the 'problem of prostitution'. By developing a distinctive constitutive approach to law, the author offers a more advanced analytical framework from which to understand how law matters in contemporary debates and also suggests how law could matter in more imaginative justice reforms. This is particularly pertinent in a period of unprecedented legal reform, both internationally and nationally, as legal norms simultaneously attempt to protect, empower and criminalise parties involved in the purchase of sexual services. The Subject of Prostitution aims to overcome the current aporia in these debates and suggest new ways to engage with the subject and law. As such, The Subject of Prostitution provides an advanced theoretical resource for policymakers, researchers and activists involved in contemporary struggles over the meanings and place of sex work in late modernity.

In the last third of the eighteenth-century, Bristol and Nantes were two of the most active commercial ports of England and France, despite a slowdown of their economy. Their economies were based primarily on the maritime trade, but they developed alongside Atlantic industries that attracted many migrants, both male and female, from the surrounding countryside and from abroad. The busy urban environment, the high number of sailors and single men migrating to the port, and the decline of female house based proto-industries, were factors encouraging the development of prostitution. How prostitution is perceived in the context of social control and urban change is key to understanding the evolving attitudes to gender and sexuality in the eighteenth century. In this comparative study, Marion Pluskota offers an analysis of the lives of prostitutes that looks beyond a purely criminal perspective, and which encompasses their roles within their families, relationships and social networks. Using police and judicial records, she provides a valuable corrective to the narrow analysis of prostitutes in terms of immorality or deviance. The unique forms of development and problems faced by port cities in the early modern period make them particularly interesting subjects for comparative history. This book is well suited for those who study social history, gender and women's history.

The eighteenth century saw profound changes in the way prostitution was represented in literary and visual culture. This collection of essays focuses on the variety of ways that the sex trade was represented in popular culture of the time, across different art forms and highlighting contradictory interpretations.

First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

All over the world, men as well as women exchange sex for money and other forms of reward, sometimes with other men and sometimes with women. In contrast to female prostitution, however, relatively little is known about male sex work, leaving questions unanswered about the individuals involved: their identities and self-understandings, the practices concerned, and the contexts in which they take place.

This book updates the ground-breaking 1998 volume of the same name with an entirely new selection of chapters exploring health, social, political, economic and human rights issues in relation to men who sell sex. Looking at Europe, North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and the Asia-Pacific, each chapter explores questions such as:

• What is known among the different ways in which men exchange sex for money or other forms of reward?
• What are the major contexts in which sexual exchange takes place?
• What meanings do such practices carry for the different partners involved?
• What are the health and other implications of contemporary forms of male sex work?

Men Who Sell Sex" seeks to push the boundaries both of current personal and social understandings and the practices to which these give rise. It is an important reference work for academics and researchers interested in sex work and men s health including those working in public health, sociology, social work, anthropology, human geography and development studies."

All over the world, men as well as women exchange sex for money and other forms of reward, sometimes with other men and sometimes with women. In contrast to female prostitution, however, relatively little is known about male sex work, leaving questions unanswered about the individuals involved: their identities and self-understandings, the practices concerned, and the contexts in which they take place.

This book updates the ground-breaking 1998 volume of the same name with an entirely new selection of chapters exploring health, social, political, economic and human rights issues in relation to men who sell sex. Looking at Europe, North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and the Asia-Pacific, each chapter explores questions such as:

• What is known among the different ways in which men exchange sex for money or other forms of reward?
• What are the major contexts in which sexual exchange takes place?
• What meanings do such practices carry for the different partners involved?
• What are the health and other implications of contemporary forms of male sex work?

Men Who Sell Sex" seeks to push the boundaries both of current personal and social understandings and the practices to which these give rise. It is an important reference work for academics and researchers interested in sex work and men s health including those working in public health, sociology, social work, anthropology, human geography and development studies."

(Sub)Urban Sexscapes brings together a collection of theoretically-informed and empirically rich case studies from internationally renowned and emerging scholars highlighting the contemporary and historical geographies and regulation of the commercial sex industry. Contributions in this edited volume examine the spatial and regulatory contours of the sex industry from a range of disciplinary perspectives-urban planning, urban geography, urban sociology, and, cultural and media studies-and geographical contexts-Australia, the UK, US and North Africa. In overall terms, (Sub)urban Sexscapes highlights the mainstreaming of commercial sex premises-sex shops, brothels, strip clubs and queer spaces-and products-sex toys, erotic literature and pornography-now being commonplace in night time economy spaces, the high street, suburban shopping centres and the home. In addition, the aesthetics of commercial and alternative sexual practices-BDSM and pornography-permeate the (sub)urban landscape via billboards, newspapers and magazines, television, music videos and the Internet. The role of sex, sexuality and commercialized sex, in contributing to the general character of our cities cannot be ignored. In short, there is a need for policy-makers to be realistic about the historical, contemporary and future presence of the sex industry. Ultimately, the regulation of the sex industry should be informed by evidence as opposed to moral panics. *** Winner of the Planning Institute of Australia (WA) 2015 Award for Excellence in Cutting Edge Research and Teaching ***

Did she choose that?' Or, more normatively, 'Why would she choose that?' This book critiques and offers an alternative to these questions, which have traditionally framed law and policy discussions circulating around controversial genderized practices. It examines the simplicity and incompleteness of choice-based rhetoric and of presumptions that women's conduct is shaped, in an absolute way, either by choice or by coercion. This book develops an analytical framework that aims to discern the meaning and value that women may ascribe to morally ambiguous practices. An analysis of law's approach to polygamy, surrogacy and sex work, particularly in Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia, provides a basis for evaluating the choice-coercion binary and for contemplating alternate modes for assessing, from a law and policy standpoint, the palatability of social practices that appear pernicious to women. Weaving together interdisciplinary research, an innovative analytical framework for assessing choices ostensibly harmful to women, and a critique of the legal rules governing such choices, this book bears relevance for students, scholars, practicing jurists and policymakers seeking a richer understanding of conduct that moves women to the margins of law and society.

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.

He'd been her friend for years. He said he loved her. Then she realised she didn't know him at all... When everything seemed to be falling apart in Sophie's life, she was thankful for her friend Kas, who was always at the end of a phone, ready to listen and to offer comfort and advice. Her father's cold dislike of her and then her parents' divorce had left her with a deep distrust of men. But, gradually, Kas made her believe there was at least one man who truly cared about her. But she was wrong. At first when Sophie went to stay for a few days with Kas in Italy, he was kind and caring, as he'd always been. But three days after she arrived, everything changed. His eyes were cold as he described the things he expected her to do 'for love'. But soon Sophie's bewilderment turned to fear as he punched and shouted at her and threatened to kill her adored younger brothers if she didn't do exactly as she was told...to sell her body on the streets to pay off Kas's debts. Terrified of Kas, the police and the men whose pleasures she was forced to satisfy, Sophie worked seven nights a week for the next six months on the dark and lonely streets of a town in northern Italy. Subjected regularly to Kas's verbal, mental and physical abuse, she knew she would never escape. And then, one day, after she'd been admitted to hospital with stomach pains - and knowing that Kas would kill her if he found out - she dared to phone her mother. But who would reach her first?

China, Sex and Prostitution is a topical and important critique of recent scholarship in China studies concerning sexuality, prostitution and policing. Jeffrey's arguments are constructed in the form of detailed analysis of a wide range of primary texts, including documents, press reports, police report, and policy and legal pronouncements, and secondary literature in both English and Chinese. The work engages with some key debates in the fields of cultural and gender studies and will be welcomed by scholars in these areas as well as by China specialists, sociologists and anthropologists.

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.

This book is a critical feminist analysis of sex trafficking. Arguing that trafficking in girls and women is a product of the social construction of gender and other dimensions of power and status within a particular culture and at a particular historical moment, this book offers the necessary locally grounded analysis. Focusing on the case of Nepal, from where 5,000 to 7,000 thousands of Nepali girls and women are trafficked each year primarily to India, Mary Crawford assesses how the social construction of trafficking - the concept and its representation in discourse - are influenced by the dynamics of gender, caste, and the development establishment. The defining figure is an innocent, naive young girl being lured or duped into leaving the safety of her village. The trafficking victim is portrayed as "backward"; however, she is "backward" in specific ways that resonate with Nepal's struggle to resist and yet encompass Western influence. This view may lead to paradoxical effects in which efforts to protect girls and women instead restrict their human rights. Rather than seeing women as universalized victims, Crawford assesses how the social construction of trafficking in a particular society affects girls and women who live in that society. In this book, the author's voice as a woman, a feminist, and a social scientist immersed in a "foreign" way of life, illuminates aspects of this process and highlights the subjectivity of urban women. It makes the connection between Nepali subjectivities and a problem of international significance, the trafficking of girls and women. The book provides a model for other locally grounded accounts of sex trafficking to counter the universalizing rhetoric of the mass media and some anti-trafficking activists, filling a niche in South Asian Studies and Women's Studies.

In this special issue, contributors theorize sexual labor as both work and a site of labor resistance and transformation. Rather than critiquing sex work itself, they consider what scholars of migration, sexuality, digital labor, and service work can learn from sex workers' interventions into their own conditions, including critical insights into power and control, gendered labor, and collective organizing. They critique the introduction of respectability politics into sex worker activism; study the insights of Black trans women sex workers into labor and the pleasures it affords; and explore erotic labor as an escape from work that leads the way to an antiwork politics of refusal and community care. Contributors to this issue highlight sex workers' own production of knowledge for navigating racial capitalism, state violence, and economic precarity. Contributors. femi babylon, Camille Barbagallo, Heather Berg, Thaddeus Blanchette, Vanessa Carlisle, Julian Glover, Kate Hardy, Annie McClanahan, Gregory Mitchell, Jon-David Settell, Svati Shah, Jayne Swift

SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA GOLD DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION 'A gripping, unputdownable masterpiece' Hallie Rubenhold, author of the Baillie Gifford prize-winning The Five 'Ingenious history writing' Mail on Sunday 'Extraordinary' Guardian 'A masterwork' Australian Book Review 'Imaginative and compelling, impassioned and powerful, and deeply, deeply moving' Matt Houlbrook, author of Prince of Tricksters Lydia Harvey was meant to disappear. She was young and working class; she'd walked the streets, worked in brothels, and had no money of her own. In 1910, politicians, pimps, policemen and moral reformers saw her as just one of many 'girls who disappeared'. But when she took the stand to give testimony at the trial of her traffickers, she ensured she'd never be forgotten. Historian Julia Laite traces Lydia's extraordinary life from her home in New Zealand to the streets of Buenos Aires and safe houses of London. She also reveals the lives of international traffickers Antonio Carvelli and his mysterious wife Marie, the policemen who tracked them down, the journalists who stoked the scandal, and Eilidh MacDougall, who made it her life's mission to help women who'd been abused and disbelieved. Together, they tell an immersive story of crime, travel and sexual exploitation, of lives long overlooked and forgotten by history, and of a world transforming into the 20th century.

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.

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.

Erotic dance is one of the most contentious issues in feminist debates today and a source of fascination in media and popular cultural representations. Yet, why is it that we currently know so little about those who perform erotic dance for female customers, or the experiences of these spectators themselves? The result of a unique investigation within two of the UK's leisure venues, Erotic Performance and Spectatorship seeks to rectify the aforementioned lack of insight. Through vivid ethnographies of a lesbian leisure venue and a male strip show, Pilcher's research advances key debates about the gender and sexual politics of erotic dance, whilst simultaneously relating these to debates about the sex industry more widely. This book also subverts previous assumptions that only women perform erotic dance and only men spectate. Thus, this book stands out amongst other academic accounts, developing the debate beyond the established focus on erotic dance as either empowering or degrading. This new contribution to the study of erotic dance - which provides a fresh theoretical perspective combining queer and feminist theorising, in addition to rich empirical evidence - will appeal to academic researchers and both undergraduate and postgraduate students within the fields of sociology, gender studies, sexuality studies, gay & lesbian studies, feminism and other neighbouring disciplines. It will also be of interest to feminist and sex work activists, policy makers, and practitioners.

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.

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.

"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.

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.