Negotiating Sex Work: Unintended Consequences of Policy and Activism

Description

Globally, discussions about sex work focus on exploitation. The media regularly provides us with stories about teen girls coerced to perform sexual acts for money, frequently beaten and robbed by their pimps or traffickers. While one would have to be hard-pressed to deny that sex workers are victimized, the popular media and our political leaders emphasize sex work as exclusively exploitative. In Negotiating Sex Work, Carisa R. Showden and Samantha Majic present a series of essays that depict sex work as an issue far more complex than generally perceived. Positions on sex work are primarily divided between those who consider that selling sexual acts is legitimate work and those who consider it a form of exploitation. Organized into three parts, Negotiating Sex Work rejects this either/or framework and offers instead diverse and compelling contributions that aim to reframe these viewpoints. Part I addresses how knowledge about sex work and sex workers is generated. The next section explores how nations and political actors who claim to protect individuals in sex work often further marginalize them. Finally, part III examines sex workers’ own political-organizational efforts to combat laws and policies that deem them deviant, sinful, or total victims. A timely and necessary intervention into sex work debates, this volume challenges how policy makers and the broader public regard sex workers’ capacity to advocate for their own interests. Contributors: Cheryl Auger; Sarah Beer, Dawson College, Montreal; Michele Tracy Berger, U of North Carolina–Chapel Hill; Thaddeus Gregory Blanchette, Federal U of Rio de Janeiro; Raven Bowen; Gregg Bucken-Knapp, U of Gothenburg, Sweden; Ana Paula da Silva, Federal U of Viçosa; Valerie Feldman; Gregor Gall, U of Bradford; Kathleen Guidroz, Georgetown U; Annie Hill, U of Minnesota; Johan Karlsson Schaffer, U of Oslo; Edith Kinney, Mills College; Yasmin Lalani; Pia Levin; Alexandra Lutnick; Tamara O’Doherty, U of the Fraser Valley, British Columbia; Joyce Outshoorn, U of Leiden; Francine Tremblay, Concordia U, Montreal. Cover Contents Acknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction: The Politics of Sex Work Part I. Sex Work and the Politics of Knowledge Production 1. Researching Sexuality: The Politics-of-Location Approach for Studying Sex Work 2. Beyond Prescientific Reasoning: The Sex Worker Environmental Assessment Team Study 3. Participant-Driven Action Research (PDAR) with Sex Workers in Vancouver Part II. Producing the Sex Worker: Law, Politics, and Unintended Consequences 4. Demanding Victims: The Sympathetic Shift in British Prostitution Policy 5. Criminalized and Licensed: Local Politics, the Regulation of Sex Work, and the Construction of “Ugly Bodies” 6. Bad Girls and Vulnerable Women: An Anthropological Analysis of Narratives Regarding Prostitution and Human Trafficking in Brazil 7. Raids, Rescues, and Resistance: Women’s Rights and Thailand’s Response to Human Trafficking 8. The Contested Citizenship of Sex Workers: The Case of the Netherlands 9. Comrades, Push the Red Button! Prohibiting the Purchase of Sexual Services in Sweden but Not in Finland Part III. Negotiating Status: The Promises and Limits of Sex Worker Organizing 10. Collective Interest Organization among Sex Workers 11. Sex Work Politics and the Internet: Carving Out Political Space in the Blogosphere 12. Gender Relations and HIV/AIDS Education in the Peruvian Amazon: Female Sex Worker Activists Creating Community 13. Sex Workers’ Rights Organizations and Government Funding in Canada Contributors Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z