Sex Trafficking in Southeast Asia: A History of Desire, Duty, and Debt (ASAA Women in Asia Series)

Description

This book brings an important new perspective to the study of sex trafficking by considering the different types of social contracts which existed in the past that had sexual labour or activity as an inherent component. It outlines the nature of these social institutions – marriage, temporary marriage, debt bondage, and slavery – which were recognized in local law, carried no stigma, and endured for long periods. It discusses how labour pledged in return for a loan of cash or as a result of a punishment dictated by the state often included sexual labour, and how this could take the form of servicing the master of the house, his guests, or foreign travellers, who paid the debt-holder for the privilege, and how even wives of different ranks, temporary or permanent, and children, were pledged as sureties for loans. The book, which covers the modern states of Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, argues that cultural norms are not static, that sexual contracts are more complicated than simply ‘marriage’ or ‘prostitution’, and that as trafficking for sexual purposes increases, those engaging in humanitarian intervention should improve their knowledge of the historical underpinnings of cultural understandings of familial and contractual obligations. Cover Title Copyright Dedication Contents List of figures Series Editor’s foreword Acknowledgements Introduction Situating desire, duty, and debt Critiquing ‘development’ Public policy as an avenue of historical inquiry Western versus culturally nuanced feminism Sources The chapters in this book Notes 1 Sexual contracts The role of the individual in mainland Southeast Asia The role of Buddhism in defining individual rights and responsibilities Sexual contracts and discourses of self Defining sexual contracts Notes 2 Presumptive permanence The ‘ranks’ of marriage Colonial-era codification Triple standards Legacies of colonial failure Notes 3 ‘Other’ women Relative rights in the pre-colonial period Colonial confusion Cultural continuance Notes 4 Slavery and sexual labour Slavery prior to c.1800 Attempting abolition Notes 5 Diligent daughters Debt bondage to c.1800 Colonial (failed) interventions The abolition of slavery The eradication of ‘slavery’ – but not of debt bondage Notes 6 Geographies of desire, duty, and debt The commodification of sex Women as vectors Traffic panic Notes Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index