Sex Work in Southeast Asia : The Place of Desire in a Time of AIDS

ISBN-13: 9780415218054 / Angielski / Twarda / 2000 / 160 str.

Lisa Law

Opis

Southeast Asian sex workers are stereotypically understood as passive victims of the political economy, and submissive to western men. The advent of HIV/AIDS only compounds this image, as sex workers come to represent the victims of, and vectors for, a deadly virus. From sensationalist stories of Bangkok bar girls to United Nations conventions on global sex trafficking, the media, activists and academics alike condemn uneven processes of economic development and uneven relations of power in the sale of sex. Whilst the goal of such commentary may be to transform the economic and social relationships that make sex tourism a reality, the stereotypical images it produces often bear little resemblance to the everyday experience of sex work. Sex Work in Southeast is a cultural critique of HIV/AIDS prevention programmes targetting sex tourism industries in Southeast Asia. Drawing on experiences of community-based organisations, national governments and emerging opinions from the international prostitutes rights movement, it highlights how feminist and postcolonial politics shape practices of global AIDS prevention.

Spis treści

1. Introduction 2. Rethinking the prostitute subject: bodies, subjectivity and space 3. Cartographies of desire: mapping Southeast Asian sex industries 4. Negotiating the bar: sex, money and the uneasy politics of third space 5. Beyond the bar: lives, community and transient identities 6. Sex work, HIV/AIDS and blame: mandatory HIV antibody testing 7. Prostitute victim/sex worker agent: the global discourse of NGOs 8. Conclusion

O autorze

Lisa Law is Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at the Gender Relations Project, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra.