The Cultural Politics of European Prostitution Reform: Governing Loose Women

ISBN-13: 9781137517166 / Angielski / Twarda / 2015 / 247 str.

Greggor Mattson

Opis

Between 1998 and 2004, eleven out of the fifteen parliaments of the European Union (EU) countries debated whether to regulate prostitution at the national level, something that had, until then, been regulated by cities. Fears about globalization and the transfer of sovereignty to the EU created a context in which nations asserted themselves by imposing national standards to protect vulnerable women, strengthening states in the face of "global" pressures. Prostitution reforms allowed governments to apprehend women who are "loose" in the sense that they lack formal or clear connections to state benefits, national labor markets, or international human rights protections. Case studies of the first four EU countries that reformed prostitution, The Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, and Finland, are told through ninety in-depth interviews with people who helped craft, implement, or enforce new prostitution policies. Departing from previous accounts that stress the differences within these debates, The Cultural Politics of European Prostitution Reform instead analyzes their commonalities, foregrounding the increasing moral power of the state in a globalizing world and the endurance of national cultural difference.

Recenzje

"This work will likely be read by scholars interested in prostitution specifically and sexuality more broadly, where Mattson succeeds best is in taking a specific social problem and showing how it encapsulates cultural dynamics of an institutional nature. ... Mattson's use of key informant interviews provides a specific and substantial contribution to our understanding of how social problems are articulated 'in the trenches' by activists and bureaucrats." (Bayliss J. Camp, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 122 (4), January, 2017)

Spis treści

1. Governing Loose Women: The New Politics of Prostitution
2. States of Anxiety: Prostitution Reform as a Symptom of European Integration
3. Dutch Pragmatism and the Difficulties of Professionalizing Prostitution
4. Legislating Peace for Women: Sweden ' 's Sex Purchase Act
5. German Consensus for Sex Work, Compromise Over Sex Business
6. Finland on the Fence: Abolitionist Compromise at the Edge of Europe
7. Seeing Transnational Problems Through National Lenses
8. The Truly Trafficked Woman, and Other Globalization Anxieties
9. Methodological Afterword: Identity Work and the Interviewer

O autorze

Greggor Mattson is Associate Professor of Sociology at Oberlin College, USA.