The Naked Anthropologist

Law against buying sex: Yawn, not even on the timeline

2013-05-16T15:05:35Z

Who cares about the law against buying sex? City, a free newspaper like Metro, ran a page recently on sex laws in Sweden. 17 steps to a softer vision of sex A lot has happened on the sex front in the past 100 years. Follow City’s timeline to see how the vision of sex has [...]

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Naked musings on borders, illegality and personal identity

2013-05-12T12:20:08Z

Last week at Gatwick airport, after asking me several apparently random questions presumably intended to trip me up, the official wagged my passport at me frustratedly. I knew what he wanted to ask but couldn’t: Damn it, who are you? These poor foot-soldiers in the war of the borders are required, whilst maintaining a calm [...]

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Good-time girls and other non-professionals taking money for sex

2013-05-05T23:21:26Z

Formalised money-sex exchanges get the attention and conflict: debates about exploitation and violence. Lots of other exchanges are ignored, a line is drawn between commercial and non-commercial sex. But that line is imaginary. Many people who expect to be compensated for their company will never call themselves sex workers or escorts, on the...

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I am not Michael O’Leary, and other meditations on public performance

2013-04-23T09:43:16Z

Photo of Laura Agustín by Workers Solidarity Movement (Ireland) Doing public gigs exposes one to all sorts of comment, some nice and some not so nice. At University College Dublin I sketched out the ideas in Sex at the Margins – a book that began in the early 90s with me listening to Dominican villagers, ten [...]

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The prohibition of things: Deterrence, Punishment and Rescue

2013-04-20T16:02:34Z

The idea of a government outlawing activities accomplishes only one thing clearly: It tells citizens that government has decided something is Wrong and now outlaws doing it. Sending A Message is the principle act behind the Swedish state’s promotion of its law against buying sex, and it is the principle act behind all the other [...]

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Sex at the Margins: How to get the book that named the Rescue Industry

2013-04-14T11:10:07Z

Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry was published by Zed Books in London in 2007 and is distributed in the US through Palgrave Macmillan. I blog often about issues covered in the book, and many of my published articles are available on this website, but to get the full picture, [...]

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A Migrant World of Services: the emotional, sexual and caring services of women

2013-03-31T16:28:16Z

Since I’ll be talking about sex work as a labour issue at the Anarchist Bookfair, I thought I would re-run an early academic publication of mine, A Migrant World of Services. In my quest to understand why so many people disqualify selling sex as a potential job, I looked critically at traditional economic concepts such as [...]

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Sex on Sunday: Beware of the Anarchist Bookfair & its devilish talk on sex work

2013-03-30T23:03:48Z

The Anarchist Bookfair is next Saturday 6 April, and I am looking forward to talking specifically about ideas related to sex work as a job or occupation or livelihood or profession - without giving centre-stage to feminist arguments, or any other -isms for that matter. That does not mean I think feminisms are irrelevant, but [...]

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Dear Students of Sex Work and Trafficking

2013-03-25T20:08:49Z

I receive ever more messages from students doing advanced degrees. Almost invariably they request that I answer their personal questions – usually fundamental, 101-level questions I have written about many times and that one could probably find the answer to by googling (including my name if the question is what would I say). The messages...

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The Em- of Empowerment: Neoliberal missionaries and maternalism

2013-03-08T12:23:01Z

I remember where I first heard the word empowerment. It was a poor, not very attractive place, the kind celebrities visit to have feel-good photos taken of themselves hugging children who appear to adore them. The girls at Somaly Mam’s over-visited home for ex-victims of trafficking are regularly required to perform the emotional work of...

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