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Call for Papers
Sexualities: Special Edition
The Cultural Study of Commercial Sex

Given the proliferation of forms of commercial sex, the scarcity of
research—except on ‘prostitution’—is remarkable. The focus is usually on
personal motivations, the morality of the buying-and-selling
relationship, stigma, violence and disease prevention. Questions of
desire and love are usually sidelined; relationships are rarely
contextualised culturally or conceived as complex; concrete sexual
issues are hardly dealt with. Commercial sex is usually disqualified
from cultural research and treated only as a moral issue.

A new field of the cultural study of commercial sex would refer to all
commercial goods and services with an erotic or sexual element—a rich
field of human activities, every one operating in complex socio-cultural
contexts where the meaning of buying and selling sex is not always the same.

Sites of the sex industry: Bars, restaurants, cabarets, clubs, brothels,
discotheques, saunas, massage parlours, sex shops, peep shows, hotel
rooms, flats, bookshops, striptease and lapdance venues, dungeons,
Internet sites, beauty parlours, clubhouses, cinemas, public toilets,
phonelines and occasional sites such as stag and hen events, shipboard
festivities and ‘modelling’, swinging and fetish parties.

Participants in the sex industry: Business owners, bartenders, waiters,
maids, cashiers, guards, drivers, cooks, cleaners, accountants, lawyers,
doctors, travel agents, tourist guides, estate agents, media editors and
entrepreneurs, outreach personnel, researchers—as well as those who sell
sex or its illusions and those who buy it.

The framework is addressed in ‘The Cultural Study of Commercial Sex’, by
Laura Agustín, published in Sexualities, 8:5, 621-34 (2005). The goal of
the special edition is to actively use a cultural framework for
scholarly conceptualisations that do not fit comfortably in the
‘prostitution’ tradition. Scholars from any academic discipline are
encouraged to contribute.

Contributions are particularly welcome that:
- question the discursive division between commercial and non-commercial
sex;
- examine the belief that sex-with-love or sex-with-partners is superior
to paid sex;
- consider concepts of consumption, entertainment and ‘having a good time’;
- explore different notions of desire;
- take into account ethnicity and class, as well as gender.

Deadline for submission of articles of no more than 6500 words: 1
February 2006. Sexualities is a refereed academic journal, so please
note that articles must be reviewed by two anonymous referees before
decisions about publication are made. For inquiries and to submit
contact Laura Agustín at [log in to unmask]

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