Please circulate widely.
Call for Papers: 115th AAA Annual Meeting 'Evidence, Accident, Discovery'
16th-20th Nov. 2016, Minneapolis
Title: Meanings of Money and Sex Work: Overturning the Predictability of Evidence
Chair: Lorraine Nencel (VU University, Amsterdam)
Naomi van Stapele (VU University, Amsterdam)
Ida Sabelis (VU University Amsterdam)
Discussants: Carole Vance (Columbia University)
Denise Brennan (Georgetown University)
An iron-clad relationship seems to exist between money and sex-work. It is one of the defining factors that appears to remove consensual sex between two adults from the romantic domain and transforms it into a commercial activity. This particular notion of money is built on the assumption that where money is involved, romance and intimacy are absent. This assumption has been aptly criticized by anthropologists working on sex work (i.e. Brennan 2004; Cabezas 2011, Shah 2014) who revealed it as a western (capitalist) construct which loses its meaning in other contexts. Moreover, these and other studies have shown that once money has lost its predictability power in this equation, binaries between sex worker and client become increasingly blurred. Thus, money engenders multiple and context-bound meanings, be it cultural, ethnic and/or gendered which shape social relationships. Accordingly, we aim to improve our understanding of the relationships between multiple and context-bound meanings of money and sex work by defining money, as Zelizer illustrates, as plural.
The significances of money in sex work should not be underestimated. Sex work enables many individuals who can be considered vulnerable and living in precarity earn more money than they would most likely earn in other income earning activities. Demographics such as: age, marital status (lone-parent), education level as well as sexual preference (MSM) and gender identity (transgender) are all considered push factors in deciding to do sex work. While this assertion accurately represents the choices of many, it also leads to fixing sex work singularly as ‘a way to earn money’ in sex work studies and NGO programs. As such, money appears to be an innocuous vehicle to make ends meet, thus ignoring implicit value judgments that shape the social relations in which this work is embedded.
Notions of money are, however, never innocent, but have tangible consequences in everyday life. This is most clearly illustrated in neo-liberal initiatives by NGO’s aimed at economic empowerment (i.e. micro-finance). Many of these programs aim to improve the economic situation of sex workers by offering other ways to make money in exchange for leaving sex work. Hence money from sex work is valued differently, and sex workers are positioned as ‘doing sex work only’, i.e. reducing sex workers’ identities to their livelihood activities. Interestingly, most economic empowerment programs with sex workers are unsuccessful. This can in part be attributed to the ‘neutral’ conceptualization of money which fails to address such underlying assumptions by ignoring the multiple meanings of money in different contexts. By not taking into account that activities such as spending, saving, borrowing, giving, lending, enjoying and consuming are situated in specific contexts, such programs produce predictable outcomes and do not match the lived realities of sex workers.
In this panel, we would like to overturn the predictable assertions and outcomes regarding money and sex work through examining the relationship between sex work and money as embedded in culturally situated relationships that maintain and produce new meanings, relationships and opportunities, while simultaneously enabling sex workers to comply with expectations, demands and pleasures. We welcome papers which approach money and sex work as such, and which critically examine existing evidence concerning this relationship while offering insights that can contribute to enhancing our understanding regarding one of the following subjects:
· Money, sex work and migration
· Money, sex work and clients
· Economic empowerment and sex work
· Meanings of money
· NGO’s, money and sex work
· Money, sex work and violence
· Money, sex work and staying healthy
· Everyday organization of sex work
· Sex trafficking and money
Please send a 250 word abstract to Naomi van Stapele [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> and Lorraine Nencel [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> no later than the 7th of April. You will be notified whether you paper has been accepted at the latest 12th of April. Please note that if your abstract will be chosen, you have to register for
the AAA conference and submit your abstract online before 15th April 2016.
Cited works:
D. Brennan (2004) What's Love Got to Do with It? Transnational Desires and Sex Tourism in the Dominican Republic. Durham: Duke University Press.
A.L. Cabezas (2011) Intimate Encounters: Affective economies in Cuba and the Dominican Republic. European Review of Latina America and Carribean Studies, 91 (Oct.)
S.P. Shah (2014) Street Corner Secrets. Sex, Work, and Migration in the City of Mumbai. Durham: Duke University Press.
V. A. Zelizer (1989) The Social Meaning of Money: “Special Monies”, American Journal of Sociology 95(2).
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