Seminar: The Gendered and Moral Economies of Sex Work in a Globalizing World (Dr. FitzGerald)

Mittwoch, 12.00 – 14.00 Uhr, IfS, R. 209

The notion that sex work is the ‘world’s oldest profession’ suggests both that it has a long history, and that this history is a homogeneous one based on unchanging gender roles and socio-economic relations. In this seminar students will learn to question the latter assumption, and examine the ways in which sex work and social attitudes towards it, and state attempts to regulate or suppress it have changed over time. We will use these findings to examination of the contemporary, global sex industry. Key to our discussion will be the discourses of the ‘gendered’ and ‘moral’ economies of sex work. We will also examine philosophical, theoretical and political debates over sex work with a particular emphasis on the difficult questions of consent, coercion, and the commodification of sexual labour that still animate public discussion about sex work today. Our discussion will engage with a variety of topics in the field, such as erotic dancing, pornography and sex trafficking. A significant part of our discussion will be dedicated to the lived experiences of sex workers. We will take a close look at the realities of life in the sex sector. This seminar is organised thematically. Through the readings and assignments, the class will investigate the extent to which sex work and its regulation have shaped and been shaped by particular notions of space, law, gender, the body, ethnicity and ‘race’, and the ways in which the politics of sexuality have interacted with international humanitaria-nism, political economy, migration and globalization