Susan Dewey Livres

Sex workers throughout the world share a uniquely maligned mystique that simultaneously positions them as sexually desirable and socially repulsive. In order to better understand how these processes function cross-culturally, this special issue of Wagadu features thirteen original articles that focus upon the everyday lives of sex workers, very broadly defined as those who exchange intimacy for something of value. This special issue fills a significant gap in the literature by examining how individual biography intersects with structural position to condition certain categories of individuals to believe that their self-esteem, material worth, and possibilities for life improvement are invested in their bodies and sexual labor. Such beliefs inevitably combine with sex workers' knowledge of their marginal, conflicted social status to inform many of their decision-making strategies. Drawing upon research conducted in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, India, Mexico, Thailand, Uganda, the United States, and the United Kingdom by scholars, sex workers and activists, work featured in this special issue illustrates the processes by which sex workers are able to see themselves as agents and entrepreneurs despite pervasive social messages to the contrary.

The book explores the detrimental effects of criminalization on sex workers' health, safety, and rights across China, Canada, and the U.S. It highlights how punitive legal frameworks foster isolation, mistrust of authorities, and hinder access to safe work and housing. Through ethnographic research, it reveals the harsh realities of police harassment and stigma, while also examining how sex workers navigate these challenges through strategies like arrest avoidance and mutual aid. Additionally, it addresses the ethical dilemmas faced by researchers in criminalized environments.

This is a work about people who make their living by engaging in street-based sex trading and criminal justice and social services efforts to curtail it through the work of police officers, public defenders, judges, probation officers, or court-mandated therapeutic treatment providers. Coauthored by an anthropologist and a legal scholar, the text explores these interactions and the cultural context in which they take place by drawing upon six years of ethnographic research with hundreds of women involved in street-based prostitution and illicit drug use, as well as dozens of the criminal justice and social services professionals who regularly interact with them.

A journey into the experiences of incarcerated women in rural areas, revealing how location can reinforce gendered violence. Incarceration is all too often depicted as an urban problem, a male problem, a problem that disproportionately affects people of color. This book, however, takes readers to the heart of the struggles of the outlaw women of the rural West, considering how poverty and gendered violence overlap to keep women literally and figuratively imprisoned. Outlaw Women examines the forces that shape women's experiences of incarceration and release from prison in the remote, predominantly white communities that many Americans still think of as "the Western frontier." Drawing on dozens of interviews with women in the state of Wyoming who were incarcerated or on parole, the authors provide an in-depth examination of women's perceptions of their lives before, during, and after imprisonment. Considering cultural mores specific to the rural West, the authors identify the forces that consistently trap women in cycles of crime and violence in these regions: felony-related discrimination, the geographic isolation that traps women in abusive relationships, and cultural stigmas surrounding addiction, poverty, and precarious interpersonal relationships. Following incarceration, women in these areas face additional, region-specific obstacles as they attempt to reintegrate into society, including limited social services, significant gender wage gaps, and even severe weather conditions that restrict travel. The book ultimately concludes with new, evidence-based recommendations for addressing the challenges these women face.--Publisher website