Abstract
Susan Dewey and Tonia St. Germain present an impressive ethnographic work devoted to firsthand stories of women working the street and the professionals involved with them: police officers, social workers, case managers, attorneys, and more. The book documents a remarkable project brought to light in this well-written, thought-provoking monograph.
The authors make several arguments throughout the book, the central one being that the professional alliance that is meant to assist women working the street is in fact failing them. When referring to the “alliance,” Dewey and St. Germain bind together the justice system, law enforcement, and social services providers. While there are variations in job orientations and motives, all alliance professionals adhere to the alliance ethos that “focuses on women’s involvement in sex trading and illicit drug use as inherently harmful, mandating sociolegal interventions, and requiring the women to claim personal responsibility for their own situations” (p. 180). Chapter by chapter, the authors underscore that transactional sex is often the only means by which women can provide for themselves and their dependents. Implicated in addiction, homelessness, compromised mental and physical health, and criminal records, women who work the street do not have many other choices. According to the alliance ethos, the illicit behaviors in which women are involved are the result of individual traumas nested in socioeconomic–gendered–geographic realities that are well explained throughout the book. Alliance professionals, according to the authors, are aware of these complex realities in various degrees, but their efforts to police and monitor the women’s illicit activities fail to understand or fully acknowledge women’s convoluted lives. Instead, the alliance views the women’s illicit behaviors as a result of past traumas that need to be treated so that women could break through the cycle of addiction, prostitution, and homelessness: “the alliance ethos situates the individual woman and her decision making as the problem, rather than the constrained socioeconomic contexts in which she must often make very difficult choices” (p. 4). While similar arguments have been presented before, Dewey and St. Germain’s originality and contribution is in the nuanced, uncompromised, and detailed description and analysis of what they frame as “systemic intimacy”: the reality by which street-involved women and alliance professionals engage in an intensive and complex relationship that rarely achieve its goal to help women live better, healthier, and safer lives (p. 13).
The authors present their arguments at the very outset of the introductory chapter along with a thorough presentation of the field in which this ethnography took place. The first author describes with great details her extensive involvement in the field, and the choices she made about where and how to interact with the street-involved women whose lives stand at the center of this book. Noteworthy are the brave reflections throughout the book that recognize the complex relationships and the striking differences between the researchers and the women.
Chapters one to four follow a similar structure: Every chapter opens with a description of a scene taken from the lives of street-involved women. These are captivating ethnographic descriptions, a reminder that this book is nested in real-life experiences of real people. Following is a scholarly definition of the issue at hand: work in chapter one, risk in chapter two, harm reduction in chapter three, and discretion in chapter four. Next the authors turn to present their findings, first with regard to the women and then to the professionals. The presentation of women’s and professionals’ voices and experiences side by side in each chapter represents the “systemic intimacy” that the authors are consistently pointing to throughout the book. Each chapter ends with concluding thoughts that recapture the essence of the chapter. This repeated structure makes for a coherent, easy-to-follow text.
The stories and testimonies in the book, both by women and professionals, were at times too hard to bear, reflecting the harsh, often impossible realities that street-involved women face. The many narratives that are intertwined throughout the pages, a result of the prolonged and extensive field work carried by the first author, make this book an exemplary of ethnographic work. As such, this book can be a good fit for students in ethnography and anthropology courses. The topic and the approach the authors take to deal with street-prostitution and women involved in it make it an excellent book for relevant courses in gender studies. It details the gendered realities of street-involved women while revealing complexities related to prostitution, criminalization, and choice.
Susan Dewey and Tonia St. Germain have delivered a book that is of great significance and contribution to social science scholars and students. Practitioners and policy makers involved with street-involved women also will find this book eye opening. Above all, this book reminded me of how powerful and timely social science research can be.