Abstract
Prahba Kotiswaran, Dangerous Sex, Invisible Labor, Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ, 2011; ISBN 978 0 691 14251 7
This book on sex work in India is a sophisticated, theoretically original and empirically grounded magnum opus, which makes a significant contribution to the literature on sex work and postcolonial studies. This is a highly important book, drawing together a long and detailed ethnographic qualitative study with a fresh analysis of theories on prostitution. The monograph casts a rare light onto the Indian sex industry: we learn about the political economy of sex markets, showing us the economic landscape of commercial sexual labour amongst Indian female sex workers. The reader is taken into the meandering streets of the brothels in Sonagachi in Kolkata, and the dispersed sex work activities in a city in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. For those who have studied the sex industry for many years, this is rich new offerings of insight into the world of women who are often infantilized, ignored or assumed somehow to be unable to control their conditions, experiences and involvement in sex work. The book makes a major contribution to legal scholarship and socio-legal understanding of the relationship between the law, sex work and the State. Legal realism and legal pluralism inform the theoretical discussions which take the often tiresome feminist contributions to an innovative level.
In the first pages we are transported to a rally spontaneously called by sex workers in the labour movement organization, the Durbar Mahila Samawayan Committee, within 24 hours of a sex worker revealing she had been beaten by her landlady because she was late with the rent. The account plunges the reader directly into the streets of Kolkata and the power of collective organizing and campaigning from one of the largest and most successful sex-worker rights movements in the world. This single account illustrates why this book is important: ‘the contrasting images of the protesting sex worker and enslaved sex worker embody profound normative contestations over how we understand the sale of sexual services for money’ (pp. 4). The focus of the book, whilst revealing the DMSC activities, successes and self regulatory influence on sex work in India, sets out specifically to explore what is often left at the margins, if at all, of sex work/feminist debates – that is the life, conditions and politics of the ‘third world’ sex worker.
The book offers what Kotiswaran calls ‘a postcolonical materialist feminist theory of sex work’ towards the end of the monograph. Feminist economics are engaged with, locating Indian sex workers as rational decision makers and actors in their circumstances rather than ‘sex slaves’. The research has integrity as we hear how the author touched the realities of the women’s lives, heard life stories in abundance, as well as participating in political uprisings at local and national levels. Testament to how ethical research in the field can be negotiated, this research shows how gatekeepers can be worked with and a research bargain struck so that the relationship is not one-sided. Kotiswaran tells of her engagement with NGOs and movement politics with the sex workers and advised on prostitution legal reform from a rights-based approach whilst building up networks and contacts through trust and understanding.
After being taken on an intricate journey through the red light districts of Kolkata and the three modes of prostitution that are identified (bonded labour; contractor sex work; and self-employed sex work), the last two chapters demonstrate new and original thought. The realities of the women’s lives enables Kotiswaran to explore a range of legal solutions as possible options. In Chapter 6 ‘Regulating Sex Markets: The Paradoxical Life of the Law’ an analytical model is presented, drawing out various consequences: these include abolitionism and partial decriminalization, complete decriminalization and two versions of legalization. In what Kotiswaran notes as the ‘intractable problems of prostitution law reform’ (pp. 185) we are presented with a clear account of why anti-sex-work thinking (abolitionism) and laws lead to detrimental consequences for sex workers. Drawing on a legal realist framework we come to understand the impact of law on all parties where a criminalized option is adopted. The author analyses the potential impacts of the four core legal options for managing prostitution through the lens of core relationships: labour, service and tenancy. This original and detailed analysis of the actual economic relationships involved in the commercial sex interaction provides the building blocks for establishing the ‘post colonial materialist feminist theory’. Starting from the premise that sex work is work enables the inequalities and exploitation that are present to be exposed and acted upon. Providing a fresh critique of the radical feminist ideas from Barry and Jeffrey (pp. 225 ff.), we can see how some western scholars approach ‘third world sex work’ insensitively. Kotiswaran adds a feminist analysis to the social history of prostitution in India that grew out of British colonial rule. This gendered history is an essential part of understanding sex work, activism and the potential and real impact of the law on sex workers in India and beyond.
University of Leeds, UK