Street Corner Secrets

Sex, Work, and Migration in the City of Mumbai

Svati P Shah (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

280 Seiten

2014
Duke University Press (Verlag)
978-0-8223-5698-1 (ISBN)

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Street Corner Secrets challenges widespread notions of sex work in India by examining solicitation in three spaces within the city of Mumbai that are seldom placed within the same analytic frame—brothels, streets, and public day-wage labor markets (nakas), where sexual commerce may be solicited discretely alongside other income-generating activities. Focusing on women who migrated to Mumbai from rural, economically underdeveloped areas within India, Svati P. Shah argues that selling sexual services is one of a number of ways women working as laborers may earn a living, demonstrating that sex work, like day labor, is a part of India's vast informal economy. Here, various means of earning—legitimized or stigmatized, legal or illegal—overlap or exist in close proximity to one another, shaping a narrow field of livelihood options that women navigate daily. In the course of this rich ethnography, Shah discusses policing practices, migrants' access to housing and water, the idea of public space, critiques of states and citizenship, and the discursive location of violence within debates on sexual commerce. Throughout, the book analyzes the epistemology of prostitution, and the silences and secrets that constitute the discourse of sexual commerce on Mumbai's streets.

Svati P. Shah is Assistant Professor in the Department of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Preface ix Acknowledgments xiii Introduction 1 1. Day Wage Labor and Migration: Making Ends Meet 41 2. Sex, Work, and Silence from the Construction of Workers' Naka 77 3. Sex Work and the Street 113 4. Red-Light Districts, Rescue, and Real Estate 147 Conclusion. Agency, Livelihoods, and Spaces 189 Notes 207 Bibliography 231 Index 247

Reihe/Serie	Next Wave: New Directions in Women's Studies
Zusatzinfo	6 photos, 2 maps
Verlagsort	North Carolina
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	386 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie ► Sexualität / Partnerschaft
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Gender Studies
ISBN-10	0-8223-5698-8 / 0822356988
ISBN-13	978-0-8223-5698-1 / 9780822356981
Zustand	Neuware