1st Edition

Globalization, Prostitution and Sex Trafficking Corporeal Politics

By Elina Penttinen Copyright 2008
    188 Pages
    by Routledge

    192 Pages
    by Routledge

    Globalization has been traditionally interpreted as a phenomenon that takes place at the macro level and is determined by states and markets. This volume takes a different approach to understanding globalization, showing how through the global sex trade, globalization is embodied and enacted by individuals.

    Elina Penttinen illustrates how the global sex industry feeds on complex global flows. Drawing on extensive fieldwork on the trafficking of Russian and Baltic female sex workers, she demonstrates how the embodiment and reiteration of globalization on the bodies of gendered individuals are tied to the larger processes of globalization. Appadurai’s framework of landscapes of globalization is developed into a framework of shadow sexscapes in order to show how the global sex industry feeds on complex global flows and in turn operates as a form of shadow globalization.

    Globalization, Prostitution and Sex Trafficking will be of interest to students and researchers of international relations, globalization and gender studies.

    1. Introduction: globalization, theories of bio-power and subjectivation

    2. Landscapes and sexscapes of globalization

    3. Prostitution and the global economy

    4. Embodying globalization: Russian prostitutes in Finland

    5. Trafficking women across Finnish-Russian and Norwegian borders

    6. The domain of subjectivity: narratives of foreign erotic dancers in Finland

    7. Conclusion: corporeal narratives and theorizing globalization.

    Biography

    Elina Penttinen is a postdoctoral researcher at Tampere Peace Research Institute (TAPRI) at the University of Tampere, Finland.