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Social Science Women's Studies

Sex and Borders

Gender, National Identity and Prostitution Policy in Thailand

by (author) Leslie Ann Jeffrey

Publisher
UBC Press
Initial publish date
Jan 2003
Category
Women's Studies, Gender Studies, Globalization, Social Policy, Human Rights
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780774808736
    Publish Date
    Jan 2003
    List Price
    $34.95
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780774808729
    Publish Date
    Apr 2002
    List Price
    $95.00
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780774850179
    Publish Date
    Oct 2007
    List Price
    $32.95

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Description

Prostitution in Thailand has been the subject of media sensationalism for decades. Bangkok’s brothels have become international icons of “third world” women’s exploitation in the global sex trade. Recently, however, sex workers have begun to demand not pity, but rights as workers in the global economy.

 

This book explores how Thai national identity in such an economy is linked to prostitution and gender. Jeffrey asserts that certain images of “The Prostitute” have silenced discourses of prostitution as work, while fostering the idea of the peasant woman as the embodiment of national culture. This idea, coupled with a will to shape the modern state through the behaviour of middle-class men, has been a main concern of Thai prostitution policy. Gender, Jeffrey argues, has become the mechanism through which states respond to the contradictory pressures of globalization and nation-building.

 

Sex and Borders is essential reading for those interested in gender studies, Southeast Asian studies, and the politics of prostitution.

About the author

Contributor Notes

Leslie Ann Jeffrey teaches political science in the Department of History and Politics, University of New Brunswick, Saint John campus.

Editorial Reviews

A timely, interesting and well-documented study of the impact of Western (neo) imperialism on the construction of different prostitution policies (and on the lives of real prostitute women).

Atlantis, Volume 28.1