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.

Leslie Ann Jeffrey's profile page

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

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