Gender and Sexuality

Contemporary gender and sexuality studies have much to offer the study of sex work which involves men, women and transgenders as buyer and sellers of sexual services. 

Recent work on the production of sexual subjectivities under neoliberalism highlights the potential of a political economy approach to sex work - one that goes beyond debates about coercion and choice to understand better the structures of constraint and scenarios of agency within which sex is bought, sold and traded. The Paulo Longo Research Initiative will conduct new ethnographic studies that permit a more nuanced understanding of sex workers' negotiation of norms on gender and sexuality within their relationships. We will contribute to - as well as draw on -broader debates within the fields of gender and sexuality, whether on questions of masculinity and male sexualities, or on resistance and resilience, to offer new insights into the material conditions of sex work. Our work in this area will aim to move beyond understanding of the sex worker as a distinct type of sexual or economic subject toward exploration of commercial sex and transactional dimensions of sex as enmeshed in power relationships and economies of desire that are inherent within all sexualities.