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- Hulusjö, Anna, 1979
(författare)
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A critical perspective on difference : 'the prostitute' and women with prostitution experience
- 2013
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Ingår i: Nordic Social Work Research. - : Taylor & Francis. - 2156-857X .- 2156-8588. ; 2:3, s. 176-184
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article discusses the continuities and discontinuities between ‘the prostitute’ as representation(s) and prostitution as lived experience(s). Women (men, and transgendered) involved in prostitution are subjected to othering processes, processes that stigmatize, disempower and potentially silence them as Others. Representations of ‘prostitutes’ in academic discourse, popular discourse and in the media constructs ‘the prostitute’ as disparately as: ‘victim of patriarchy’, ‘economic entrepreneur’, ‘undeserving victim’, ‘unfit mother’, ‘commodity’, ‘dirty and sexually indiscriminatory’, etc. Reductionist and stigmatizing representations of ‘prostitutes’ have both symbolical and material consequences for women with prostitution experience. I argue that one of the main challenges for social work research on prostitution is to counter rather than to participate in othering processes. Through othering processes women with prostitution experience are constructed as different from other women. With an and/both approach to difference, differences are considered to be fluid, shifting and discursive as well as enduring and embodied. Women with prostitution experience are not only constructed as ‘different’ but also consequently have ‘different’ experiences. Doing research that counters rather than participates in othering processes implies both deconstructing difference and making visible the effects of constructed difference.
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| 2. |
- Hulusjö, Anna
(författare)
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The multiplicities of prostitution experience : narratives about power and resistance
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis is not primarily about ‘the rights and wrongs of prostitution’, at least not as they are conveyed in the prostitution debate, rather it aims to shift the focus from what prostitution is (work or violence, empowerment or exploitation), the topic of most prostitution debate, to how prostitution operates. That is, how power relations, knowledges, discourses and practices interconnect in making particular forms of prostitution and particular ways of making sense of prostitution experience possible. The study is situated on the feminist narrative field and is constituted of interviews with twenty women with prostitution experience. With a genealogical approach to narrative analysis the participants’ narratives are not treated as reflections of an assumed prostitution ‘reality’, but rather there is an exploration of what the participants do as they narrate their experience, how they, through their narratives, construct their identities and make sense of their experiences and their lives. By engaging with the participants’ narratives, the power and domination of the institution of prostitution and the multitude of tactics that the participants employed in order to negotiate, resist and destabilize power and domination were explored. The participants’ narratives were both entangled with and positioned against dominant narratives about prostitution and ‘the prostitute’. They contained complexities, contradictions and multiple meanings; prostitution was described as both enabling and constraining, as a means of resistance and as an effect of power. The participants spoke of how the institution of prostitution produced different experiences of being constituted as a ‘commodified body’, an ‘appropriate target for violence/undeserving victim’ and a stigmatized identity. 8 Depending on their social location and personal biography the participants were more or less able to manage the emotional and physical risks that prostitution involved. The narratives revealed how prostitution, as it currently operates, is conditioned by intersecting structures of social inequality.
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