What's Love Got to Do with It?

Brennan Denise Brennan

Description

In locations around the world, sex tourism is a booming business. What's Love Got to Do with It? is an in-depth examination of the motivations of workers, clients, and others connected to the sex tourism business in Sosua, a town on the northern coast of the Dominican Republic. Denise Brennan considers why Dominican and Haitian women move to Sosua to pursue sex work and describes how sex tourists, primarily Europeans, come to Sosua to buy sex cheaply and live out racialized fantasies. For the sex workers, Brennan explains, the sex trade is more than a means of survival-it is an advancement strategy that hinges on their successful "performance" of love. Many of these women seek to turn a commercialized sexual transaction into a long-term relationship that could lead to marriage, migration, and a way out of poverty.Illuminating the complex world of Sosua's sex business in rich detail, Brennan draws on extensive interviews not only with sex workers and clients, but also with others who facilitate and benefit from the sex trade. She weaves these voices into an analysis of Dominican economic and migration histories to consider the opportunities-or lack thereof-available to poor Dominican women. She shows how these women, local actors caught in a web of global economic relations, try to take advantage of the foreign men who are in Sosua to take advantage of them. Through her detailed study of the lives and working conditions of the women in Sosua's sex trade, Brennan raises important questions about women's power, control, and opportunities in a globalized economy.

Sujets

• República Dominicana
• Globalization
• Biological anthropology
• Dominican Republic
• République dominicaine

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 14 mai 2004
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822385400
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT?

a b o o k i n t h e s e r i e s

LATIN AMERICA OTHERWISE:

LANGUAGES, EMPIRES, NATIONS

Series editors:Walter D. Mignolo, Duke

University; Irene Silverblatt, Duke

University; Sonia Saldívar-Hull,

University of California

at Los Angeles

What’s Love Got to

Do with It?Transnational

Desires and Sex Tourism in

the Dominican Republic

denise brennan

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS

DURHAM AND LONDON 2004

2004 DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS | All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper$ Designed by Rebecca M. Giménez | Typeset in Monotype Dante by Keystone Typesetting, Inc. | Library of Congress Cataloging- in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

f o r b e l k i s a n d n a n c y

I

II

III

IV

CONTENTS

About the Series, ix Acknowledgments, xi Introduction: Elena and Jürgen, 1

t h e t ow n 1. Sosúa: A Transnational Town, 13 2. Imagining and Experiencing Sosúa, 51

t h e t r a n s n at i o n a l p l a n : l o o k - i n g b e y o n d d o m i n i c a n b o r d e r s 3. Performing Love, 91

t h e s e x t r a d e 4. Sosúa’s Sex Workers: Their Families and Working Lives, 119 5. Advancement Strategies in Sosúa’s Sex Trade, 154

p l a n ac c o m p l i s h e d : g e t t i n g b e y o n d d o m i n i c a n b o r d e r s 6. Transnational Disappointments: Living in Europe, 185 Conclusion: Changes in Sex Workers’ Lives, Sosúa, and Its Sex Trade, 207

Notes, 221 Glossary, 245 Bibliography, 249 Index, 273

ABOUT THE SERIES

atin America Otherwise: Languages, Empires, Nationsa critical is L series. It aims to explore the emergence and consequences of concepts used to define ‘‘Latin America’’ while at the same time exploring the broad interplay of political, economic, and cul- tural practices that have shaped Latin American worlds. Latin Amer- ica, at the crossroads of competing imperial designs and local re- sponses, has been construed as a geocultural and geopolitical entity since the nineteenth century. This series provides a starting point to redefine Latin America as a configuration of political, linguistic, cultural, and economic intersections that demands a continuous reappraisal of the role of the Americas in history, and of the ongoing process of globalization and the relocation of people and cultures that have characterized Latin America’s experience.Latin America Otherwise: Languages, Empires, Nationsis a forum that confronts es- tablished geocultural constructions, that rethinks area studies and disciplinary boundaries, that assesses convictions of the academy and of public policy, and that, correspondingly, demands that the practices through which we produce knowledge and understanding about and from Latin America be subject to rigorous and critical scrutiny. Sosúa, a town in the Dominican Republic, is a crossroads of personal desires and impersonal forces. European clients in Sosúa meet Dominican and Haitian women for paid sex. With sensitivity and compassion, Denise Brennan introduces us to women deter- mined to do more than survive; they have dreams of improving their lives, helping their families, and leaving the D.R. for the excitement and security of Europe. Few do. This rich and engaging book brings a subtle ethnographic lens to a complex exchange. Sex work is never just about money and sex; it is about hopes, possibilities, and the realities of transnational capitalism