On the Game

Sophie Day

Description

***Winner of the Eileen Basker Prize and the Wellcome Medal for Anthropology as Applied to Medical Problems***



On the Game is an ethnographic account of prostitutes and prostitution. Sophie Day has followed the lives of individual women over fifteen years, and her book details their attempts to manage their lives against a backdrop of social disapproval. The period was one of substantial change within the sex industry.



Through the lens of public health, economics, criminalisation and human rights, Day explores how individual sex workers live, in public and in private. This offers a unique perspective on contemporary capitalist society that will be of interest both to a broad range of social scientists.



The author brings a unique perspective to her work -- as both an anthropologist and the founder of the renowned Praed Street Project, set up in 1986, as a referral and support centre for London prostitutes.
Introduction

Histories in Person

1. A London Clinic: Anthropology and Health

2. Simply Work

3. What’s in a Name? The Distribution of Knowledge among Colleagues

4. Playing the Market against the State

5. The Right to Have Rights

6. The Uses of Money

7. Infertility, Pregnancy and Future Mothers

8. Consummate Artifice: Market Makes All

9. Counterpublics

10. Time on the Game

Epilogue: The Lifescapes of Public Women

References

Index

Sujets

• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Anthropology
• Social
• Culture

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 juin 2007
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783714773
• Langue: English

Extrait

ON THE GAME
Anthropology, Culture and Society
Series Editor:
Dr Jon P. Mitchell, University of Sussex
Land, Law and Environment Mythical Land, Legal Boundaries Edited by A LLEN A BRAMSON AND D IMITRIOS T HEODOSSOPOULOS
Claiming Individuality The Cultural Politics of Distinction Edited by V ERED A MIT AND N OEL D YCK
Anthropology and the Will to Meaning A Postcolonial Critique V ASSOS A RGYROU
Risk Revisited Edited by P AT C APLAN
Macedonia The Politics of Identity and Difference Edited by J ANE K. C OWAN
Slave of Allah Zacarias Moussaoui vs The USA K ATHERINE C. D ONAHUE
Ethnicity and Nationalism Anthropological Perspectives T HOMAS H YLLAND E RIKSEN
Globalisation Studies in Anthropology T HOMAS H YLLAND E RIKSEN
A History of Anthropology T HOMAS H YLLAND E RIKSEN AND F INN S IVERT N IELSEN
Small Places, Large Issues An Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology T HOMAS H YLLAND E RIKSEN
What is Anthropology? T HOMAS H YLLAND E RIKSEN
Anthropology, Development and the Post-modern Challenge K ATY G ARDNER AND D AVID L EWIS
Power and its Disguises Anthropological Perspectives on Power J OHN G LEDHILL
Corruption Anthropological Perspectives Edited by D IETER H ALLER AND C RIS S HORE
Control and Subversion Gender Relations in Tajikistan C OLETTE H ARRIS
State Formation Anthropological Perspectives Edited by C HRISTIAN K ROHN -H ANSEN AND K NUT G. N USTAD
Youth and the State in Hungary Capitalism, Communism and Class L ÁSZLÓ K ÜRTI
Locating Cultural Creativity Edited by J OHN L IEP
Cord of Blood Possession and the Making of Voodoo N ADIA L OVELL
Cultivating Development An Ethnography of Aid Policy and Practice D AVID M OSSE
The Aid Effect Giving and Governing in International Development Edited by D AVID M OSSE AND D AVID L EWIS
Ethnography and Prostitution in Peru L ORRAINE N ENCEL
Witchcraft, Power and Politics Exploring the Occult in the South African Lowveld I SAK A. N IEHAUS WITH E LIAZAAR M OHLALA AND K ALLY S HOKANE
Power, Community and the State The Political Anthropology of Organisation in Mexico M ONIQUE N UIJTEN
Social Mobility in Kerala Modernity and Identity in Conflict F ILIPPO O SELLA AND C AROLINE O SELLA
Negotiating Local Knowledge Power and Identity in Development Edited by J OHAN P OTTIER , A LAN B ICKER AND P AUL S ILLITOE
Class, Nation and Identity The Anthropology of Political Movements J EFF P RATT
Ethnic Distinctions, Local Meanings Negotiating Cultural Identities in China M ARY R ACK
The Cultural Politics of Markets Economic Liberalisation and Social Change in Nepal K ATHARINE N EILSON R ANKIN
Bearing Witness Women and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa F IONA C. R OSS
Landscape, Memory and History Anthropological Perspectives Edited by P AMELA J. S TEWART AND A NDREW S TRATHERN
Terror and Violence Imagination and the Unimaginable Edited by A NDREW S TRATHERN , P AMELA J. S TEWART AND N EIL L. W HITEHEAD
Race, Nature and Culture An Anthropological Perspective P ETER W ADE
ON THE GAME
Women and Sex Work
S OPHIE D AY
First published 2007 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and 839 Greene Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48106
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright © Sophie Day 2007
The right of Sophie Day to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Hardback
ISBN-13    978 0 7453 1759 5
ISBN-10    0 7453 1759 6
Paperback
ISBN-13    978 0 7453 1758 8
ISBN-10    0 7453 1758 8
PDF eBook
ISBN-13    978 1 8496 4113 5
Kindle eBook
ISBN-13    978 1 7837 1478 0
EPUB eBook
ISBN-13    978 1 7837 1477 3
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for
This book in printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.
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This book is dedicated to ‘Olivia’, research participant and subsequent friend, who died prematurely
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Introduction : Public Women
1
A London Clinic: Anthropology and Health

A Public Clinic: Notes, Staff and Patients

Sex Workers and the Clinic

Handling Time
2
Simply Work

Separating the World into Two Parts

Ideologies and Counter-ideologies of the Person

Two Bodies

On Work
3
What’s in a Name? The Distribution of Knowledge among Colleagues

The Local Industry

Stratification of the Sex Industry

Geographies of Movement

The Exchange of Information

The Exchange of Names
4
Playing the Market against the State

Informal or Illegal?

The Criminal Justice System

Making Your Money

Enterprise
5
The Right to Have Rights

The Sex Work Movement

Occupational Health and Safety

‘Inside’ the State?

Civil Society, or another Public Realm
6
The Uses of Money

Price and Value

The Costs of Working

Pimps and Ponces: Sharing and Wasting Money

Earmarking, Targets and Goals

An Addiction to Money

Enterprise and Gender
7
Infertility, Pregnancy and Future Mothers

The ‘Barren Prostitute’

Signs of Infertility

Anticipating Children

Pregnancy

Motherhood

Turning Points

Prescriptive Fertility
8
Consummate Artifice: Market Makes All

Regular Clients

The Sugar Daddy

The Performance

Careers in Sex Work

Prescriptive Enterprise
9
Counterpublics

Alternatives to Work and Business

Alternative Sexualities

Distributed Sexualities

Politics, Sex and Gender

Comparing Leslie’s Turning Point with Marcia’s Harlequins
10
Time on the Game

Sex Work 1986–2000

Strategies Between, Strategies Within

Outcomes

Migrants and Strangers

Biographical Disruption

The Life Course
Epilogue : The Lifescapes of Public Women
References
Index
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I thank Dr Helen Ward, Senior Lecturer at Imperial College London with whom I have worked since 1986 in the Praed Street Project. This book reflects our long-term collaboration in the politics, anthropology and epidemiology of sex work. I thank research participants for all they have taught me and for their many varied contributions to my work over the years, and Praed Street Project research staff for their contributions including: Catrina Donegan, Jane Mezzone, Sara Farrar, Louise Hanson, Martha Hickey, Anna Pallecaros, Lucinda Dunlop, Louise Perrotta, Annette de la Court during the earlier research period; Kate Cooper, Anna Green and Judith Kilvington more recently, in addition to Jane Wadsworth and Luke Whitaker in the Medical School.
My work was initially supported by the AIDS Virus Education and Research Trust (AVERT), with particular encouragement from the Director, Anabel Kanabus. More recent research (1998–2003) was supported by the Wellcome Trust, Population and Reproductive Health Programme (project grant 053592). I have also received research support from the Medical Research Council, the European Commission (Public Health Directorate DG V, Europe Against AIDS), the National Health Service Executive and the London International Group.
For nearly 20 years, I have conducted anthropological research in the clinic at St Mary’s Hospital; this would not have been possible without the vision and support of Dr J.R.W. Harris, Clinic Director during the research period, the Jefferiss Research Trust and many NHS colleagues including the current coordinator of the Praed Street Project, Jane Ayres. During this period, I have presented and discussed my work with many colleagues in anthropology who I would like to thank for their comments and references, in particular, Maria Phylactou, Michael Stewart, Janet Carsten and my colleagues in the anthropology department at Goldsmiths College. Frances Pine, Melissa Llewellyn-Davis, Olivia Harris, Helen Ward and Jonathan Weber valiantly read and commented on entire drafts of this manuscript, and helped me enormously in redrafting: my thanks to them and to Anne Beech at Pluto who encouraged me to complete the book.
Sophie Day December 2006
INTRODUCTION: PUBLIC WOMEN

… out of the confusion a consensus is emerging that public and private are not (and never have been) ‘conceptual absolutes’, but a minefield of ‘huge rhetorical potential’. Despite their instability and mutability, public and private are concepts which also have had powerful material and experiential consequences in terms of formal institutions, organizational forms, financial systems, familial and kinship patterns, as well as language. In short, they have become a basic part of the way our whole social and psychic worlds are ordered, but an order that is constantly shifting, being made and remade (Davidoff 1995: 228)
The struggle for personhood on the part of sex workers illuminates widespread fictions about normal or proper behaviour. If you work with sex, how do you manage sex outside the money economy; how do you make significant relationships? Sex workers I met considered that they had both a public and a private aspect, just like everyone else. They agreed that they worked with sex and therefore had a public status, like all other workers, but refuted the idea that they were selling or, indeed, giving away a part of themselves that should not be traded in the marketplace. They opposed conventional prejudice suggesting that they were merely ‘public women’. Branded in law, stigmatised for confounding distinctions between love and work and pathologised in term