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Maksimowski, Sophie A. (2012) "A Brief History of the Anthropology of Sexuality, and Theory in the Field of Women’s Sex Work,"
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A Brief History of the Anthropology of Sexuality, and Theory in the Field
of Women’s Sex Work
Abstract
This article provides an overview of the historical development of theory in the Anthropology of Sexuality.
Taking a Foucaultian perspective, the discourse on sexuality that emerged in the Victorian era will be critiqued
as a constructed tool to ensure social and moral conformity. Discourse, particularly with respect to sexuality,
has been a means to conscript bounded groups of people to serve historically defined goals in the production
of knowledge. The application of discourse on sexuality in an attempts to understand the “primitive Other”
will be contrasted to the discourses of sexuality applied to prostitution. Building on this knowledge and
evolution of anthropology theory on sexuality, post-modern conceptualizations of sexuality, resistance, and
social constructionism will be explored and applied to sex work in a contemporary female-bodied context.
Keywords
Anthropology of Sexuality, theory, history, knowledge, power, discourse, sex work, Foucault, “the Other”,
social constructionism, resistance
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Maksimowski: The Anthropology of Sexuality: Discourse and Sex Work
demonstrate sexual difference in the Recognizing the ambiguity of the term sex
practices and customs that serve beneficiary worker as an individual whose work may
purposes in some cultures, such as two- not entail heterosexual intercourse, given the
spirited individuals in First Nations cultures, limitations of space, this one aspect of sex
who often act as community mediators or work is generally what I will refer to in this
healers occupying both gender fields. paper. Taking such a simplistic definition of
Negative conscription is exemplified in the the term sex worker in this way does not
racialization of primitive sexuality, a process adequately grant space to GLBTQI (gay,
in which early anthropologists like Mead lesbian, bi, trans, queer, and intersexed) sex
and Malinowski were complicit. Ethno- worker voices, yet it complies with
graphic accounts also demonstrate that mainstream understandings of what sex has
conscription can be more ambiguous: come to be defined as: an invented term with
questioning the basis of sexual fact is the a typically heterosexual (though also male
manner in which the same ethnographic data homosexual) understanding of implied
can and has been used to support both penetration.
negative and positive conscription of
peoples to specific categories and discourses Victorian discourses on sexuality
(Lyons and Lyons 2004:18-19). Regardless Foucault wrote that in the nineteenth
of their use, conscription and discourse century, public discourse about sexuality
creation are largely a means for was effectively used
essentialism, and the representation of
difference; they are tools to delineate …to bring the sexual behaviour
boundaries of what things are and what they of women, children, patients,
cannot be. This essentialism can be strategic church members, and private
in its exotification, as a tool for the political citizens under the control of
representation of identity to gain access to agents of authority (husbands,
community or rights. doctors, teachers, courts) but
Rousseau (1991:xiii) writes that the also to aid in the legitimation of
purpose of theory is “to reinvigorate that authority by providing, as a
historical studies” through the critique of the major justification of the
paradigms and discourses that produced hierarchy upon which it was
them. In this essay, I seek to apply the above based, evidence of a dangerous
conceptualizations of discourse, and sexual depravity among the
discourses of sexuality, to female sex work. lower ranks (Foucault 1980, in
This essay will focus on predominately cis Lyons and Lyons 2004: 52).
females following the continuum of Western
discourses on sex, sexuality and prostitution His use of discourse in this sense implies
since before the Victorian era. Trans refers that discourse is a means through which
to individuals whose gender and biological power becomes rationalized and enacted
sex cannot be conflated, while cis is a upon the individual. Discourse determined
categorical representation of women whose “where and when it was not possible to talk
biological sex aligns with the socially about such things in which circumstances,
accepted gender role they perform (The among which speakers, and within which
Peak, October 2011). In this paper, I use the social relationships” (Foucault 1980, in
term prostitute in a historical sense and sex Lyons and Lyons 2004: 55). How discourses
worker in a more contemporary context. are conceived and perceived is historically
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Some called for male abstinence on the basis sexual identity are absent in many groups,
of disease prevention or morality, and others though the ethnographer was able to label
for women’s liberation (Lyons and Lyons sexual practices in accordance with Western
2004:121; Truong 1990). discourse. As a functionalist, Malinowski
Anthropological representations of viewed a society’s role in regulating sex as
primitive sexuality were radically altered necessary to its functioning, since human
during this time period, but this does not sexuality was an instinctual force needing
mean that evolutionary fantasies were regulation. Rather than focusing on sexual
replaced by true accounts featuring native difference as a product of racial difference
voices. In these new discourses, primitives or cultural evolution, anthropologists in the
were often cast by anthropologists as under- early twentieth century wanted to explain
sexed, not possessing the basic human sexual practices in the context of specific
sexual drive. Margaret Mead’s ethnographic bounded cultures – the ways in which
work during this period highlighted the culture naturalizes sex and a fixed sexual
rigidity of Western notions of social identity (Vance 2005). Institutions thus
morality rather than danger in the primitive functioned to control the sex drive, and
sex. Mead did not believe in a universal reproduction, irrelevant of a need for labour
human nature, but saw sexual behavior as organization within economic systems
socially conditioned by culture and (Truong 1990). More complex societies
environmental factors. We could study these were able to progress through the control of
specifics of sex and sexuality in other sex through such institutions.
cultures to better understand our own and its To the extent that early anthropology
limitations, as Mead did in 1928 with questioned sexuality as universally biolog-
Coming of Age in Samoa. However, ically given, they made a significant
functionalism took an apolitical and contribution to cross-cultural studies of
ahistorical approach to the study of sexuality. These studies, especially those
sexuality. It failed to question in whose popularized by Mead, caused the West to
interest these controls were placed, on question its discourse on sexuality as natural
whose bodies and which particular and necessary for the functioning of human
sexualities (Lyons and Lyons 2011). society. While Mead described the existence
Through anthropologists such as of sexual norms and taboos in Samoa, she
Bronislaw Malinowski, there was a greater also demonstrated the absence of Samoan
attempt to bring ethnography into the realm conceptualizations of adult sexual per-
of science, and to be more precise in the versions, and an accepted fluidity of gender
discipline’s use of language applied to social boundaries and sexual practices outside of
groups and customs (Lyons and Lyons institutional confines, such as marriage
2011). Malinowski (1929) wrote that sex (Lyons and Lyons 2011:127-8; Mead 1928).
permeates everything and that one can study She also demonstrated this in Sex and
its cultural meaning in a scientific way. He Temperament in Three Primitive Societies
studied Trobriand Island culture and wrote (1935). Thus, anthropologists like Mead and
The Sexual Life of Savages in 1929. Malinowski presented practices from other
According to Malinowski, less organized cultures in a way that necessarily challenged
societies also conceived of sexual morality the dominant Western discourse on
in a rather loose way, and thus prostitution sexuality.
was absent (Malinowski 1929; Truong 1990:
22-24). Similarly, notions of homo/hetero-
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Mid to late 20th Century and 1970s questioned male dominance and
anthropological discourse on sexuality patriarchal institutions that perpetuated
From the 1930s until the 1970s, there women’s oppression and sexual exploit-
was a silence in anthropology on the topic of ation. Conflicting views of prostitution arose
sexuality (Lyons and Lyons 2004; 2011), in which female sex workers could be
which was subsumed under the subfield of viewed as victims or as rational actors, paid
kinship studies – sexuality as marriage and for a service women are traditionally
reproduction (Vance 2005). To this day, a expected to give for free (Truong 1990:31).
great deal of the material written by The 1970s debates about prostitution and
anthropologists regarding sexuality has pornography were rooted in the discourse on
remained peripheral to the discipline’s gender of the times, which viewed
theoretical and practical framework. Weston prostitutes as either exploited by male
(2011:9) argues that anthropologists patriarchy or complicit in its reproduction
typically have taken a “flora-and-fauna (Freedman and Thorne 1984). This victim/
approach” to sexuality, collecting accounts agent debate is largely ongoing among sex
of sexual acts as ‘facts’ occurring in the workers, activists, scholars, and organiz-
natural environment and recording them in ations today in the debate over sex work as
the ethnographic form. Carole Vance (2005) exploitation or empowerment.
similarly argues that the theoretical During the late 1970s, Marxism grew
framework structuring anthropological as a theoretical paradigm within anthrop-
studies of sexuality remained little changed ology. Political economy deconstructs
between 1920 and 1990. Institutional forms ideological assumptions about gender roles
were privileged over human practice, and relations within historical and economic
especially silencing same-sex narratives of processes of production and exploitation.
sexuality (Lyons and Lyons 2004). This Under this paradigm, “[s]exual morality and
silence also applies to the study of sexuality ideological assumptions about sexual roles
in the West, predominately of white and are analyzed in terms of the formation of
working-class sexuality (Freedman and subjects fit for historically specific socio-
D’Emilio 2005:169). economic relations” such as slavery, or
In the 1970s, early Structuralism à la prostitution (Truong 1990:4). This approach
Levis-Strauss took an ahistorical account of tends to theorize about and categorize
sexuality through its focus on ideology and people based on their class or ethnicity and
social systems as manifestations of deeper, is not as subjective (individual-focused) as a
all-pervading cultural and psychological social constructionist approach (Truong
structures (Truong 1990). Feminist anthrop- 1990:3-6).
ologists like Sherry Ortner (1972) used In the 1980s, feminist anthrop-
structuralist theory and the binary ologists like Henrietta Moore (1988) were
oppositions of Levi-Strauss to question the critiquing the discipline for its white male
passive role assigned to women in the bias, and the dynamics of power involved in
domestic sphere as Others, outside of men’s knowledge production within a sexist
domain of culture. There was a recognition ideological framework. The impact of
of women’s oppression as specific to feminism politicized sexual theory and
historical processes and social and economic brought theories of biological determinism
systems, and perpetuated through cultural and essentialism under question, contrib-
structures and discourses (Truong 1990). uting to social constructionist approaches
The second wave feminist movement of the (Vance 2005). The essentialist tradition had
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argue that the powerful discourse of of how they know the other and their sexual
prostitution as promiscuity that emerged nature.
from the Western scientific view of Employed under the colonial project,
sexuality has been maintained, in our minds the anthropologist was asked to help “do
and institutions, in the way many view sex something about the other” (Harvey and
workers in their communities (Truong Gow 1994:4), at times bringing others under
1990). the control and regulation of the colonial
However, in the context of multiple authority. Ann Laura Stoler (1996) draws
and shifting modernities, we are continuing upon Foucault’s (1980) History of Sexuality:
to question, what is sexual? This especially Volume 1 to trace the application of
pertains to same-sex studies of sexuality in bourgeois discourse and the colonial
cross-cultural contexts (Blackwood and treatment of other sexualities in the context
Wieringa 1999; Freeman and D’Emilio of empire “in which biopolitics was
2005:168). Our understanding of ‘the registered and racial taxonomies were
sexual’ has been conditioned by prevailing based” (Stoler 1996:53). The colonial
discourses on sexuality, which have tried to project was gendered, and its politics
condition human sexual behavior according contributed to the management of sex both
to defined parameters of what sex can be, abroad and at home (Stoler 1996:180-4).
where, when, and with whom. The self-other dynamics of desire and power
operated in the context of the discourse of a
Anthropology, Exotification, Colonialism dominant race justified and strengthened by
and Sexual Violence imperial rule (Stoler 1996:194). This can
Anthropology as an early discipline apply to particular sex-work relations today,
developed as an extension of the ethno- in which “images of the ‘exotic’ are
grapher’s exotic gaze, penetrating those entwined with ideologies of racial and ethnic
cultures most opposite from his own. This difference: the ‘prostitute’ is defined as
desire first manifested itself in historical ‘other’ in comparison to the racial or ethnic
sexual accounts of other peoples and origin of the client” (Kempadoo and
cultures, complete with pictures of half- Doezema 1998:10).
naked primitives, viewed as pornographic by The contemporary dynamics of
Western standards of the time. In power, domination and racialization have
Malinowski’s case, he took many such been imbued with the discourses of sexuality
pictures, and admitted in his personal diary from Western history. Remnants of these
that he was very sexually attracted to discourses persist and can shape relations
Trobriand women, and had “pawed” at least around sex. Paying for sex may encompass
one during his research stay (Lyons and “the desire for participation without
Lyons 2011:127). Indeed, as Weston (2011) responsibility” (Harvey and Gow 1994:2).
writes, “hypersexualization was integral to As a gendered relation, a sex worker-client
the invention of the primitive”(15). Mead encounter can be framed in terms of object-
was also guilty of such exotification, subject. For some clients, “the acting out of
describing Samoan youth as a period of fantasy and gratification is part of the
sexual promiscuity with many accounts of experience being paid for, the object or
“love under the palm trees” (Lyons and objective” (Day 1994:186). These fantasies
Lyons 2011:127). Imbued with authority, can focus on “the eroticization of
successive ethnographers could re-visit domination” (Harvey and Gow 1994:2).
those cultures, creating newer, truer versions This process of eroticization entails distance
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(removal from subject) and through such ation of women around the world, and this
ambiguity, the objectification of sex- greatly includes sex workers.
workers as sexual subjects. Erotic exotic- However, the dominant Western
ization compels Westerners, predominately discourse on sexuality and sex work exists
heterosexual men, to embark on adventures within a framework of implied consent
of sexual tourism. Their destinations are rather than an obligation to obtain consent.
generally the exotic former-colonies in An economic exchange of sexual service for
which women of exotic sexual difference money can easily connote the objectification
exist to be discovered and experienced. In of women as sexual objects. Whether this
this way, national identity becomes tied up violence consists in racialization, breached
with an erotic sexual nature (Donnan and consent or violence, it is representative of
Magowan 2010:90). Eroticization on the structural inequalities that pervade the
basis of actual or perceived difference in economies of desire and sexual labour.
gender, sex, class, age, race or ethnicity can Typically, violence and work continue to be
entail power inequities and situations of defined in the public domain and sex and
exploitation (Harvey and Gow 1994). consent are viewed as private, subjective
According to Anthropologist Sophie and domestically constrained. This separ-
Day (1994), sexual violence occurs when ation perpetuates the idea of the bounded
conflicting discourses meet. This can entail self, when really the self and the sexual
on the one hand, agreed upon parameters of cannot be viewed in isolation from the
what is and is not allowed in a paid sexual context in which they are actualized (Harvey
service conflicting with client expectations and Gow 1994). This is not to restrict the
and objectification of the service provider, exercise of sex worker agency in negotiating
informed by a misogynist consensus that these structures, but merely to acknowledge
“consent is written into all sexual their embededness within them and their
relationships involving women” and with impacts on how gender and sexuality may
sex workers specifically (Day 1994: 186). be variably constructed and articulated.
This violence can be physical, emotional
and/or economic. She discusses the Discoursed Peoples’ (De)Construction and
conceptualization of rape among sex Reconstruction
workers in London as breached consent and Returning to dominant debates on
broken contracts. For example, a client’s sex work and concerns over structure and
refusal to wear a condom during the session agency, it is imperative to recognize both
as previously agreed upon. When this kind sides of the coin. On the one hand, some
of breach of consent occurs, it is especially women are conscripted into sex work
hurtful and physically damaging in the event through coercion and lack of choice, while
an STD were contracted or if the woman conversely we must recognize the agency of
became pregnant. This form of rape does not women to challenge that system, and to
fit with the standard definition of rape as capitalize on the desire implicit within it or
blatant physical coercion, but it is necessary on its periphery. But there has existed a
to understand its complexity. The legitimiz- strong discourse throughout history to
ation of sex work as work is essential, and in conflate female prostitutes to either end of
this it is integral that contractual consent this spectrum. Sex workers continue to be
building and respect are imbued in the labeled either as victims or as licentious
discourse on consent (Day 1994). This vagrants of society, threatening the morality
discourse is evolving through the particip- of institutions like the family and spreaders
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Maksimowski: The Anthropology of Sexuality: Discourse and Sex Work
of vice and disease. This was the Victorian acts, sexual identities, sexual communities,
view of the prostitute, and its stigma remains the direction of erotic interest (object
largely intact. Wright (2004) illustrates this choice), and sexual desire itself” may also
in her analysis of street sex worker identity be constructed in various ways (20). As sex-
in La Paz, and the conscription of these positive feminist pornstar and sex educator
women to the discourse of whore or puta as Nina Hartley wrote:
a powerful tool in devaluing their labour,
and their presence in public spaces. If I love that my job is sex. I like sex
female sex workers are cast as victims, this work. I like how cut and dried it is.
undermines their categorization as workers I’m a sex nurse. Our sexuality as a
as they are coerced and agent-less. If on the society is not well. It’s sick. People
other hand, they are viewed as professionals, so desperately need nursing around
in a sense this serves to further institute sex. I was a trained nurse. I’m a
male-female relations based in patriarchy registered nurse. Only now I nurse
and to entrench male sexualities as lustful people’s sexuality (Hartley
and dominating. In either sense, 2009:221).
homogenizing women sex workers under
either discourse is a disservice and Sexual acts, identities and communities
misrepresentation (Truong 1990:13). Sex are fluid, and people construct and contest
work encompasses a variety of economic, these in different ways across time and
sexual and psychological factors that space. Seemingly definitive categories like
determine choice and agency, and the degree sex worker, homosexual or queer, may be
of pleasure and danger experienced. crossed repeatedly by the individual in their
Sex workers necessarily engage with daily life, as practice deconstructs discourse
and operate within public (and academic) concerning what these categories mean or
discourses on gender, sex, work and ought to mean. Relationships among sex,
sexuality (Donnan and Magowan 2010). gender, sexuality, identity and work are
They operate within constructed realms of ambiguous, which is part of what enables
power and sexuality, which allow their sex workers to have separate sexual lives;
profession to exist. Ideologies and the one in which sex is work, and may at
economies enable the body to be times represent risk, danger and pleasure,
commodified and for sexual services to be and the other in which sex is personal,
bought and sold. In as much as one could emotional, and ideally about pleasure.
talk of bodies and sexualities being
conscripted within discourse, we can speak Conclusion
of individuals choosing a place for This essay has attempted to
themselves within economic relations of demonstrate the historical and political
power, and conscripting clients to discourses contingency of discourse as it constructs our
of desire. Ultimately, this entails creating ability to theorize about human sexuality.
political and economic subcultures of desire Sexuality is constructed within historical
and bringing those into public spaces as relations of difference, “embedded in
discourses of pleasure, danger, power, political, ideological, social and economic
morality, therapy and liberation. Vance systems” (La Font 2003: 69). As articulated
(2005) discusses the ways in which culture through a multitude of discourses, sexuality
and history play a role in creating itself is an ambiguous term (Lyons and
sexualities, but she also writes that “...sexual Lyons 2011). Robertson (2005) notes that
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