ESA RN23 MidTerm Conference: Sociological explorations of sexuality in Europe:

Activity: Attending an eventConference organisation or participation

Description

The goal of this Midterm Conference is to provide a space for exploring bodies, practices, and forms of resistance, and for decolonizing sexuality studies, in an effort to detect centre-periphery dynamics in research agendas, language, concepts, and methods. We would like to discuss how these dynamics are related to increasing transnational mobility and precarization of research work, and to the relations between academia and social movements as sites of knowledge production.

Spanger's paper presentation: SURVEILLANCE OF DANGEROUS LIAISONS THROUGH THE
NOTIONS OF SEX AND MONEY
From a historical point of view this chapter investigates how the scope of and the meaning ascribed to ‘the prostitute’ derives from the way in which the state regulate prostitution in different times. The empirical examples are taken from the 1930s to the 1950s focusing on the vice squad and medical authorities’ control of young women defined as prostitutes. ‘Public women’, ‘loose women’ and ‘prostitutes’ are all definitions that derive from the way in which authorities have problematized and governed women that were considered as dangerous due to their sexual liaisons with different men. This paper scrutinizes how different constellations of sex, femininity and payment in terms of money, gifts or material goods were ascribed different meanings by the authorities in the 20th century in Denmark as an example of European history. Inspired by Michel Foucault’s ideas on governmentality and power, and Viviana Zelizer’s idea of the link between sex and money this chapter demonstrates how the authorities’ definition of ‘the prostitute’ served as power mechanisms of the state in governing femininity, which had consequences for not just women that sold sexual services, but for women in general.
Period14 Feb 201915 Feb 2019
Event typeConference
LocationCracow, PolandShow on map
Degree of RecognitionInternational

Keywords

  • sexuality
  • prostitution
  • sex work
  • racialisation
  • gender
  • governing