Exploring sex for sale
Methodological concerns
Marlene Spanger and May-Len Skilbrei
Aim and focus of the book
The background for this book is a wish to facilitate specialised and thoughtful methodological discussions as an integrated part of the scholarship of âsex for saleâ. The aim is to contribute to thinking about how political and theoretical issues on the one hand, and empirical research on the other, are related. While some of the issues taken up in the chapters pertain to sex for sale in a broad sense, the authors engage particularly with examples from literature and research on situations where women sell sex to men. Thus, this book is not a methodology book that offers technical instructions as to how to go about researching sex for sale.
While general methodology books are valid starting points for researchers and students interested in developing their skills in studying sex for sale, there are some specific challenges to the research field that mandate more specialised deliberations. However there are very few publications that present challenges and problematics related to the study of sex for sale in a broad sense, with methodological issues instead primarily being covered in methodology articles and chapters (OâConnell Davidson and Layder 1994; Hubbard 1999; Shaver 2005; Sanders 2006; Bernstein 2007; Taylor and OâConnell Davidson 2009; Hammond 2010) or simply outlined in their methodology sections (Bernstein 2007; Sanders et al. 2009), as well as appearing in publications dedicated to specific methodologies (OâNeill 2004; Dewey and Zheng 2013). What are often missing are presentations and discussions of broader issues, other than simply practical ones, which explore the particularity of doing research on sex for sale.
The contributions in this book represent reflections of the scholarsâ own research practices and characteristics of sex for sale as a field of knowledge, with the authors sharing an interest in engaging in reflexive research practices informed by feminism and feminist epistemologies. Feminist scholarship has at its core an ambition to critically engage with historical and contemporary âfactsâ about the social world, paying particular attention to their construction and how scholars take part in conserving the status quo rather than challenging it (Ryan-Flood and Gill 2010). In the selection of chapters, and the editing of them, we have been inspired by the Norwegian gender scholar Hanne Haavind (2000: 13) who encourages academics to offer systematic and grounded reflections on: (1) how to achieve more complex understandings of the production of the object of study in its wider societal context, and (2) how the philosophy of science offers crucial avenues to scholarly knowledge production at the different stages of the research process.
Feminist discussions at the interface of epistemology and politics have reflected critically on ambitions to âgive voiceâ to assumed marginalised âothersâ and critiqued assumptions that an unsituated objectivity is achievable or should even be a goal (Haraway 1991; Hartsock 1998; Ryan-Flood and Gill 2010). Such discussions are particularly valuable to scholars studying sex for sale. At the core of controversies about the phenomenon, which scholars are also engaged in, is the question of what sex for sale is. The answer to this question does not only give direction to how states should regulate it, but also to what are relevant questions for researchers to pose and how the object of study is delineated. This is the background to the question which is the starting point for the various problematics involving epistemological considerations that are taken up and scrutinised in this book: How do we research sex for sale and what are the implications?
We are particularly concerned with how we as scholars can manage the relationship between the questions of what sex for sale is (ontology), how sex for sale can be known and represented (epistemology) and how research-based knowledge interacts with ideas about what should be done about sex for sale (politics). Specialised knowledge on these issues mandates specialised discussions. But there are also more general points to be made, and our aim is to consider sex for sale as a prism1 that sheds light on further problematics to do with the relations between politics and research, and issues to do with participation, representation and âvoiceâ and the role of emotions and attachments in research. This is a book about methodologies and is intended to inform thinking about how both epistemological positions and the way the research field is politicised inform research practices. The various chapters shed light on power relations; how to theorise power linked to âdiffering assumptions about both the content of existence and the ways we come to know itâ (Hartsock 1998: 7).
In this collected work, the term that conceptualises the link between sex and payment (prostitution, sex work, selling sex, etc.) varies from chapter to chapter. For some scholars the selection of terms that are used relies on the empirical context and/or the epistemological approach. For instance, investigating subjects that identify themselves as sex workers, the terms âsex workâ and âsex workersâ are applied (Harrington). Alternatively, researching how the sale of sex was or is regulated and understood as âprostitutionâ, the term âprostitutionâ is applied (see the chapters by Walkowitz and Crowhurst). Other scholars apply the term âwomen who sell sexâ instead of âsex workerâ since the studied objects do not identify themselves as âsex workersâ or as âprostitutesâ (see the chapters by Spanger and Bjønness). Applying the terms âsex for saleâ or âselling sexâ is a way of stressing the transaction and at the same time maintaining an awareness that the sale of sex positions the implied subjects in various power relations and hierarchies. The question of what concepts to apply is very difficult in this field of study, and our aim is to find one that is not politically charged, condescending or imprecise.
Producing interdisciplinary knowledge through a
feminist epistemological lens
A central characteristic of the ambition and content of this book is that it reflects upon the multidisciplinarity of the field. Disciplines and professions such as sociology, human geography, anthropology, law, history, psychology, medicine, political science and criminology have all produced significant contributions to the knowledge-base about sex for sale. It can be argued that historically, knowledge production with respect to sex for sale has been hampered and narrowed through particular disciplines holding a hegemonic position (Jeffreys 1997; Carpenter 2000). The need for interdisciplinarity stems from the fact that the issue of sex for sale plays out and is regulated at several levels simultaneously; that is; it is approached as multi-scalar, encompassing ideas, forms of control and practices that range from the local to the global, the international to the intimate. While there are few examples of literature particularly dedicated to developing our understanding of knowledge production on sex for sale, as already mentioned, feminism and feminist epistemology has served as an evident inspiration as they offer broad overarching approaches that emphasise the centrality of gender and sexuality to our understanding of sex for sale.
This book offers contributions from a number of scholars who, based on their reflections on their own research practice and the existing knowledge field, discuss ongoing methodological issues and challenges that we find to be representative of international research on sex for sale. In particular, this book explores and advances reflections on how knowledge production is framed by the pre-understanding of the scholar grounded in specific epistemological traditions. It focuses on how ethical dilemmas and ways of relating to the object of study, for instance through fieldwork, are firmly tied together with epistemological issues. In different ways, feminist thinking and feminist political agendas offer various inroads into epistemological questions relating to the scholarship of sex for sale that challenge the way in which sex commerce, the politics of prostitution and sex work are studied. While we argue that feminism is central to knowledge production on sex for sale, this does not mean that there exists one feminist ontology and politics of prostitution as well as politics of sex work, the two main labels for sex for sale in contemporary debates. Indeed, since the 1970s a growing body of feminist literature discusses the nexus of feminism and prostitution, which evidences that sex for sale has been and still is a contested phenomenon (Barry 1984; Bell 1987; Pateman 1988; Shrage 1994; Nagle 1997; OâConnell Davidson 1998; OâNeill 2001; Skilbrei and HolmstrĂśm 2013).
Different feminist inroads into the research field
of sex for sale
While feminists define and research sex for sale differently, there are commonalities in how they engage with the issue through considering how it aims to disturb power relations and that which is taken for granted. Feminist scholars have criticised the inherit maleness of mainstream (malestream) scientific inquiry and theories. Out of the critique of the male bias in different academic disciplines came feminist epistemology and methodology (Fonow and Cook 1991). The development of and discussions about standpoint epistemologies have been a central part of feminismâs engagement with the relationship between politics and empirical research (see, for example, Harding 1991; Hartsock 1998). Sanders, OâNeill and Pilcher (2009: 170) rightfully argue that feminist epistemologies are an important backdrop to the development and importance of participatory methodologies in the study of sex for sale, whether this is claimed as an explicit inspiration or not. Such methodologies include the people we study as active participants in various parts or in all of the research process (for a broad presentation see OâNeill 2004).
Feminist standpoint epistemologies emphasise the need to consider womenâs daily life as a starting point (hence the name). Thus, knowledge is produced through lived experience based on the idea that the category of âwomanâ is seen as autonomous or universal, emphasising female experiences as something distinctive (Simonsen 1996). Jane Flax (1987), an early standpoint theorist, argues that standpoint feminism retains an essentialist notion of womenâs difference from men, and therefore includes a claim for being able to overcome the constraints of position and power over, for example, women of colour or workingclass women, which they claim male researchers cannot. This is what the different directions within this tradition have in common.
Some versions of standpoint feminist theory do not pose only women as particularly able to understand the experiences of other women, but also marginalised people more generally (Addelson 1991; Fonow and Cook 1991), and this is relevant to the question of who can understand and represent the experience of women selling sex. The voicing of âwomenâs issuesâ is linked to the raising of âvoicesâ in a wider political historical context where different minorities and oppressed groups have struggled to be heard within science and in society at large over the last couple of decades, to find a voice of their own (Harding 1998) (see also Harrington and Cheng, this volume).
Standpoint theory implies notions of insider and outsider and this represents positions vis-Ă -vis the research object/subject where the insider has access to knowledge that is more âtrueâ than that which outsiders can produce (Wolf 1996). The premise of insidersâ epistemic privilege has met with resistance among feminists. One strand of critique is that it underestimates the epistemological, ethical and practical challenges that may be particular to insiders doing research (Narayan and Zavella in Wolf 1996). Another strand is questioning how women are often formulated as insiders to other womenâs lives, in the sense that it is assumed that women share enough experiences for them to be able to understand each otherâs lives and challenges. This has been critiqued for taking experience for granted and universalising the category of âwomanâ (see, for example, Dill 1987; Butler 1990; Collins 1998). This set of critiques was informed by postcolonial, âblackâ and working-class scholarship in the 1980s, which resulted in calls for a more complex rendering of positionality (hooks 1987; Parr 1997; Skeggs 1997; Collins 1998). As differences between women were becoming very important to both epistemological and political debates within feminism (Hartsock 1998), many feminists searched for alternative ways of theorising both gender and the meaning of experience (Haraway 1991: 160â161). In this way feminist poststructuralist theory, and particularly Judith Butlerâs thinking, can be seen as a reaction to standpoint feminism.
Several of the contributions in this book are inspired by poststructuralist and postcolonial perspectives. In line with poststructuralist feminist and postcolonial perspectives, a number of studies of sex for sale break with the sex-gender distinction and the predominant narratives that derive from the naturalised (Westernised) heterosexual matrix (see for instance, Kulick 1997; Prieur 1998; Mai 2012; Spanger 2012). By deconstructing the heterosexual matrix, Butler stresses that the culturally intelligible two genders model (man and woman) institutes and reproduces the cohesion between four components: body, gender, sexual practices and sexual desire (Butler 1990: 23). This gender configuration comes into being through âcitationalâ discursive practices referred to as âgender performativityâ. Within the heterosexual matrix, the two genders are regulated and become intelligible, while other types of gendered subjects, such as transgendered persons, are rendered impossible. Poststructuralist feminist theory, in line with postcolonial studies, has created an awareness that gender identities and gender relations are situated and need to be investigated in context. This theoretical point has been incorporated into studies on transnational sex commerce, resulting in the questions: first, whether white women from the âGlobal Northâ with no experience of selling sex are capable of representing and conducting nuanced studies of black womenâs and menâs selling of sex in the Global South; second, we stress that the concepts of prostitution and sex work have been transferred to various locations in the Global South without recognition of differences in local sexual and gendered discourses and practices as well as historical configurations that may not necessarily be the norm globally. Thus, we need to address the question of conducting studies that are Eurocentric. However, a burgeoning body of literature has demonstrated that the link between sex and money needs to be studied contextually (see for instance, Agustin 2007; Faier 2007; Cheng 2010; Oso Casas 2010; Spanger 2012; Groes 2014). These insights have produced a carefulness in contemporary feminism in speaking for others, which Belinda Carpenter (2000: 62) terms âthe contemporary feminist aversion to speaking for othersâ.
Several of the chapters herein (particularly Nencelâs and Harringtonâs) grapple with a central premise for much feminist epistemology; that of epi...
