Globalization, Prostitution and Sex Trafficking

Corporeal Politics

Elina Penttinen

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9780415599580
• eBook ISBN: 9781134103843
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Globalisation
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Globalization has been traditionally interpreted as a phenomenon that takes place at the macro level and is determined by states and markets. This volume takes a different approach to understanding globalization, showing how through the global sex trade, globalization is embodied and enacted by individuals.

Elina Penttinen illustrates how the global sex industry feeds on complex global flows. Drawing on extensive fieldwork on the trafficking of Russian and Baltic female sex workers, she demonstrates how the embodiment and reiteration of globalization on the bodies of gendered individuals are tied to the larger processes of globalization. Appadurai's framework of landscapes of globalization is developed into a framework of shadow sexscapes in order to show how the global sex industry feeds on complex global flows and in turn operates as a form of shadow globalization.

Globalization, Prostitution and Sex Trafficking will be of interest to students and researchers of international relations, globalization and gender studies.

1 Introduction

The silent point of globalization

A Russian-Estonian woman is dancing in an erotic bar in Tampere, an expanding former industrial town, which now rides on the high tide created by boom in information technology. It is late evening and the bar, where the woman dances, is small and cozy. There are several Finnish men seated around the stage, watching her as she strips herself and dances completely naked in front of them while simulating phallic sex.¹ They have come to see an “Eastern girl” perform their erotic fantasies. There are no Finnish women either dancing or in the audience. There is a Finnish woman tending the bar, and this is the usual way the gendered and ethnicized labor is organized in bars like this; there is also a Finnish male bouncer. After her dance, she slips into her G-string and goes around the bar asking for tips. The men obey her and give her the usual 20 FIM (€3.50), slipping it into her G-string. This is a moment of touch and also small talk. The woman smiles and flirts and advertises a private show – a dance especially for “you.”² She makes the movements and gestures that one would associate with the stereotypical image of the female in heterosexual sex. The men seem to be pleased; they are getting their money’s worth. And what about her? In two weeks she has made 9,000 FIM (€1,500) for herself, even after all expenses have been paid and cuts taken by the bar and by her own manager. This is the kind of money that would have been impossible for her to make, let alone save, back home in Tarto, Estonia. After working for three weeks, she will go back, finish her degree in clothing design, then hopefully go on to a medical school and maybe some day work abroad for “real.”

In this short story, there are many levels of globalization taking place. The obvious point simply is that, before globalization and the breaking down of the Soviet borders, there were no such possibilities for Russian or Baltic women to travel and work abroad. It is also with the emergence of globalization, in the form of liberalization of commercial erotic culture, that Finland has become enmeshed in the commercial sex business. Before the 1990s, there were no erotic clubs where these “Eastern girls” could work. Before the 1990s, the “Eastern girl,” meaning a sex worker of any age of Baltic or Russian origin, did not exist discursively. The name “Eastern girl” has been associated with sexual drive and also moral looseness, meaning that an “Eastern girl” has no hang-ups over engaging in immoral work, but also cannot be trusted – she may steal, cheat and so on; but primarily she has been defined by her sexuality. This is due to the globalization of information flows that provide the “Eastern girl” with information of different places – some of them remote – in Finland, where there is a demand for sex workers. Before globalization of the world economy, Finnish people did not talk of “Eastern girls,” but with the commercialization and the advent of the sex business, “Eastern girls” has become a concept. The Finnish sex business demands and relies on these women, who are exchangeable and exotic and are willing to satisy the sexual demands of the male customers.

This book addresses prostitution as a consequence of international politics. In this book, I will show how globalization produces prostitution as a means to cope with globalization. Therefore, I will show also that globalization concretizes as prostitution at the individual level and that prostitution and sex-trafficking present how globalization operates as subjectivating bio-power. This book’s approach toward the issue of prostitution is different from that of most of the literature on prostitution politics, which tends to focus on the ideologies behind legislative measures toward prostitution, the interpretation of the client–prostitute relationship and the definitions of prostitution and trafficking. Furthermore, the manner in which this book approaches the issue of globalization is different from what is familiar to the majority of mainstream international relations (IR) literature, by addressing how globalization manifests itself in everyday lives.

In most IR literature, globalization is simplified into economic, political or cultural terms and discussed and debated upon in two ways. First, there is the assumption that globalization takes place in the world out there. It follows from this assessment of globalization that there is debate on where exactly globalization takes place, what counts as globalization and what drives the globalization processes. As somewhat distinct from the first debate on globalization, I see the debate on how globalization is theorized. Of course, this is related to the assessment of where globalization is seen to take place and, accordingly, the theorizing of globalization falls also easily into isolationist camps. Therefore, in the theories of globalization, it is conceptualized as an economic or a politico-ideological or a cultural process (see also Berndtson 2000). Therborn (2000: 152–153) categorizes the discourses in similar terms, identifying them as competition economics, “sociocritical,” state (im)potence, cultural and planetary ecology.³ These different perspectives have opposed each other and have competed with one another; and only a few theorists have worked to find a synthesis of the different aspects characteristic of globalization (Appadurai 1996).

Instead of debating over where globalization takes place and what globalization is, I want to emphasize the connection between theories and practices of globalization. I see the discussion on globalization as a form of discourse by which is considered to be globalization is constructed. Therefore, by discussing globalization, we are also constructing globalization (see Peterson 1996). The weakness I identify in much writing on globalization in the context of IR is that the focus is most often on macrolevel agents and events. Globalization is discussed in the context of the global economy from a critical theory perspective⁴ or as competition economics,⁵ relations of states⁶ or in terms of politico-ideological developments such as democratization and the universalization of human rights.⁷ Therefore, the debate on who generates globalization is also centered on these macrolevel agents. What I find missing for the most part are the concerns of questions of power and the individual. As portrayed in so much IR literature, it would appear as though there are no individuals who are affected or who do globalization and as though globalization is something that happens above and beyond individuals; and the issues of gender and ethnicity are most often overlooked in defining and theorizing what globalization is.

However, feminist approaches to globalization bring together, for critical review, most of what has been said about globalization. Still, even in the feminist debate on globalization, the focus is on gendered effects of globalization, rather than on the question of a gendered construction of globalization (see Chow 2003). Yet, it is in the feminist-oriented discussion that the questions of the theory and practices of globalization that inform my own analysis have been raised.

The definitions of globalization point to the interconnectedness of distant locations in shaping events and consequences, namely, the space-time compression due to technological innovations and cultural flows. Globalization is sometimes seen as universalization and homogenization of culture in the American style consumer society (Berndtson 2000)⁸ or instead, taking form through fragmentation and localization as well as through marginalization of peripheries by the affluent centers. Along with the word “globalization,” which has become part of everyday usage, there are also terms which attempt to describe the complexity and contradictions of globalization by saying the world is going through “fragmegration” or “glocalization.” Globalization can be seen as the continuity of world politics or as a fundamental transformation from the past. Although there are many different and contradicting accounts of globalization, I agree with Jens Bartelson (2000: 180) that, although “there is no agreement on what globalization is, the entire discourse on globalization is founded on the agreement that globalization is.” (italics original). And, as McCormack (2002: 105) argues, “Globalization attracts so much current theoretical attention because it is a simple (perhaps the simplest) way of defining the messy and all-too-often violent conflict of human interaction.” He also argues that the name “globalization” has itself become a category that contains all the different elements of globalization. Therefore, the name and the meaning attributed to it are being continuously contested in various fora (McCormack 2002).

The term “globalization” resists and eludes any easy or simple definition. It is also often stated that one cannot talk of globalization in singular, but instead, globalization should be assessed in plural as it takes many forms and thus “globalizations” is a more appropriate term (Therborn 2000).⁹ What is singular about globalization is rather the different discourses on globalization, which do not engage in dialogue with each other (Therborn 2000; see also Maclean 2000). However, these authors seem to have left feminist conceptualizations of globalization off their lists and do not address questions of method in researching or writing about globalization.

Feminist conceptualization of globalization

The feminist debate on globalization rounds up the different discussions presented above by gendering the economic, cultural and politico-ideological analyses of globalization. The feminist approaches to globalization in IRs can be roughly categorized into standpoint feminism and postmodern feminism.¹⁰ The first line of questioning involves, “Where are the women in globalization?” focusing on the gendered impacts of globalization as in the marginalization and relative impoverishment of women, but also the manner in which women contribute to globalization by their cheap labor in the global assembly line. The postmodern feminists also focus on how sex and gender are produced through globalization processes by bringing into question the masculinist bias inherent in systems of power and knowledge that contribute to globalization (see Chow 2003).

I want to elaborate in a few words on how globalization is conceptualized by using feminist lenses. Important texts, for example, are Anne Sisson Runyan and V. Spike Peterson’s (1993) Global Gender Issues; Jan Jindy Pettman’s (1996) Worlding women; and Meyer, Mary K. and Elisabeth Prügl (eds) Gender Politics in Global Governance (1999). The main theme that arises from these texts in terms of globalization is the focus on how neoliberal economic restructuring has affected women in discriminating ways. The criticism is directed at the inherent masculine bias and gender blindness in neoliberal practices, but also, on a deeper level, at matters concerning science and modern epistemology¹¹ according to which economic restructuring processes have been legitimated. In this way, the feminist criticism is extensive, for it addresses masculinism in the recent economic processes in terms of questions of power and knowledge that underline principles and practices of globalization. In this respect, feminist critics have also been skeptical about the triumph of liberalism and have on many occasions pointed to the unsustainability of economic growth as a means for progress or development. Feminists have criticized the triumph of liberalism being inherently based on a relationship of exploitation and criticized its inherent euro-centrism and gender bias.

Feminists argue that globalization, perceiving it to mean the globalization of production and consumption, could not have happened, had not the women been the silent contributors in “maquiladoras” and sweatshops (see e.g., Peterson and Sisson Runyan 1993, Pettman 1996, Wichterich 1998). Therefore, it is exactly women’s cheap labor that has enabled globalization to take place as female workers have been essential for transnational corporations that want to maximize profits. However, exploitation of women as cheap labor is based on masculinist bias and the institution of patriarchy. Women are considered not to need the same level of income as men since they are assumed to bring only secondary income to the family or else to be so young that they will soon marry, start a family and leave the workplace. Therefore women are paid less than the minimum wage on many occasions (Wichterich 1998, Ehrenreich and Russell Hochschild 2002). In addition, women are attractive workers for global production since they are assumed not to unionize and to accept oppressive working conditions so as to gain any income at all.

However women’s cheap labor in the global assembly line is not the only type of work that has been represented as attractive. An important part of the discourse is also the large numbers of women working in organized prostitution. It has been shown how important prostitutes are in attracting tourists, businessmen and transnational business. Pettman (1996) has followed Cynthia Enloe’s¹² (1988) lead in extensively covering the links with sex tourism, hospitality services and trafficking in women for purposes of prostitution, mail-order brides and domestic servants. The feminist analysis also relates to colonialism, economic restructuring, growing internationalization and indebtedness in state economies due to the imposed policies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. Pettman calls this system “the International Political Economy of Sex” as the gendered impacts of international and national policies so evidently shape women’s position and possibilities to deal with economic restructuring, thus constituting sex work also as a means for coping with globalization. This aspect of the sex specificity of forms of agency, as a constituting factor of the international political economy of sex, will be taken up in the following chapter on the construction of gender and ethnicity in the globalized sex market.

The feminist criticism of globalization as a form of power and knowledge aims to deconstruct and reconstruct how globalization is produced as a form of discourse. The criticism addresses the masculine bias in knowledge production through valorized dichotomies, reductionism and gender-blind empiricist methods (see e.g., Harding 1991). It is acknowledged that, as globalization poses theoretical and practical challenges to IRs, it may also open space for remapping these fields in more gender-sensitive ways. This is grounded in the arguments of the integral nature of discourses in reshaping world politics and vice versa. Peterson (1996) argues that the feminist project is important in responding to the empirical and epistemological weaknesses of IR theory in analyzing globalization. What feminists propose is to acknowledge the relational quality of world politics instead of its separation into states-markets, public-private and internal-external binary oppositions. Moreover, Peterson claims that postmodern feminism can account for the complexity and contingency of the globalizing world, for its strategy is in contextualizing, comparing and critically reflecting rather than in the search for objective truth and origin or ahistorical methods and theories.

An important part of the feminist project is not only the deconstruction of Western masculine-biased knowledge production but also the aim to give voice to those who have been marginalized (Krause 1996). This is important since feminism is not only an academic debate but also a political project, connected with political women’s movements, that aims at ending women’s discrimination in all forms. Globalization, as it is understood in terms of interconnectedness and overcoming of the tyranny of distances and borders, also enables the transnationalization of the feminist political project. This is evident in global women’s movements, in transnational collaboration of women’s non-governmental organizations and also in the attention and recognition that feminist issues have received at the level of the UN, such as its observance of 1976–1985 as the United Nations Decade for Women and also the holding of the 1995 United Nations World Conference for Women in Beijing. Women’s rights form an important part of a more general “human rights” discourse and, within this debate also, the violence against women in the globalized world has received strong emphasis and weight (Krause 1996). The best means to achieve the goals are also questioned and, therefore, participating in male-dominated institutions, such as the UN, is seen as futile from the point of view of the feminist project.¹³

What is probably one of the most important things that comes through the feminist academic and political (if these can be separated) projects is the openness and sensitivity toward different kinds of knowledge and voices. The feminist project, as it maintains that there is no ungendered experience, also makes interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches possible in academic research. The result is that, with these streams of feminist inquiry and interventions, a new kind of space for plurality of voices and discourses opens, making also the remapping of theories and practices of globalization possible. My own project stems from these feminist-informed perspectives on the study of globalization, thus making it possible also to address the question of agency and sex specificity in the theory and practices of globalization.

Globalization as corporeal politics

This book addresses prostitution and sex-trafficking in the context of globalization as corporeal politics. In this book I take the familiar question, “Where are the women in international relations?” presented by feminist scholars in IR, and I present it in terms of, “Where are the sex-specific and ethnicized bodies in the context of globalization?” I am going to address globalization as a form of bio-power, drawing on Michel Foucault and Judith Butler; this is discussed in more detail in Chapter 2. I will argue that globalization subjectivates, that is, produces sex-specific and ethnicized subject positions that are incorporated and embodied. In other words, I am going to be looking at how globalization concretizes at the level of the body and how, in turn, the sex-specific and ethnicized bodies enact and reiterate globalization. I will be exemplifying the corporealities of globalization by looking at the operations of the global sex industry. I will develop from the basis of Arjun Appadurai’s framework of landscapes of globalization, creating a framework of sexscapes of globalization in Chapter 3 in order to show how the global sex industry feeds on the complex global flows. These complex flows form global conjunctures in which new forms of agency and subjectivity are created. This is developed further in the narratives of corporeal globalization presented in Chapters 4–6, in which I explore the new forms of subjectivity and agency enacted in the global conjunctures of Finnish sex bars, brothels and parking lots where the sex trade takes place.

In this book, I will show how the global sex industry operates through a complex system of global flows and how it operates in correlation with the processes of globalization, in turn benefiting from them and also how it accordingly subjectivates in a gendered and ethnicized manner. Conceptualizing the global sex industry as a part of the globalized world economy implies several things. First of all, the global sex industry can be conceptualized as shadow globalization. What I mean by shadow globalization relates partly to how the shadow economy is theorized and defined as comprising illicit, informal, domestic and unrecorded activity (Fleming et al. 2000). However, by shadow globalization I also mean activities that have been made possible by global flows of information, technology, finance and people, that are taking place in informal and illegal ways, but in the shadows in terms of otherness of the domain of subjectivity of global world economy.

My aim is to conceptualize the global sex industry in the context of the overall processes of globalization. In this respect, I see it as shadow globalization, operating in relation to globalization of the world economy and also reiterating and reinventing it, but from the shadows by taking advantage of disjunction and construction of otherness.¹⁴ Globalization of the world economy, then, is seen marking the domain of subjectivity established by power/ knowledge, which takes shape through global governmentality. I will discuss this further in the following chapter.

Second, both these forms of globalization, the global village kind and shadow globalization, operate as forms of subjectivating power, producing and requiring certain kinds of subjectivities, which result in agency and also in the incorporation of the position of the subject. This means that subjectivity acts on and activates bodies, is performed through bodies and constrains bodies. These embodied positions exemplify the bio-politics of globalization. They result in incorporation and embodiment of gendered, economic, cultural and social as well as ethnicized relations that are shaped by globalizing processes. I argue that these embodied subject positions are gendered and ethnicized, resulting in different forms of agency, chal...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Bio-power and subjectivation in the globalized world economy of sex
• 3 Sexscapes of globalization
• 4 Narratives of embodied globalization of Russian prostitutes working in the erotic clubs in Helsinki
• 5 Sounds of silence in Lapland
• 6 “The land of perverts”
• 7 Conclusions
• Notes
• Bibliography