Boundaries of Legitimacy: Sex, Violence, Citizenship, and Community in a Local Sexual Economy |
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| Authors: | Lisa E Sanchez |
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| Institution: | Lisa Sanchez is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Criminology, Law, and Society at the University of California, Irvine. The research described here has been generously supported by the Ford Foundation, the American Society of Criminology, and the University of California, Irvine Program in Graduate Studies. The author is grateful for the support of these groups. The author would like to extend thanks to "Shane" for invaluable research assistance, and to the women and men of "Evergreen" for openly sharing their expertise, their opinions, and their struggles. The author appreciates the support of Kitty Calavita, and would like to thank Richard Perry for his generous contributions and critiques of this work. In addition, the author thanks Sally Merry, William Maurer, Michael Musheno, Marjorie Zatz, Paul Jesilow, Susan Coutin, Rosemary Coombe, Nahum Chandler, Justine Hyde, and the editors of Law and Social Inquiry;for helpful comments and continuing support. |
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| Abstract: | Studies of prostitution have overlooked the role of law in constituting the identities and sexual practices of women in the sex trade and defining the boundary between legitimate and illegitimate violence in the sexual economy. Drawing on field work with sex trade participants in a northwestern United States city, this paper explores how the cultural logic of modern liberal law shapes women's identities and interpretations of their actions. In positioning women in the sex trade as "sexual outlaws" to be managed and subjected to the full scope of legal authority, the law simultaneously limits women's citizenship and withdraws its protection. Moreover, in restricting women's ca-pacity to invoke fundamental legal rights, the law effectively sanctions "private" or extralegal forms of discipline and creates a space for violence. Given the paradoxical position these women hold as sexual outlaws on the one hand and frequent victims of physical and sexual assault on the other, I explore how they negotiate consent and resist violence. |
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