Intimate Labors by Parreñas Rhacel Salazar. Boris Eileen

Author:Parreñas, Rhacel Salazar.,Boris, Eileen [Parreñas, Rhacel Salazar.,Boris, Eileen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780804777278
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Ho Chi Minh City

After the fall of Saigon in 1975, Vietnam effectively closed its doors to the foreign world. Under the postwar socialist state, between 1975 and 1986, pimping was controlled, and prostitution was reduced, but even in the absence of a market economy, men persisted in producing a market demand for women's bodies. Moreover, rehabilitation programs and socialist prohibitions did not completely eliminate prostitution; many women returned to prostitution catering to local Vietnamese men in poverty-stricken postwar Vietnam.6

Following nearly a decade of lagging productivity and rapid inflation, the Vietnamese government introduced an extensive renovation policy called Doi Moi in 1986, which moved Vietnam from a socialist economy to a market economy.7 This market reform, heightened most recently when Vietnam joined the World Trade Organization in 2006, thrust Vietnam into a global system, opening its doors to foreign trade and investment following similar moves by other socialist countries.8 Over the past twenty years, scholars have documented the widespread social implications of Vietnam's movement from a complete socialist welfare system to a partial free-market economy for Vietnamese society with respect to family structures, gendered relations, and the return of Vietnamese transmigrants from abroad.9 However, little attention has been paid to the rise of sex work in this globalizing country.

I carried out seven months of fieldwork in three intervals between June 2006 and August 2007, spending the summers of 2006 and 2007 and the winter of 2006 in HCMC. During this time I conducted participant observation in local bars, cafes, sex workers' homes, malls, and restaurants and on the streets. My research is limited to women over the age of eighteen who work as independent agents in local bars and clubs because I wanted to focus on adult sex workers who chose to enter into sex work rather than those who are trafficked or forced to work.10 I began my research by spending time in local bars and on the streets trying to meet and develop rapport with various sex workers and clients before asking the women to participate in my project. I also befriended two local motorbike taxi drivers who took me to various pockets of the industry that catered to local Vietnamese men and helped me find different ways to approach women in the low-end sector.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.