Prostitution Research in Context by Marlene Spanger May-Len Skilbrei

Author:Marlene Spanger, May-Len Skilbrei [Marlene Spanger, May-Len Skilbrei]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Science, Sociology
ISBN: 9781317433552
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2017-03-16T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

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Collaborative research with sex

workers

Carol Harrington

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Introduction

This chapter considers knowledge about sex work produced by collaborative and participatory research, with reference to the example of New Zealand. I argue that three important factors have contributed to the hegemony of knowledge produced by collaborative and participatory research with sex workers in New Zealand since the late 1980s. First, a public health turn to partnership approaches in service delivery resulted in funding for sex worker organisations, which formed in major urban centres organised under the title ‘New Zealand Prostitutes’ Collective’ (NZPC). Second, a scandal over unethical medical research on female patients led to the institutionalisation of ethics committee approval as essential for carrying out research involving human subjects. Third, the ethical requirement for consultation with indigenous communities about any research concerning them framed norms for research with other marginalised groups. Consequently, the NZPC has had considerable influence over which researchers engage in public health research on sex work. Furthermore, while feminist research has informed campaigns for criminalisation of clients around the world, in New Zealand feminist social scientists’ commitment to collaborative and participatory methods precluded support for criminalisation. I trace how collaborative and participatory research norms informed a conflation of ethical and epistemological claims about sex work research and privileged the NZPC as central to knowledge production about sex work in New Zealand.

Both sex worker activists and scholars have criticised mainstream prostitution knowledge as supporting heterosexist and unequal gender relations and stigmatising minority groups, particularly migrants from poor countries (see, for example, Walkowitz 1982; Bell 1994; Doezema 2000; Vanwesenbeeck 2001; Jeffreys 2010). Their critique of scholarship on prostitution draws upon broader social movement criticism of research and scholarly knowledge as maintaining social hierarchy. Since the late 1960s, scholars associated with gender/feminist/women’s studies, queer theory and postcolonial theory have criticised claims to objectivity in mainstream research and argued that most research about oppressed populations serves the interests of elite white men. Many feminist methodologists now insist that when researchers report on their research about a population they should socially situate themselves in the research rather than adopt an objective voice (Harding 2004). Some scholars have developed participatory and collaborative approaches designed to overcome problems of hierarchy and exploitation in the relationship between the researcher and research subjects (Reinharz 1992; Scanlon 1993). Such standpoint theorising epistemologically privileges oppressed and exploited social groups, for example, women and indigenous people. Thus some scholars epistemologically privilege sex worker perspectives on sex work, and sex worker organisations advocate standpoint theorising.

Sex worker organisations have been key advocates of participatory research. Given their ability to facilitate researcher access to the sex work field, they have had some success in shaping research processes and outcomes. A governmental turn towards delivering services through partnerships with NGOs since the mid-1980s has supported sex worker organisations and global networks. Transnational and local health bodies have funded sex worker organisations as part of ‘community development’ to enable local participation in public health initiatives (Cornish and Campbell 2009). Such sex worker organisations advocate

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