| Description |
1 online resource (304 pages) : 13 black and white images, 1 table, 11 halftones and 2 line drawings |
| Series |
Nepal and Himalayan Studies |
| Contents |
Cover; Title; Copyright; CONTENTS; List of illustrations; Preface; Acknowledgements; Abbreviations; 1 Drawing boundaries: an introduction; 2 An incomplete feminist ethnography; 3 The 'sex worker' as category; 4 Representations of sex work in Nepal: Othering cycles; 5 Space and women in urban Nepal; 6 Exchanging intimacy; 7 Transnational movements and the 'body' as capital investment; 8 Towards a conclusion: negotiating selves between categories; Epilogue: sex work, an unpacked category; Appendix 1; Appendix 2; References; Index |
| Summary |
This book explores 'sex-work' in Nepal as a social and analytical category. Narrating stories of those subsumed under such definition, it examines changes as well as continuities characterizing socio-cultural norms and perceptions through an analysis of sexual consumption. It also highlights the ways in which the development sector, media and local community discourses frame 'sex-work' as a distinct category. How does the work of development aid projects affect the understanding of the 'sex worker'? How are visual and media images employed to mark spaces of perdition in the Nepalese urban setting and what forms of imagination do they trigger? How are intimate practices and relations transformed by imported notions of love, and how do standards of propriety related to such interactions shift? This book attempts to answer some of these questions. An in-depth and intimate ethnography, the book deconstructs the 'sex worker' against the backdrop of global influences within local urban surroundings and points to the contradictions therein. Furthermore, through thorough descriptions of the experiences, agency, decision-making processes and lives of those labelled as sex workers, the book challenges concepts such as deviance and victimhood. It proposes a counternarrative by rethinking ideas of gender, objectification, marginality, symbolic violence and discrimination. This book will greatly interest researchers and scholars in women and gender studies, sociology and social anthropology, South Asian studies and social sciences as also NGOs and those in the development sector |
| Subject |
Prostitution -- Social aspects -- Nepal
|
|
Sex -- Social aspects -- Nepal
|
|
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Anthropology -- Cultural.
|
|
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Gender Studies.
|
|
Prostitution -- Social aspects
|
|
Sex -- Social aspects
|
|
Nepal
|
| Form |
Electronic book
|
| ISBN |
9781315141893 |
|
1315141892 |
|
