The Gendered Proletariat
Sex Work, Workers' Movement, and Agency
Published on 25. October 2018
Book
Hardback
264 pages
978-0-19-947775-3 (ISBN)
Description
Sex workers are not factory labourers, wage workers, or domestic labour. Why, then, should they be considered a 'gendered proletariat'? What constitutes 'work' in sex work? The book answers these questions through a political-economic analysis of prostitution, situated in the context of the Sonagachi movement in Kolkata, West Bengal.
Using Marxian categories of use value and exchange value and its dual in concrete labour and abstract labour, this book analyses why the incorporation of the prostitute in a worker-citizen complex is always incomplete. It traces the history of prostitution in India through the colonial and postcolonial period, along with the transformation of the role of state from penal to a watch-care model of surveillance. With respect to a sex worker's rights, the book presents a critical observation on agency that the movement claims to have obtained.
Using Marxian categories of use value and exchange value and its dual in concrete labour and abstract labour, this book analyses why the incorporation of the prostitute in a worker-citizen complex is always incomplete. It traces the history of prostitution in India through the colonial and postcolonial period, along with the transformation of the role of state from penal to a watch-care model of surveillance. With respect to a sex worker's rights, the book presents a critical observation on agency that the movement claims to have obtained.
Reviews / Votes
The Gendered Proletariat is an in-depth and rigorous examination of the economic basis of sex work. The author, Swati Ghosh, adeptly draws on economic and deconstructionist frameworks to explore how we may consider sex work as a legitimate domain of labour. At the core of the analyses, as the title suggest, is the issue of gendered labour, and how that aligns with the larger picture of labour, which is supposedly gender neutral. * Simanti Dasgupta, University of Dayton, Dayton, USA, Pacific Affairs *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New Delhi
India
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 224 mm
Width: 142 mm
Thickness: 23 mm
Weight
408 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-947775-3 (9780199477753)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Swati Ghosh teaches Economics at the Faculty of Arts, Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata, West bengal. She also teaches courses at the Department of Economics, University of Calcutta. She has contributed to books on issues of gender, labour and development. Her publications include articles in Social Text, Economic and Political Weekly, Hecate, Identity Culture and Politics, and Sarai Reader. She is twice recipient of the Social Science Research Council (US), South Asia Regional Fellowship, in 2004 and 2005. She also writes in Bengali and has translated the book Science and Indian Culture by J.B.S. Haldane into Bengali.
Content
- Introduction
- Part I: Sex Work and Value
- Chapter 1: Economics and Sex Work
- Chapter 2: Sex Work as a Form of Service
- Chapter 3: Sex Work and Theory of Value
- Chapter 4: Feminist Engagements with Value
- Chapter 5: Sex Work as Affective Labour
- Part II: From Prostitute to Sex Worker: An Incomplete Revolution
- Chapter 6: Genealogy of the Prostitute: Colony to Post-colony
- Chapter 7: State, Welfare, and Governmentality
- Chapter 8: The Shadow Lines of Citizenship
- Chapter 9: Why (In)complete Revolution
- Part III: On the Question of Agency
- Chapter 10: A Manifesto and (Im)possibilities of Agency
- Chapter 11: Transgressing (B)orders: Prostitute As Mother and Wife
- The Gendered Proletariat
- References
- Index
- About the Author