Sex trafficking in Southeast Asia : a history of desire, duty and debt /

Sex trafficking in Southeast Asia : a history of desire, duty and debt /

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:Jacobsen, Trudy, author.
Imprint:Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2017.
Description:xii, 139 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.
Language:English
Series:Asian Studies Association of Australia Women in Asia series ; 49
ASAA women in Asia series ; 49.
Subject:
Human trafficking -- Southeast Asia.
Sex -- Economic aspects -- Southeast Asia -- History.
Sex -- Social aspects -- Southeast Asia -- History.
Human trafficking.
Sex -- Economic aspects.
Sex -- Social aspects.
Southeast Asia.
History.
Format: Print Book
URL for this record:http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/10927428
Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:9781138683075
1138683078
9781315544731
Notes:Includes bibliographical references and index.
Summary:"This book brings an important new perspective to the study of sex trafficking by considering the different types of social contracts which existed in the past that had sexual labour or activity as an inherent component. It outlines the nature of these social institutions - marriage, temporary marriage, debt bondage and slavery - which were recognised in local law, carried no stigma and endured for long periods. It discusses how labour pledged in return for a loan of cash or as a result of a punishment dictated by the state often included sexual labour, and how this could take the form of servicing the master of the house, or his guests, or foreign travellers, who paid the person who held the debt for the privilege, and how even wives of different ranks, temporary or permanent, and children, were pledged as sureties for loans. The book, which covers the modern states of Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, argues that cultural norms are not static, that sexual contracts are more complicated than simply "marriage" or "prostitution", and that as trafficking for sexual purposes increases those engaging in humanitarian intervention would do well to understand better the historical underpinnings of cultural understandings of familial and contractual obligations"--
Table of Contents:
  • List of figures
  • Series Editor's foreword
  • Acknowledgements
  • Introduction
  • Situating desire, duty, and debt
  • Critiquing 'development'
  • Public policy as an avenue of historical inquiry
  • Western versus culturally nuanced feminism
  • Sources
  • The chapters in this book
  • Notes
  • 1. Sexual contracts
  • The role of the individual in mainland Southeast Asia
  • The role of Buddhism in defining individual rights and responsibilities
  • Sexual contracts and discourses of self
  • Defining sexual contracts
  • Notes
  • 2. Presumptive permanence
  • The 'ranks' of marriage
  • Colonial-era codification
  • Triple standards
  • Legacies of colonial failure
  • Notes
  • 3. 'Other' women
  • Relative rights in the pre-colonial period
  • Colonial confusion
  • Cultural continuance
  • Notes
  • 4. Slavery and sexual labour
  • Slavery prior to c. 1800
  • Attempting abolition
  • Notes
  • 5. Diligent daughters
  • Debt bondage to c. 1800
  • Colonial (failed) interventions
  • The abolition of slavery
  • The eradication of 'slavery' - but not of debt bondage
  • Notes
  • 6. Geographies of desire, duty, and debt
  • The commodification of sex
  • Women as vectors
  • Traffic panic
  • Notes
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
  • Index
The Louis A. and Frances B. Wagner Book Fund bookplate

Similar Items