Illustrated by in-depth empirical research from Kenya - one of the most popular country destinations in Africa for sex tourism - this book gathers much-needed statistics and data, and then critically examines the features of tourism and the sex trade, contextualizing this in relation to tourism development. It addresses the conditions which generate this 'social problem' and, while not taking a potentially problematic moralistic stance it questions whether this trade is exploitative in nature, particularly in cases of child sex tourism. It then critically evaluates the current policies in place to regulate the sex tourism industry and provides suggestions for future direction.
Illustrated by in-depth empirical research from Kenya, this book gathers much-needed statistics and data, and then critically examines the features of tourism and the sex trade, contextualizing this in relation to tourism development..
Sex worker activists throughout Africa are demanding an end to the criminalization of sex work and the recognition of their human rights to safe working conditions, health and justice services, and lives free from violence and discrimination. To Live Freely in This World is the first book to tell the story of the brave activists at the beating heart of the sex workers’ rights movement in Africa—the newest and most vibrant face of the global sex workers’ rights struggle. African sex worker activists are proving that communities facing human rights abuses are not bereft of agency. They’re challenging politicians, religious fundamentalists, and anti-prostitution advocates; confronting the multiple stigmas that affect the diverse members of their communities; engaging in intersectional movement building with similarly marginalized groups; and participating in the larger global sex workers’ rights struggle in order to determine their social and political fate. By locating this counter-narrative in Africa, To Live Freely in This World challenges disempowering and one-dimensional depictions of “degraded Third World prostitutes” and helps fill what has been a gaping hole in feminist scholarship regarding sex work in the African context. Based on original fieldwork in seven African countries, including Botswana, Kenya, Mauritius, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, and Uganda, Chi Adanna Mgbako draws on extensive interviews with over 160 African female and male (cisgender and transgender) sex worker activists, and weaves their voices and experiences into a fascinating, richly-detailed, and powerful examination of the history and continuing activism of this young movement.
For nearly a decade, Brazil has surpassed Thailand as the world's premier sex tourism destination. As the first full-length ethnography of sex tourism in Brazil, this pioneering study treats sex tourism as a complex and multidimensional phenomenon that involves a range of activities and erotic connections, from sex work to romantic transnational relationships. Erica Lorraine Williams explores sex tourism in the Brazilian state of Bahia from the perspectives of foreign tourists, tourism industry workers, sex workers who engage in liaisons with foreigners, and Afro-Brazilian men and women who contend with foreigners' stereotypical assumptions about their licentiousness. She shows how the Bahian state strategically exploits the touristic desire for exotic culture by appropriating an eroticized blackness and commodifying the Afro-Brazilian culture in order to sell Bahia to foreign travelers.
This book is part of a two-volume set that examines prostitution and sex trafficking on a global scale, with each chapter devoted to a particular country in one of seven geo-cultural areas of the world. The 16 chapters in this volume (Volume II) are devoted to examination of the commercial sex industry (CSI) in countries within Africa, Asia, Middle East, and Oceania, while the 18 chapters comprising Volume I focus exclusively on Europe, Latin America, and North America. This volume also includes a "global" section, which includes chapters that are globally relevant — rather than those devoted to a particular country or geographic location. The content of each Volume, as well as each chapter, reflects great diversity — diversity in focus, writing style, and personal position regarding the commercial sex industry. Diversity extends to the contributors, who are comprised of international scholars, service providers, and policy advocates representing a variety of fields and disciplines, with distinct and varied frames of reference and theoretical underpinnings with regard to the commercial sex industry. In addition to addressing aspects of the CSI across the globe, as impacted by geography and culture, authors have also provided a spectrum of implications of their work — implications ranging from continued scholarship and research, to legislative maneuvers and policy change, to suggestions for collaboration across NGOS, fieldworkers, clinicians, and service providers. Together, the 34 expertly-crafted chapters provide a wealth of knowledge from which to more deeply appreciate and contemplate the global commercial sex industry. By uniting contributors from around the world, this book aims to build a relatively common knowledge base on global prostitution and sex trafficking. Viewed from a unified, global perspective, it is hoped that this common understanding will lead to a grounded theory and integrated view with applicable suggestions for international efforts aimed at intervention.
Sugar Girls & Seamen illuminates the shadowy world of dockside prostitution in South Africa, focusing on the women of Cape Town and Durban who sell their hospitality to foreign sailors. Dockside "sugar girls" work at one of the busiest cultural intersections in the world. Through their continual interactions with foreign seamen, they become major traffickers in culture, ideas, languages, styles, goods, currencies, genes and diseases. Many learn the seamen's tongues, develop emotional relationships with them, have their babies and become entangled in vast webs of connection. In many ways, these South African mermaids are the ultimate cosmopolitans, the unsung sirens of globalisation. Based on fifteen months of research at the seamen's nightclubs, plus countless interviews with sugar girls, sailors, club owners, cabbies, bouncers and barmaids, this book provides a comprehensive account of dockside "romance" at the southern tip of Africa. Through stories, analysis and first-hand experiences, it reveals this gritty world in all its raw vitality and fragile humanity. Sugar Girls & Seamen is simultaneously racy and light, critical and profound.
Africa is a 'theme park' for Western tourists to experience untouched wilderness, untamed nature, and truly 'authentic' cultures, where the hosts, too, are part of a discourse about the 'other' and ourselves, about wildness, danger and roots. Tourism is important for Africa: international tourist arrivals to Africa continue to grow, income from tourism is crucial to national economies, and tourism investments are considered among the most profitable. This edited volumedeals with the interaction of local communities with tourists coming into their areas and villages. Based upon a common theoretical approach, fourteen cases of African tourism are discussed which involve direct contact between 'hosts' and 'guests'. The viewpoint throughout is from the side of the locals, establishing how the processes of interaction shape each small scale destination. Crucial in Africa is the fact that the large majority of tourism is game oriented and the interaction between locals and visitors is very much 'tainted' by this fact. Central is the notion of the tourist bubble - the infrastructure that is generated locally (and internationally) for hosting tourists, as it is this institutional interface that tends to impact on the local society and culture, not the tourists themselves directly. The examples come from all over Africa, from the Sahara to the Eastern Cape, and from Kenyato Ghana. All contributions are based upon original fieldwork. Walter van Beek is professor of anthropology at Tilburg University and Senior Researcher at the African Studies Centre, Leiden; Annette Schmidt is curatorof the African department at the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden, and is an archaeologist with a long experience in cultural management projects.
Sex Tourism examines the issues which emerge from sex worker-client interactions and from tourists visiting 'sex destinations'. It is a comprehensive summary of past research by academics and original primary and secondary research by the authors and has examples from Asia, Australasia and the USA. The authors have generated new models to show different dimensions of sex tourism, which normalise at least some components of the sex industry, and represent a new way of looking at sex tourism by challenging the preconceived perceptions that some people have of sex tourism or confirm the impression of others. Sex Tourism looks at issues of importance to those working in tourism, women's studies, gender studies and social change.
The runaway international bestseller is now an American must-read for lovers of adventure, travel writing, and romance. Corinne Hofmann tells how she falls in love with an African warrior while on holiday in Kenya. After overcoming severe obstacles, she moves into a tiny hut with him and his mother, and spends four years in his Kenyan village. Slowly but surely, the dream starts to crumble, and she hatches a plan to return home with her daughter, a baby born of the seemingly indestructible love between a white European woman and a Masai. Compulsively readable, The White Masai is at once a hopelessly romantic love story, a gripping adventure yarn, and a fine piece of meticulously observed social anthropology.
