China’s Commercial Sexscapes: Rethinking Intimacy, Masculinity, and Criminal Justice
© 2019
Exploring the experiences of both male clients and female sex workers, China’s Commercial Sexscapes expands upon the complex dynamics of sex worker and client relationships, and places them within the wider implications of expanding globalization and capitalism.
The book is based in large part upon interviews with sex workers and their clients the author conducted while undercover as a bartender in Dongguan, an important industrial city in Guangdong province and an explicit, complicated, and multidimensional setting for study. In the wake of the financial crisis, the purchasing of sex by single, young-adult males has become an increasingly socially acceptable way for men to perform and experience heteronormative masculinity. Investigating human rights, social policy, and the criminal justice system in China, this book applies the concept of “edgework” to the commercial sex industry in Dongguan to study how men and women interact within the changing global economy.
Product Details
- World Rights
- Page Count: 192 pages
- Dimensions: 5.9in x 0.7in x 9.0in
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Reviews
"China’s Commercial Sexscapes gives a voice to women and men who otherwise remain largely voiceless and nameless in a nation which would rather pretend that they don’t exist."
Mike Cormack
South China Morning Post, October 12, 2019"Eileen Yuk-ha Tsang has done us a terrific service. China’s Commercial Sexscapes is the first in-depth overview of the levels of erotic entertainment found in urban China. We are invited to probe how various participants perceive themselves in a variety of sexual and emotional transactions. This is how ethnography should be."
William Jankowiak, Department of Anthropology, University of Nevada, Las Vegas"Exploring a range of factors influencing female sex work in the urban regions of China, including urban migration, kinship systems, and economic and political upheaval, China’s Commercial Sexcapes demonstrates impressive ethnographic research."
Graham Scambler, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University College London"China’s Commercial Sexscapes contributes to the literature on the variegated levels of sex work in urban China. Its ethnographic approach offers readers an in-depth scrutiny of the dynamic interactions between clients and sex workers."
Tiantian Zheng, State University of New York, Cortland -
Author Information
Eileen Yuk-ha Tsang is an associate professor in the Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences at the City University of Hong Kong. -
Table of contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part One: Method
1. Urban Sexscapes: A Snapshop of China’s Commercial Sex Industries
Part Two: "Tempting Girls" and Clients in Low-End and Mid-Tier Niche Markets
2. Finding Hope as a "Tempting Girl" in China: Sex Work, Indentured Mobility, and Cosmopolitan Individualism
3. Disappointed and Despondent: How Young-Adult Male Migrants Contest Masculinity in China’s Low-End and Mid-Tier Niche Markets
Part Three: Intimacy and Masculinity in High-End Niche Markets
4. Reframing Love with a "Dirty Girl": High-End Sex Work and Intimate Relations in Urban China
5. Reciprocating Desires: The Pursuit of Desirable East Asian Femininity in China’s Commercial Sex Industry
Part Four: Social Policy Implications and Criminal Justice
6. Selling Commercial Sex as Edgework
7. Profit-Making Disguised as Rehabilitation: The Biopolitics of the Homo Sacer in China’s Custody Education Program for Sex Workers
Conclusion: Understanding the New Trends in China's Commercial Sex Industry
References
Index
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