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China's Commercial Sexscapes

China's Commercial Sexscapes

Rethinking Intimacy, Masculinity, and Criminal Justice

Published by: University of Toronto Press

Digital download
9781487532901
Published: August 2019

Description
Contents
Authors
Praise

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.

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

Eileen Yuk-ha Tsang is Associate Professor in the Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences at the City University of Hong Kong. She is the author of several books about China, including China's Commercial Sexscapes: Rethinking Intimacy, Masculinity, and Criminal Justice and Blending East and West: Understanding the Changing Chinese Society.

"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